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Today, music sampling has effectively created entire genres. Industrial and Electronic music are entirely dependent on the technology. Where would dance music be without libraries of dance production music and all related resources? It's interesting to consider then, in this sample-saturated world, where the technology came from and what sounds it enabled in the early days.

The 60s was a time of great experimentation in sampling, with obscure work by William S Bourroughs and Timothy Leary. However, the same techniques were used to great effect on more mainstream records by Simon and Garfunkel ('The Sounds of Silence') and The Beatles ('Yellow Submarine', 'I am the Walrus').Rather than 'borrowed' elements, these songs featured double or triple re-recordings of the artists themselves singing to create extra harmonies.

But it was in hip-hop that advanced sampling to the artform it is today. Intriguingly the use of borrowed breaks and tunes in hip-hop and rap weren't always 'sampled' from a library music, some artists literally had cover-bands performing what versions of tunes they required for them to perform over. Grandmaster Flash was among the Hip-Hop producers of the early 80s bring a much saner and familiar sampling technique to music. Some of the breaks (such as the infamous Amen break) then sampled by hip-hop artists were Funk and Soul bands of the late 60s, and they endure in libraries even today.

Electronica production music owes a lot to the hip-hop pioneers and their contemporary influence on Brian Eno and David Byrne when they created 'My Life in the Bush of Ghosts'. Instead of focusing on vocal performances by putting familiar elements in the instrumental, Eno / Byrne were using samples of Arabic singers, preachers and DJs taken from the radio to create the lead vocal. But once we're past this record, the history of sampling becomes a history of lawsuits brought against the practice, rather than the great records it has created.