Sampling (music)

musical instrument

form of electroacoustic music

reproduction of short extracts from a musical work

drum break

WhoSampled is a website and app database of information about sampled music or sample-based music, interpolations, cover songs, and remixes. As of February 2026, the website contains 1,294,557 songs and 402,043 artists in its catalog.

music term; using a melody, or portions of a melody, from a previously recorded song but re-recording the melody instead of sampling it

Plunderphonics is a music genre in which tracks are constructed by sampling recognizable musical works. The term was coined by composer John Oswald in 1985 in his essay "Plunderphonics, or Audio Piracy as a Compositional Prerogative", and eventually explicitly defined in the liner notes of his Grayfolded album. Plunderphonics is a form of sound collage. Oswald has described it as a referential and self-conscious practice which interrogates notions of originality and identity.

1970 song performed by James Brown of which samples of its drumming have been used in over two-thousand records

music term and genre; technique where newly branded sound objects or compositions, including songs, are created from collage

Sound effect

composition by Gavin Bryars

Sampledelia (also called sampledelica) is sample-based music that uses samplers or similar technology to expand upon the recording methods of 1960s psychedelia. Sampledelia features "disorienting, perception-warping" manipulations of audio samples or found sounds via techniques such as chopping, looping or stretching. Sampledelic techniques have been applied prominently in styles of electronic music and hip-hop, such as trip hop, jungle, post-rock, and plunderphonics.

frequently sampled phrase by James Brown

soul or jazz music that is very hard to source or relatively obscure