[HN Gopher] Recreating Daft Punk's Something About Us
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Recreating Daft Punk's Something About Us
Author : MistyMouse
Score : 234 points
Date : 2025-04-05 05:31 UTC (17 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (thoughts-and-things.ghost.io)
(TXT) w3m dump (thoughts-and-things.ghost.io)
| hnlmorg wrote:
| Discovery is a great album but what this article misses is that
| Daft Punk, like a lot of electronic artists, heavily used
| samples.
|
| I couldn't find anything on the samples used in Something About
| Us specifically, but chances are they did sample a few funk
| tracks to create that.
|
| Discovery is a great album. And the anime story that runs through
| the album is a delight to watch too.
| djmips wrote:
| Maybe they didn't. They are musicians, not just DJs so it's
| entirely possibly that they made an entire track from scratch.
| Their last album I think was a lot of originals not using
| pastiche IIRC.
| hnlmorg wrote:
| There are a hell of a lot of samples used throughout
| Discovery. If Something About Us was entirely original then
| it would be an outlier.
|
| Also their latest album (Random Access Memories) came more
| than a decade later than Discovery and was departure from
| their older techno roots.
|
| You also have to bear in mind that while Discovery is a great
| album, it wasn't created in a vacuum. Electronic artists
| sampling rock and funk music was in vogue at the time. With
| artists like Fatboy Slim and The Prodigy having their own
| seminal albums with heavy use of creative sampling.
|
| If you look at popular electronic music from that era, more
| tracks have made use of sampling than tracks that haven't.
|
| > Maybe they didn't. They are musicians, not just DJs
|
| I think that's rather disparaging to artists who do sample.
| Producing electronic music might be a different skill to
| playing the guitar but it's still a difficult craft to learn.
| It's also an entirely different skill to DJing
|
| Source: myself, who was a DJ and producer in the Daft Punk
| era.
| disillusioned wrote:
| Interestingly, there aren't any listed on whosampled, but a
| comment there calls out that the bass line borrows
| extremely heavily from Curtis Mayfield's Tripping Out (and
| a bit more than the bass, if you listen to it):
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dCR6ecWb064
|
| Not quite a sample necessarily, but more than a bit of
| inspiration there.
|
| And when you watch the Discovery sample deconstruction
| videos, it becomes obvious just how much artistry went into
| their albums... how they'd hear the tiny guitar riff and
| mix it into exactly what they need for so many tracks.
|
| God, I love Daft Punk.
| jmcgough wrote:
| Something About Us is the odd track on the album that does
| not use any known samples. The backing music is likely
| inspired by Oliver Cheatham's "Get Down Saturday Night",
| which Daft Punk has sampled in two other songs (Voyager and
| the intro to their 1997 BBC1 Essential Mix).
| kev009 wrote:
| Using samples doesn't mean not musician. A lot of progressive
| rock used the Mellotron which are clever tape loops. The
| biggest artists of the 80s used Fairlights and Emulators.
| Entire genres of music owe some lineage to Akai. If you are
| "producing" (in the arranging, mixing, mastering sense) today
| in a DAW you probably use sampling techniques all over the
| place even if you did a live take of real instruments. The
| sampler is a real instrument.
| diggan wrote:
| > Using samples doesn't mean not musician.
|
| I don't think parent tried to say they're not musicians
| because they used samples. But more like they had more
| options, since they weren't just DJs, so it's possible they
| actually did sound design themselves, rather than sampled
| it. Someone who only knows DJing obviously has less options
| available in the beginning if they start producing.
|
| That said, Daft Punk did rely heavily on samples all over
| the place (not a bad thing), and it would be surprising if
| there was tracks out there where they didn't use any
| samples at all.
| kev009 wrote:
| I think the false dichotomy is really jarring. Setting up
| a straw-man population of "just DJs" that are yet capable
| of making sample-based music is fairly uninformed. And
| even "just DJs" picking the right tracks, cross fading at
| the right time, and potentially beat matching is still an
| artistic endeavor.
| raverbashing wrote:
| Part of the magic of Daft Punk is using samples _even when it
| does not sound like_ they 're doing it
|
| Of course they're musicians and they could make the track
| from scratch, but where's the fun in that :)
| eweise wrote:
| Listening to the break down of the tracks, they barely takes
| any music playing ability so I imagine they could have easily
| made them from scratch instead of using samples.
| hnlmorg wrote:
| Artists don't sample because they're unable to perform
| elements of a track.
|
| They sample because they hear an element of one track and
| go "that's awesome, I want to use that creatively but in a
| different way".
|
| To that end, most of the samples you'll hear are pretty
| simple to reproduce. And sometimes artists don't get the
| license to use the sample so they are forced to reproduce
| (this happens a lot more with vocal samples from what I'm
| aware)
| barrenko wrote:
| I'd like to sneak in a movie recommendation here
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eden_(2014_film), semi-related to
| the thread. Be aware that there are a lot of Eden movies, as
| well as another one in that same year.
| hnlmorg wrote:
| Not heard of this movie before but it reminds me of Clubbed
| To Death, another French movie based on a popular electronic
| album.
|
| I'll be sure to check out Eden too.
| sim7c00 wrote:
| if you wanna find out who sampled who theres great sites where
| people collect this info (whosampled)
| dostick wrote:
| It looks like maybe they didn't sample anything in that songs,
| https://www.whosampled.com/Daft-Punk/Something-About-Us/
| ses1984 wrote:
| For a super duper long time daft punk asserted that one more
| time had no samples, then one day someone figured it out.
|
| Who knows? Today it has no samples, maybe tomorrow someone
| will find them.
| dash2 wrote:
| Related: this recreation of Prodigy's Smack My Bitch Up. I'm
| amazed at the level of musical knowledge needed to do this.
