Digital Sampling

"This is an original, engaging, and much-needed book about sampling, which focuses on the history, design, and use of key technologies like the Fairlight CMI and E-mu Emulator. By exploring the practices of users in a wide range of musical genres, it demonstrates the rich, diverse, and complex ways that sampling has shaped popular music." - Ragnhild Brovig-Hanssen, Associate Professor in Popular Music Studies, University of Oslo

"The first rigorous, comprehensive, sociological study of sampling, which vividly details the impact that sampling practices have had on popular music culture. A wonderfully readable text that will deepen and enrich our understanding of the myriad ways technology shapes what music sounds like and how it is made." - Nick Prior, Professor of Cultural Sociology, University of Edinburgh

"This readable and meticulously researched work is the first book-length account of the social, musical, and technological history of the sampler. Beyond the trope of appropriation, Harkins helps us hear the multiple ways that digital instruments are enmeshed with ideas and practices of the analogue." - Eliot Bates, Assistant Professor of Ethnomusicology, City University of New York Graduate Center