in music, what is the difference between a sample and a remix?
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A sample is a snippet of another song. Sampling has been done since the classical music era by just “interpolating” someone’s composition or lyrics into your own composition or performance, just as a sort of tribute.
However, usually when people talk about samples, they’re talking about actually taking a piece of some other artist’s *recording* and putting that into your own song; this was something that started happening mainly in the 1980s and remains popular today.
Since the mid-1950s, most songs are recorded on “multitrack”: vocals and instruments are all recorded separately onto parallel “tracks” (on reel-to-reel tape, historically). Later, the tracks are played through a mixing console so that their relative volume levels can be set and effects like echo and stereo panning can be added, the goal being to produce a stereo “mixdown”. This recording is sometimes then further edited.
The first remixes were simply another publicly released attempt at mixing the multitrack recordings in a new way.
In the late 1950s/early ’60s, remixes were made by anonymous engineers who were just trying to create stereo versions of songs that were only in mono before.
In the 1970s, remixes were made by disco DJs or reggae producers who wanted to lengthen and beef up the sound of songs so they sounded good on very loud sound systems.
In the 1980s and beyond, remixes became more ubiquitous and daring, incorporating a lot of new percussion and other instrumentation that the original artist didn’t make. Sometimes the new material includes samples of other recordings. Sometimes the remixes are arguably superior to the original productions.
An example is worth a thousand words. Listen to a few seconds of each of these clips on YouTube:
[SWV – Right Here (radio edit)](https://youtu.be/j3Wozms0IGM?t=25)
This version of this combination R&B/rap song wasn’t bad, but it was not a hit.
[SWV – Right Here (instrumental)](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N7xl2lVTWyc)
This “instrumental” is a remix in which most of the vocals and percussion has been removed, minor changes have been made to the effects and the way the remaining instruments were combined, and the entire song has been re-edited.
[SWV – Right Here (Human Nature Radio Mix)](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vHwXoY0LiQk)
This was a very popular remix in which all the instrumental backing parts were replaced and the rap was removed. The biggest change is the inclusion of a gratuitous, repeating sample (used with permission) from Michael Jackson’s “Human Nature”. The remix was not what the original singers and producers envisioned, but this new version was a huge hit, and the record company even commissioned a new video for it.
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