During the workshop, my team used analog gear to sample film scenes and music. We browsed YouTube for various samples, and when we found a second-long section we liked, we captured it on an Akai Sampler and recorded the playback from a MIDI keyboard into the DAW. For melodies especially, this was randomized as we sporadically captured parts of a Herbie Hancock live performance and pieced together different combinations of the one-second cuts in the DAW. For drums, we relied on the drum-one shots provided beforehand, and layered these with loops and samples recorded from YouTube, which largely consisted of hi-hats and shakers to create a sense of movement across the duration of the beat.
The ultimate result was a gritty boom-bap beat with dirty drums layered with additional chops of a haunting piano line. The chops of piano are dark and skittering, as well as slightly detuned. This is layered with vocal chops from Midnight Train to Georgia by Gladys Knight & The Pips, which also adds to the eerie atmosphere. Further, we chose to use a power chord strike sample from Rock the Bells by LL Cool J, which made sense because RZA actually used the same sample on Protect Ya Neck. The track closes with a more melodic 4-bar loop from Midnight Train to Georgia, which serves as an outro which culminates in a fight scene sample, “Shaolin shadowboxing and the Wu-Tang sword style”.
I observed a surprising degree of flexibility in this production style, of course incomparable to the flexibility of sampling within a DAW, but one which, in the 1990s, would have made sense. It enables a producer to borrow from vinyl, tape, VCR, CD-ROM, DVD, and many more formats of media, and in this regard was essentially limitless when it came to sampling. Since the duration of sound captured is so short, it is understandably greatly useful for sampling drums; specific snares, kicks, and hi-hats can easily be isolated and looped in their own fashion. In a more conceptual sense, this flexibility allows for a producer to build intertextual ideas – in the case of RZA, by sampling martial arts films that speak to the unique identity and story of the Wu-Tang Clan, or by sampling soul/jazz records that themselves have important places in the lexicon of African-American history, which are then used by RZA to build new history.
There are certainly limitations that come with this process, especially with regards to ease of use and time spent, as opposed to sampling in the modern digital production landscape. However, the purposeful limitation of options really narrows down the scope of production to a more detailed, simple, and specific type of beat which becomes emblematic of this style.