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eU5Dn-WaElI
| brohee wrote:
| Damn I was about to post that, one of the best Ableton showcase
| ever made.
| pathless wrote:
| Also, ReverbMachine does this sort of thing regularly for all
| different artists. They have covered Daft Punk's albums pretty
| thoroughly:
|
| https://reverbmachine.com/blog/how-kavinsky-created-nightcal...
| https://reverbmachine.com/blog/daft-punk-homework-synth-soun...
| https://reverbmachine.com/blog/daft-punk-discovery-synth-sou...
|
| All their work is amazing. Perhaps I will post all of these
| here as posts individually? Someone should...
| yard2010 wrote:
| Hey Marca, thank you for this art and the inspiration bomb first
| thing in the morning
|
| Keep them coming! <3
| nakedneuron wrote:
| It's incredible how deeply ingrained in memory some of those
| songs are that I immediately start to notice the slightest
| deviation.
|
| Daft Punk especially for me represent a merger of musical genius
| and perfect execution.
|
| As this is on HN I wonder how far in the future AI will excel at
| recreating/analysing songs. It seems like it could lend itself
| extremely well for this type of task.
| squigz wrote:
| Daft Punk have been my favorite artists for most of my life.
| Waking up to the announcement of their disbandment was the first
| time I've been truly sad about the "passing" of an artist
| phrotoma wrote:
| This youtube channel has a whole pile of sampling recreations.
|
| Daft Punk: Discovery https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5AqHSvR9bqs
|
| Daft Punk: One More Time https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5QwOpRh-
| IfI
|
| Mos Def: Mathematics https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=--A_89lTuiA
|
| Pogo: Alice https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=au7RYxqaO10
|
| Fatboy Slim: Rockafeller Skank
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SBsRzyQ-TfM
|
| And this 30 minute compilation that spans four decades is utterly
| mesmerizing https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FpaoCUEhZJM
| firtoz wrote:
| Thank you for this, amazing to see a glimpse into how they come
| up with the songs!
| axlee wrote:
| Especially back then, in the time of vinyls and cassettes
| (browsing music wasn't exactly as easy as pressing "play"),
| it shows the amazingly deep musical culture of these artists.
| The samples they use are from all over the place, and their
| songs are often built around a handful of seconds from
| obscure b-sides.
| svilen_dobrev wrote:
| not about Daft punk but..
|
| > The samples they use are from all over the place
|
| > built around a handful of seconds
|
| have you seen/head this?
|
| https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=mondovision
|
| the original was at www.giovannisample.com which
| disappeared..
| grishka wrote:
| Also: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wrrnE9p4GyQ
| namanyayg wrote:
| Alive 2007 is my favorite album of all time and this video
| genuinely blew my mind
|
| Any starter tutorials on how to make music like this?
| Ordering a drum pad rn
| hnlurker22 wrote:
| Related: Theremin cover
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bkp9bDGDd1w
| KaiserPro wrote:
| This is the kind of content I am here for.
|
| I haven't touched music production stuff for about 18 years
| (Mackie D8b + protools represent), however its great to see
| someone break down a song bit by bit. It also helps that the song
| they are covering is a banger.
|
| For a slightly tangentially related podcast you might like
| https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m00106lb which is where a bunch
| of musicians each week create a playlist of 4 songs that each
| have a link.
| simian1983 wrote:
| Yo! Don't hate on BBEdit, it's old but it's still really really
| good. I'm using it everyday for everything.
| dan_pixelflow wrote:
| A genuine confusion for me - as a visual artist - about how two
| things can be true: this can be a great love letter to such an
| iconic and brilliant song, and also why generative AI was used to
| create accompanying imagery in this article. I don't see how an
| piece about the 'joys of music production' - aka, creativity -
| should also actively be anti-creative. To me, those two thoughts
| seem completely opposing.
| stickfigure wrote:
| We humans can't be great at everything.
| Arainach wrote:
| Which is why we can compensate other humans (or cooperate
| with them in some way) to achieve things.
| sentientslug wrote:
| Not just the imagery, very clearly the text as well. It really
| puts me off of reading an article when it's so obvious, I'm not
| sure why. It almost feels like the author is trying to pull
| something over on me.
| redwall_hp wrote:
| It's disrespectful, that's why. If someone doesn't think it's
| worth the time and effort to write something, it's not worth
| my time to read it.
