AUDIO HIJACK: YOUR KEY TO ENDLESS SAMPLING POTENTIAL
I don’t own any records. I don’t plan on buying any records. I am of a generation, and I am sure that others are too, that has never actually sampled from vinyl. It is not that I think that my method is better in any way, but I just don’t feel like starting from scratch. Whenever I think “you know, I need to get some records,” it’s usually because I think that my apartment doesn’t look cool enough–not because I want the music. My point is, most of my sampling comes from digital sources. Usually, this means dragging an mp3 into Ableton Live and having at it. Sometimes, though, I want to sample something else–a system noise, a Youtube video, Text to Speech (for that Benny Benassi robot voice), a DVD or a Netflix on demand movie (I do this a lot). For all of these uses, I use Audio Hijack.
Audio Hijack Pro is a great program that allows you to record sound from any application. The free version of this program lets you record up to 10 minutes of audio, which is more than enough for our purposes. Here is a quick guide to setting up the program and using it.
DL the program here and install.
Open Audiohijack.
Select the Application from which you would like to record and press Hijack. The application should open. If the application is already open, it will have to be restarted.
In this case, I am going to record an audio clip from Youtube, so I select Safari and, once that is open, go to youtube and navigate to the clip I want to record. Let the clip play through. Once you are near where you would like to start recording, press the record button.
Here I am recording the amazing youtube of a Japanese aerobics video.
When you are done recording, press Record again.
Alternatively, if you would like to record multiple parts of the same clips, just press Pause and unpause when you encounter another part you’d like to record. This way, all of the different parts will be saved as one audio file.
Now, go to “Recording Bin” in the left column. The recording you just made will be labeled with the program name and the date. You can rename it by clicking “Inspect” and changing the tags.
This clip can be dragged directly into Ableton. There, you can edit and chop it to your heart’s content! I hope you found this useful, I use this program literally ALL THE TIME. Let me know if you have any questions or comments!
I have an entire list of bookmarks to youtube videos I want to sample. Now I have an easy guide to doing so, thanks!
Glad you found it handy. I really like to use it with Netflix on demand movies. They have a whole bunch of weird foreign movies on there that are fun to sample.
WOW, I didn’t even think of that, I’ll have to sample some of those campy 80′s movies I have been watching. Thanks again!
thank you thank you thank you! this program is the heat.
Audio hijacks o.k but to be honest i recon wiretap pro is way better , it allows you to decide after recording on a name and weather or not to save (as opposed to audio hijack which automatically calls everything system audio and saves it ), and it takes way less of the screen .
Nice website tho mate , lots of good tips on here .
Never tried that Wiretap. Yeah, renaming every file is a bummer, but the freeness keeps me coming back
And thanks for visiting the site!
YO! audio hikack… what’s the sound quality of the files it records? Does it depend on the quality of the audio i want to record?
Ex: if a youtube vid is 360p then the audio quality will eb w/e. but if the vido is 1080p with good audio, will the outcome be the same?
Thank you for your time =)
All of the quality of Audio Hijack’s recordings will be determined by Audio Hijack. I’ve never found it to be an issue, but you still want the source material to be as high quality as possible.
AWESOME! I’m sampling Godzilla first things first! Thanks Anthony!
no prob. Use your newfound powers wisely, haha.
Oh my god, that video. It erased everything you taught me.
Haha. I’ve seen a lot of stuff on the internet, but this is one of my all-time favorites.
When it eventually gets taken down, I might just shut down the blog in mourning.
I personally use Ableton and a line out from my headphone jack into the mic jack to record. Then it’s already in Ableton and you can edit it.
thaks alot this is a really helps big time!!!!!!!!!