What kinda music

Admiring the art of tags, quotations, and samples

In my last post, I talked about Suno, an AI music app that generates music that sounds suspiciously similar to existing songs¹. This is wrong when there appears to be no communication with artists or the public about what data they use. There’s also no artistic intent behind the copying: rather than respecting or honoring previous work, what generative AI does is much more exploitative. Ironically, sounding like other music is one of the most important musical creative techniques, and has been for a very long time. Unlike generative AI slop, when it’s done properly, it sounds really good! In this post, I will dig into the beauty of musical reference.

Let’s start with self-references. In hip-hop, producer tags are everywhere: a short, instantly-recognizable clip (usually someone saying the producer’s name) inserted at the beginning of the song. My favorite is Pharrell’s: instead of his name, he opts for a four-beat opening that musically integrates into the song. To be honest, I didn’t even notice until I saw someone talking about it:

Western classical composers also did this, though there’s more flexibility with how it shows up. For example, Shostakovich is famous for his four-note motif that spells out part of his name Dmitri Schostakovich (German transliteration): d-s-c-h, which is to us d-eflat-c-b. The intervals work well with his angsty tonality, and he integrates it naturally into the melody, harmony, or bass line. It’s kind of everywhere in his eighth string quartet, but the start time I link below shows it being handed off quickly from cello to viola to the violins, and then repeating at half speed in the first violin.

It makes sense that artists like putting their name on things they make, like a signature on a painting. But the real fun starts when musicians start referencing other musicians.

This is a standard technique in Western classical music, to the point where I would be surprised if there were any piece completely devoid of a quotation. They’re used for a variety of reasons, similar to how samples are used in hip hop today: whimsy, symbolism, reverence, mockery, and more. One of the most commonly quoted phrases is the first four notes of the third movement of Beethoven’s 5th symphony (dun dun dun DUUNNN). Listen to the first four notes of this movement from Charles Ives’ “Concord” sonata. Sound familiar?

Those first four notes are so delicate and in a completely different context here that it’s difficult to notice if you’re not listening for it (though later, like at 1:19, it’s obvious). It also gets woven into the melody itself, and comes back over and over with dramatically different variations. Even when the melody completely changes, the simple one-two-three-four rhythm, which is basic enough to appear in literally any music of any genre, somehow still evokes Beethoven’s 5th. Magic!

Of course, quotation is not limited to classical music. Franz Ferdinand’s opening guitar riff in Walk Away clearly quotes, but does not copy or sample, Kraftwerk’s The Model:

What about quoting things that aren’t music? Many composers were inspired by birdsong, such as Olivier Messiaen in his Oiseux Exotiques. And there’s even imitation of machines: the chilling percussion at the end of Shostakovich’s 15th symphony rumored to imitate the humming and clattering of the hospital machines during Shostakovich’s hospitalization for a heart attack. Listen here:

When sampling technology came about in the 1940s alongside the musique concrète movement, the possibilities for reference-making expanded. Rather than having to imitate a sound with instruments, you could put it in directly! The image below is taken from the score of Edgard Varèse’s Déserts (1954).

source

And here’s the “1st interpolation”:

Okay, but that’s just the early days of sampling in classical music. As we know, sampling is so ubiquitous, especially in hip-hop, that it’s almost embarrassing to be writing about it. I have neither the expertise nor desire to go into its rich history, but I just wanted to highlight the creativity and playfulness that goes into explicitly and (usually) respectfully borrowing other people’s music.

Kendrick’s tracks have super creative samples. This YouTube channel does awesome breakdowns, and Backseat Freestyle even samples a clip from The Powerpuff Girls. Check it out:

And here’s a fun one, surprisingly shown to me by Spotify Discover Weekly (the algorithm does sometimes work?). Did you know this was the original?

I’ll end with one of my favorites, Mos Def’s sample of Aretha Franklin’s One Step Ahead. I love that he (or producer Ayatollah) keeps in the plucked guitar line from the original. It actually is much more than just a sample: Ms. Fat Booty is a masterful restitching of original parts with the addition of transformative beats and verses.

It’s clear that musicians of all genres can do amazing stuff with other people’s music that honors it, treats it playfully, or takes it to a new level. As with most art, there is no formula for how to do this well. You know it when you hear it. Marveling at these gems makes it even more clear how difficult it is define and imitate human artistic creativity, even for entities with seemingly all the resources in the world.

What are your favorite musical references?

1. Last week, Suno and Udio were sued by major record labels.