|
| All writing, visual art and music is an act of expression and
| communication. If one delegates that human element to a
| machine, they're a poseur, and that's the end of it.
|
| Thanks for calling that out and saving a click. There are
| lots of nice reconstructions of dance music on YouTube, which
| are fascinating to learn from as someone who likes to play
| with DAWs and synths, which are more worth the time.
| input_sh wrote:
| Not to mention this being on Daft Punk's Wikipedia:
|
| > In April 2023, [Thomas] Bangalter released a solo work, the
| orchestral ballet score Mythologies. He gave interviews about
| the project and allowed himself to be photographed without a
| mask. He cited concerns about the progress of artificial
| intelligence and other technology as to why Daft Punk split,
| saying: "As much as I love this character, the last thing I
| would want to be, in the world we live in, in 2023, is a
| robot."
|
| Then again, looking at the Ghibli trend, I'm not surprised.
| lxgr wrote:
| If you're a fan of both Daft Punk and the late 70s/80s Anime
| aesthetic mentioned in the article and haven't yet seen
| "Interstella 5555", drop everything and do so now.
| sprkv5 wrote:
| If you're a fan of both Daft Punk and the 80s City Pop genre
| and if you were around when City Pop was rising in 2019 then
| you could have listened to the mashup "Something about Plastic
| Love"[1]. Beautiful blend. The original got taken down - and
| second grade recreations remain.
|
| Also Plastic Love is the best Pop song if you go by Vice[2].
|
| [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jOTlyCZmVa8 [2]
| https://www.vice.com/en/article/mariya-takeuchi-plastic-love...
| chaosprint wrote:
| Very interesting article and process.
|
| > "A huge part of the joy came from working in Ableton Live 12,
| which now feels like an extension of how I think" I feel the same
| way, but for Reaper
|
| Seeing the author mentions that decomposition of the snare is the
| hardest, and that's what I was trying to solve in
| https://github.com/chaosprint/RaveForce (just an idea).
|
| Multimodality AI is much more powerful now. I wonder how helpful
| it would be for music and art education if AI could help us
| deconstruct some songs.
|
| When I was teaching kids with Glicol, I often used KraftWerk's
| Das Model as an example:
|
| https://glicol.org/demo#themodel
|
| This rough midi version is very different from the original, but
| the kids had a lot of fun messing around with it.
| krnsll wrote:
| > I wonder how helpful it would be for music and art education
| if AI could help us deconstruct some songs.
|
| Was thinking along the same lines as I fell into the trap of
| Ghiblifying pictures earlier this week. As someone who spent
| countless hours in my childhood trying to copy the styles of my
| favorite comic books (Japanese and otherwise), at some point in
| this AI exercise I started rendering each picture in the
| artistic styles of each of my favorite artists and placing them
| side by side for comparison. Realized an exercise like this
| would have been very useful back when I drew in comparing
| different styles and what _exactly_ made them different. Maybe
| it speaks more to how I think --- lacking a true artistic
| intuition --- but simply comparing styles and giving words to
| their distinctions helped me appreciate them in a way I hadn't
| (of course the AI didn't produce a perfect representation but a
| crude enough approximation)
| pathless wrote:
| Hey, I happen to own the vocal tool they used for this song and
| Digital Love. It's called the Digitech Vocalist. It's a MIDI-
| controlled pitch corrector, and it's the key to that whispery
| sort of grainy sound to Thomas's voice in both tracks. YouTube
| has plenty of demos of it, and one even directly of a Digital
| Love cover.
| mock-possum wrote:
| > Now--the snare. This one was tough. I spent a long time trying
| to recreate it, convinced it was a processed acoustic snare
| layered with something synthetic. After too many failed attempts,
| I caved and sampled the original. Yes, the snare is the only part
| I couldn't fully replicate.
|
| which seems so weird to me, because when you listen to the
| isolated sample, it sounds like a fairly standard Lindrum fare, a
| snare hit plus some kind of other perc sample, maybe a wood block
| or one of those 'congo' bell samples or something.
| 6stringmerc wrote:
| Very cool article and a great observation about the "French
| Touch" as a concept. The explanation is insightful and wonderful.
| It actually reminded me how much study I've done regarding the
| "Swedish Touch" which is best exemplified by Abba, Max Martin,
| and Avicii for the sake of discussion.
|
| My one gripe is the caption on his guitar. Almost spit-take
| level...seeing a Gibson Les Paul Honeyburst described as "humble"
| is tongue in cheek, but the sign of a person who could use a
| reality check. I get it's an attempt at humor, but come on bro,
| that's a brag haha.
| afro88 wrote:
| Great post, and nice recreation!
|
| I went through a period of recreating songs during Covid. Here's
| my attempt at Short Circuit from the same album:
| https://on.soundcloud.com/F5dcikiLb9RNQ4jC9
|
| The chords at the end were really difficult to get 100% right.
| Think I got to about 95%. I didn't get around to the bit
| crushing. I was a bit deflated that the chords weren't spot on :)
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