The art of sampling, put simply, is taking a couple seconds out of an already released music track and looping it behind a new track. To do this, you send an audio signal to your computer and the computer ‘samples’ it- basically takes a lot of very quick pictures of this sound and then saves it accordingly. The theory that makes it possible (sampling theorem) was developed by Bell Labs (surprise, surprise) and it became such a popular technique that all digital music is made by a form of sampling. The most popular music creating services, such as GarageBand, use loops and samples to populate the options a user is given. Attached is a Ted talk by one of the top producers of the last decade (he’s produced for Amy Winehouse, Bruno Mars, etc) in which he discusses the art of sampling. He explains his point of view that sampling isn’t about ‘hijacking nostalgia wholesale” as critics often claim, but actually about including yourself in the narrative of a song while moving that story into the future. In other words, it’s a way of acknowledging the past and its influence, but advancing the narrative with modern ideas and technology.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H3TF-hl7zKc