Basic Sampling 101 or How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love YouTube

[IlluminatiPirate]

Disclaimer I did not make this u/IPoAC made it. I reposting it here for Macintosh Cafe shoppers all credit goes to him/her!

Welcome to Basic Sampling 101! You've no doubt come here because you either:

A) Don't know where to find samples or B) Don't know how to sample what you want.

So sit back and watch as I pull the curtains back on this really difficult process.

Required tools:

YouTube

A YouTube to MP3 or similar website

Audacity

Good taste

Note that you can certainly get more fancy and sample VHS, Vinyl, Wax Cylinder, ect. but today we're focusing on getting sampling done quick and easy to get those tracks rolling.

Go to YouTube and search up some tunes using the good taste you brought along. Unfortunately good taste isn't something I can teach you, and even that's subjective in the end. If you're going for the average Vaporwave sound I suggest looking up some smooth jazz or something.Let's grab this Kenny G song for example.

Copy the video link and head over to http://www.youtube-mp3.org/ or whatever converter site you prefer. Download the file after it's done converting.

Congratulations! You've got your sample! Now you can throw it into whatever DAW you use and slow it down to the tempo that makes you happy.

"But what if I want to sample only part of a track/album/movie/interview?" I hear you cry.

Well, you can still use the method I just brought you through but I agree that filtering through over 30 minutes of audio for one sample is a bit of a pain in the ass. So here's where we get slightly more technical but still really easy.

Download and install Audacity.

Open Audacity and choose Windows WASAP in this wee dropdown.


Voila! You can now record your computer's audio output. Now the possibilities are endless as you can sample literally any audio coming from your computer. All you gotta do is hit record in Audacity and hit play on what you intend to sample. Be weary that any adjustments in volume in your system will be reflected in the recording, so if your sample is really low volume you can either turn up your volume or adjust the mic gain in Audacity. Just remember to export it as a wav file afterwards and you're good as gold.

Hit up this link for a little more in depth info of using this method if you want.

Here's a few quick YouTube searches for the lazy to get your basic sample library poppin':

Japanese funk

Album oriented rock

Smooth jazz

80s R&B

Don't be afraid to get sucked down a YouTube hole either, that's where the juicy samples are really found!

What you do with your sample after that is up to you. Slow it down in Audacity if you want, warp it up Ableton, turn it into Future Funk in FL Studio. Not sure where to go next? Well, you're in the right place if you're looking for vaporwave specific advice. I highly suggest checking out the wiki for this subreddit for starters, but remember that there's no set way to make vaporwave; you've got to know how to learn and apply your own production knowledge to your tracks, so peel back your eyelids and watch all the tutorials you can and absorb that shit like a sponge because there's so, damn, much, of it.

Hope this answers some of your beginner questions, I know it's one of the most asked around here so I did my best to cover all the bases.

Cheers!

 

[Dream Thief]

Necro, but good post, thanks for sharing

 

[MySpace Tom]

Third-party sites can be slow and unreliable. I prefer using yt-dlp, and you should too. It takes a bit more setup but once everything's installed, it's fast and easy to download pretty much any media that you can get to in a browser. I'll focus on using it just for audio here.

Downloading Audio with yt-dlp

Installing yt-dlp
First, download yt-dlp from their GitHub page here:

GitHub - yt-dlp/yt-dlp: A youtube-dl fork with additional features and fixes

A youtube-dl fork with additional features and fixes - GitHub - yt-dlp/yt-dlp: A youtube-dl fork with additional features and fixes

github.com

Make sure that you check out their Dependencies section as well, mostly to get FFmpeg which is required for yt-dlp to process media:

GitHub - yt-dlp/yt-dlp: A youtube-dl fork with additional features and fixes

A youtube-dl fork with additional features and fixes - GitHub - yt-dlp/yt-dlp: A youtube-dl fork with additional features and fixes

github.com

FFmpeg

www.ffmpeg.org

Validating the Installation
Open a terminal. If you're not familiar with what a terminal or the command line is, do one of these:

If you use...	Do this
Windows	Press the Start key and type "powershell" or "cmd", then hit Enter
OSX	Press Command + Space, type "terminal", and hit Return
Linux	Knowing this should already be in your blood

Once you have your terminal open, type the following into it:

yt-dlp --version

This should reveal the current version number if it works, which should be its last build date. It should look something like this:

2021.10.10

You might get a message similar to this instead:

'yt-dlp' is not recognized as an internal or external command,
operable program or batch file.

