“I don’t have to clear any samples and I’m also getting original music”: Why Will Clarke writes entire songs just to sample them laterSampling has been the bedrock of electronic music for decades – but Will Clarke is putting his own spin on it.
Speaking on the first episode of MusicTech’s My Forever Studio Season 7, the British DJ, artist and producer reveals his unconventional method of writing entire tracks just to resample them, noting that the approach helps him stay creative and legally stress-free.

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“So the way I wrote the album and the way I write now is I go into a studio, I’ll write a disco song, or I’ll write like a ballad or I’ll write something that’s just completely a rock song,” Clarke says. “Then I’ll go back to my studio and just completely resample it and treat it like a sample so I don’t have to clear any samples. I don’t have to worry about that but I’m also getting original music.”
“If you look at all the records [that] as house music producers we sample previously, they weren’t perfect records,” he adds. “They weren’t recorded in the best studios in the world because the best studios weren’t even around then.”
This lo-fi charm is something the musician embraces fully: “You get artifacts in the recordings which sometimes is really annoying,” he admits, “but with technology nowadays you’re like ‘okay it is what it is’. You can take those artifacts out or sometimes leave them in. It’s for me just trying to write the best record, not sonically the best record.”
“When you’re making a record, if you’re trying too hard to make it sound good at the time, you just lose everything.”
“We still want grit and sand in the records and I think by having the most perfect mic setup, preamps, all of that – yes it sounds great but I’m not writing pop records.”
The same philosophy extends to the producer gear’s choices too. Instead of relying on industry staples like the Roland TR-808 or 909, Clarke says he prefers using the AVP ADS-7, a somewhat obscure Russian drum machine, when crafting beats.
“It’s not a clean sound,” he says. “But I’m not looking for a clean sound. I’m looking for something gritty. I’m looking for something to get textures that you wouldn’t get from a sample.”

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