29 Mind-Blowing Music Facts I’ve Learned from Creating Micro-Chop
This past summer I read an article about the value of organizing your Medium writing into a publication. After reading it I decided to take what I’d written about music on Medium and put it into a publication called Micro-Chop. Using the tagline “Dissecting DJing, rapping, samplers, synths, and vinyl”, I wanted to give music junkies a trusted resource for deep dives on the creative process. I wanted to create a home for my favorite kind of music journalism.
Since then I’ve been honing my craft by digging through archives of articles, interviews, social media posts, and YouTube videos. I take what I learn and turn it into articles about the fascinating process of making music. Everything I’ve discovered along the way has increased my appreciation of music tenfold.
Here are 29 of the most interesting stories I’ve discovered so far. Links to the articles are included in each numbered point. Enjoy.
- The Avalanches used 3,500 samples to make “Since I Left You”.
- The Beatles sampled a Chuck Berry bassline for “I Saw Her Standing There”.
- Biz Markie’s “Just a Friend” started out as “You Must Be On Speed”.
- Black Thought’s verse for “Bird’s Eye View” took three minutes to record inside a closet.
- Bob Marley’s “I Shot The Sheriff” might be about birth control.
- Dan The Automator, E.Z. Mike Simpson of The Dust Brothers, and Prince Paul recorded an unreleased album.
- Dave Grohl recorded the entire Foo Fighters debut in one week.
- Dibia$e started making beats with an 8-second sampler, the radio, and a Sony Sports Walkman.
- DJ Shadow used turntable pitch control to layer samples on “Endtroducing…..”
- It took Dilla 12 minutes to make A Tribe Called Quest’s “Get a Hold”.
- The Gorillaz made an entire album with an iPad.
- Jade’s “Don’t Walk Away” inspired Q-Tip to make “Award Tour”.
- John Carpenter created the entire Halloween score in two weeks.
- Large Professor wrote a love song about his drum machine.
- Madlib owns four tons of vinyl.
- Mannie Fresh made “Ha” with an Emu SP-1200.
- Mayer Hawthorne recorded A Strange Arrangement demos through a pair of headphones.
- Nas’s “One Love” is a pause-tape beat.
- Paul C programmed two songs for Devo.
- Q-Tip made most of “People’s Instinctive Travels” on pause-tapes when he was 16.
- Rihanna’s “Umbrella” started as a free GarageBand loop.
- RZA lost 300 beats in a flood.
- The opening to Michael Jackson’s “Beat It” is an exact replay of a synth demo record.
- The riff from Nirvana’s “Come As You Are” has complicated origins that span back to the 1960s.
- The sample for Eminem’s “Stan” was recorded off of a TV set.
- T-Pain made “I’m N Luv (Wit A Stripper)” in GarageBand during a power outage.
- TLC’s “Waterfalls” features vocals from CeeLo Green and a Paul McCartney interpolation.
- 2Pac’s “Fuck The World” was a Prince remake that Shock G meant to tape over.
- Warren G sampled the opening of “Regulate” from a VCR and recorded the vocals in a closet.
If you enjoyed this piece, please consider following my Bookshelf Beats and Micro-Chop publications. You can also read my work at Cuepoint and HipHopDX.