If you see this, you can either put the location of yt-dlp in your system's PATH environment variable or you can reference yt-dlp by its full path. For simplicity, we'll go with the latter of these methods. Just include the full path of where you put yt-dlp in your system. Here's what mine looks like when I do this on Windows after I put yt-dlp in an arbitrary Applications folder:

C:\> C:\Applications\youtube-dl\yt-dlp --version
2021.10.10

Downloading Audio from YouTube

Now that you have yt-dlp installed, go to your sample directory and open a terminal. If you're on Windows, you should be able to open PowerShell by holding the shift key and right clicking in the folder. This will open a context menu that has the "Open PowerShell Window Here" menu option:

When you have a terminal open, just type the following:

yt-dlp -f ba -x --audio-format mp3 "https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4hMPVO76BI0"

Let's quickly break down this gibberish:

Part of the command	What is means
yt-dlp	The yt-dlp program itself
-f ba	Choose "best audio" for the format
-x	Extract the audio from the video
--audio-format mp3	Save the audio as an MP3
"https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4hMPVO76BI0"	The URL of a cool video that you want to download (surrounded by double quotes because without these, your terminal might get confused by any special characters)

Replace the YouTube link with the one for whichever video you want to download and run the command

If it worked, you should see something like this:

PS \audio> yt-dlp -f ba -x --audio-format mp3 "https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4hMPVO76BI0"
[youtube] 4hMPVO76BI0: Downloading webpage
[youtube] 4hMPVO76BI0: Downloading android player API JSON
[youtube] 4hMPVO76BI0: Downloading MPD manifest
[youtube] 4hMPVO76BI0: Downloading MPD manifest
[info] 4hMPVO76BI0: Downloading 1 format(s): 251
[download] Destination: KrəSH Ambien - incantation [4hMPVO76BI0].webm
[download] 100% of 5.54MiB in 00:00
[ExtractAudio] Destination: KrəSH Ambien - incantation [4hMPVO76BI0].mp3
Deleting original file KrəSH Ambien - incantation [4hMPVO76BI0].webm (pass -k to keep)

Now you should have an MP3 of the file in your folder. How cool was that?

What Else Can yt-dlp Do?

If you want to go crazy, yt-dlp can download and process multiple videos with one command, like this one that grabs three videos:

PS \audio> C:\Applications\youtube-dl\yt-dlp -f ba -x --audio-format mp3 "https://www.youtube.com/watch?v
=kJzR6-5Dnl0" "https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EGIm38L1ChQ" "https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kHCrFkRwPF0"

It can even download playlists:

PS \audio> C:\Applications\youtube-dl\yt-dlp -f ba -x --audio-format mp3 "https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLh6x_N4QYj0oOUj_P4CRl4Jy7dyoEtFoS"

Or even entire YouTube channels:

PS \audio> C:\Applications\youtube-dl\yt-dlp -f ba -x --audio-format mp3 "https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCfREJySdf4pW5UPKLHk2gZQ"

Basically, just throw any URL that you want at it and chances are it will rip it exactly as you like, even for things that aren't YouTube. It can download this video from Vimeo from a Bing search results page:

PS G:\YouTube Rips\audio> C:\Applications\youtube-dl\yt-dlp -f ba -x --audio-format mp3 "https://www.bing.com/videos/search?q=michael+idehall+vimeo&docid=608009035430713236&mid=C55E8F4A1020059253F5C55E8F4A1020059253F5&view=detail&FORM=VIRE"

Now go download gigabytes of media!

 

[MySpace Tom]

Did you guys know that you can convert media with VLC Media Player? It's a pretty easy way to turn video rips into audio to import in a DAW. Just do this:

1. In the menu bar, go to Media -> Convert / Save
2. Under File Selection, either add files or drag and drop them onto the box
3. Click the "Convert / Save" button at the bottom for the window
4. Under Settings, set the Profile to "Audio - CD"
5. Under Destination, you can set where the result should go if you're converting a single file. Otherwise, it will say "Multiple Files Selected" and won't give you an option to change it since it will put them into the same directory
6. Tick the checkbox for "Append '-converted' to filename" to minimize any chances of the originals being overwritten
7. Hit the "Start" button
8. Wait for conversion to complete
9. Enjoy your new sample material