Sampling- OK? yes/no

heavensdaw · Post by **heavensdaw** » Thu Aug 14, 2008 6:49 pm

Hi guys,

I think that it's a deep tricky subject here..

Personally, If I wanted to totally sound like somebody else i'd do a 'cover version'..

I do sample little bits and pieces from 'prerecorded' material.. But mangle it beyond recognition..

Don't want to go off topic.... but would be interested to know.. but it's sort of related/
What about a 'cover' version of a song, done in a completely different style..? Not a remix no sampling at all... Anyone know what the legal deal is here?

cheers

Hd

Tone Deft · Post by **Tone Deft** » Thu Aug 14, 2008 6:54 pm

I think at concerts ASCAP monitors and reports what people play.

heavensdaw · Post by **heavensdaw** » Thu Aug 14, 2008 6:56 pm

yes, in a live situation... but what about making a recording?

Hd

doc holiday · Post by **doc holiday** » Thu Aug 14, 2008 7:20 pm

heavensdaw wrote:yes, in a live situation... but what about making a recording?

Hd

you need to license the track, it may not be unreasonable.

heavensdaw · Post by **heavensdaw** » Thu Aug 14, 2008 7:25 pm

doc holiday wrote:
heavensdaw wrote:yes, in a live situation... but what about making a recording?

Hd
you need to license the track, it may not be unreasonable.

With who?

Cheers..

Hd

eisnein · Post by **eisnein** » Thu Aug 14, 2008 7:37 pm

as far as i know you can always cover anything (unless its Prince- http://entertainment.uk.msn.com/music/n ... id=9201476 )

but if you make money part of the money goes to the publisher and/or writer. (note i said "and/or writer"- Michael Jackson would have collected McCartney's publishing for his tunes when he pwned em.)

heavensdaw · Post by **heavensdaw** » Thu Aug 14, 2008 7:41 pm

Nice one .. thanks for that!

Ok now back to the subject SAMPLING!!

Hd

Ps.. It's all been done before, anyway ... Hasn't it?

doc holiday · Post by **doc holiday** » Fri Aug 15, 2008 2:09 pm

go ask john mclame:

http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/stories/P/ ... TE=DEFAULT

if your going to jack you better be creative with it.

eisnein · Post by **eisnein** » Fri Aug 15, 2008 2:40 pm

so if copyright was abolished they couldnt stop them…

heavensdaw · Post by **heavensdaw** » Fri Aug 15, 2008 2:46 pm

http://www.vocalist.org.uk/recording_cover_songs.html

A good read on the subject of cover versions..

Hd

pulsoc · Post by **pulsoc** » Fri Aug 15, 2008 10:13 pm

Girl Talk discusses his compositional technique here
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KykbPtRb0K4

pbanken · Post by **pbanken** » Fri Aug 15, 2008 11:02 pm

Hi everyone!

This post is not meant to refere to any of the previous posts, it just contains a few bits of thought I put in one of my university papers. Feel free to read on.

I. The large majority of the dominant thoughts within the context of cultural creativity are based in what I would call the 'European Renaissance spirit'. Take the German romanticists, for example. In their school of thought, an artist would wait for some kind of divine inspiration, being touched by God in order to create a beautiful picture or write a lovely poem. The act of creative writing would start in their encapsuled mind after being inspired by the display of divinity within nature, for example (the German writers during this period were big fans of an occasional stroll through the gardens, big up for this from my part!). Their effort was regarded as something pure and in a way holy, with absolutely no input from the rude, troubled and 'unclean' world outside of their little writing rooms.

Simply put, a guy like Shakespeare could not afford a luxury like waiting for this inspiration. He was hungry, he had to write a new play, simple as that; he was essentially a buissness man; people forget that from time to time. Apart from the fact that not a single of his plays was truly original source material developed by him (he was sampling, for example, Danish mythology and Roman classics), this shows us that the assumptions we make about creativity, the relationship between our laws and our culture and our expectations of artist's originality are changing during the times. What our laws reflect today could be based on thoughts that are no longer relevant.

II. On a similar tip, this Eurocentric school of thought has penetrated our idea about ownership. In other cultures, people have established long traditions that vary immensly from this point of view. In a huge number of African communities, it would be absurd to say: 'listen up everyone, I came up with this particular pattern of music, please do not improvise on it!' In these societies, music (especially) is a communal affair, with everyone participating. Due to the horrors of the Middle Passage, these traditions came to the Americas. Centuries later, no single person can claim ownership to the Blues, and it is not frowned upon to improvise on well known standarts within Jazz music. This cultural heritage is not regarded as something to be owned. Check out Henry Louis Gates' 'The Signifyin' Monkey', the first serious study on the African American culture of improvising upon established themes.

On the other hand, European culture has always put great emphasis on ownership: 'I own the exclusive rights to interpreting the Bible.', just one thought that has cost millions of lives ...

Look at how much crimes have been committed due to the exploitation of African American musical artists during the last century. If the record company 'owned' one's song, it was their source of income, not the writers.

Puh, it's getting late ... in case you read this far too short piece, go and buy Ewan Pearson's and Jeremy Gilbert's "Discographies: Dance Music Culture and the Politics of Sound" (London: Routledge, 1999). It contains a vast number of interesting thoughts on various important topics within dance music, and it truly helped me with my Magister Artium.

To finish it up nicely: Always remember that the rules which some take for granted are, simply put, dominant trains of thought within our society, that have been placed within the rulebooks for a very good reason: To protect the interests of the guys who wrote the rulebooks. There are other points of view upon such topics as ownership and creativity.

Good luck,

pbanken

inmazevo · Post by **inmazevo** » Fri Aug 15, 2008 11:08 pm

Do you sample?
No

Do you care if other people sample?
No (unless you sample me when I'm successful enough and rich enough to sue you and win... which I'll do, at that point)

When was the first time this was asked?
A very long time ago... come on... we've progressed to "is it ok to use loops" and "is voice correction technology cheating?"

Never ends.
i was particularly fond, in 1990 or so, of "is techno MUSIC?"

- zevo

aqua_tek · Post by **aqua_tek** » Sun Aug 17, 2008 12:05 am

As long as you're not playing the entire original track with just a simple new drum layer and some synthlines on top, without even attempting to make it sound somewhat different, i dont think sampling is ALL THAT BAD. Some great music has come out of sampling older tracks.

Might as well use this thread to shamelessly plug my thread. On-topic, in a way:

http://www.ableton.com/forum/viewtopic. ... highlight=

shameless

DGA · Post by **DGA** » Sun Aug 17, 2008 12:49 am

its not fair to make money from someone else'S sweat without compensating them.

its also not fair to expect to continue making money from making music alone, unless commissioned to do a piece (adverts, scores, etc). Music is no longer simply distributed in physical form, so its accessibility is instant. People are not going to stop downloading or sampling, so one can continue to fight to get a piece of an ever shrinking pie, or one can figure out how to translate their talents to a live performance.

go ahead, get blue in the face yelling at others not paying for use of your recorded music, someone on the otehr side of the planet will simply use your shit will continue using your shit.

i don't sample. it's more fun to come up with sounds i havent heard before, but what attracts me to live performances is to hear something ive heard before in a different context.