Sampling the performance, or the sound?
An interesting point raised today by Hank Shocklee (I think that was his name) was the distinction between sampling someone's performance versus sampling the sound. A consideration of this distinction in copyright law would result in an enormous improvement in the related legal issues. In the sound clip played in the lecture today, George Clinton and Shocklee use the example of a snare drum. Can Tama, the manufacturer of drumkits and percussion instruments, copyright the sound of their instruments? Or can Fender copyright the sound of their Rhodes piano? If they can not legally do this, then shouldn't consumers of commercially-released music be allowed to dissect that particular sound, say, a snare hit or trumpet stab, from its context, and then place it within their own musical creation?
As an amateur music composer, I frequently listen to my favourite CDs to find samples of instruments (say, a single piano note, a closed hi hat, etc.) that I can use in my own compositions. For me, as for many other musicians and particularly hip-hop DJs, I am looking for a sound that I can make my own. I am not looking to rap over a sample of a well-known Beatles chorus, for example, to make a gimmicky top-40 hit. I am merely looking for 'pieces' of music with which to craft an aural collage. As I write this, I am listening to DJ Shadow's 1994 album Endtroducing, which is crafted exclusively with samples from old records. I would challenge anybody to identify any of the samples on this album. I can't. In fact, almost all of the samples are from artists that couldn't even be classified as one-hit wonders, and who would probably never be heard again, were it not for this album. Why should the musician/DJ/artist have to pay for an element from a song, an element that is so insignificant it is perhaps unidentifiable outside of its original musical context?
This calls attention to a further distinction that is somewhat murkier: how identifiable is the sample? Shocklee explained on the sound clip how he can take a brass stab from a particular song, then manipulate it with modern digital technologies to create something wholy different from the original sample, that doesn't even sound like a traditional instrument anymore. I think the line of 'identification' occurs somewhere between where individual notes become melodies or riffs. In the case of vocals, copyright perhaps needs to be more stringent. It is far easier to differentiate between human voices than instruments. For example, the typical James Brown grunt is absolutely distinctive, even when compared to the facsimile grunts by his back-up vocalist Bobby Byrd. In the case of mash-ups, sampling is at its most obvious and self-conscious, and vocals form the focal point of the composition. Due to the inherent nature of mash-ups as pop-music artifacts spliced together with minimal overt manipulation, the elements that constitute the original, individual songs are readily identifiable, and it is this identification that causes the biggest problem with relation to the status quo of copyright law.
Watch the excellent film about turntablism, Scratch (Doug Pray, 2001), to see an interview with DJ Shadow and other turntablists.
As an amateur music composer, I frequently listen to my favourite CDs to find samples of instruments (say, a single piano note, a closed hi hat, etc.) that I can use in my own compositions. For me, as for many other musicians and particularly hip-hop DJs, I am looking for a sound that I can make my own. I am not looking to rap over a sample of a well-known Beatles chorus, for example, to make a gimmicky top-40 hit. I am merely looking for 'pieces' of music with which to craft an aural collage. As I write this, I am listening to DJ Shadow's 1994 album Endtroducing, which is crafted exclusively with samples from old records. I would challenge anybody to identify any of the samples on this album. I can't. In fact, almost all of the samples are from artists that couldn't even be classified as one-hit wonders, and who would probably never be heard again, were it not for this album. Why should the musician/DJ/artist have to pay for an element from a song, an element that is so insignificant it is perhaps unidentifiable outside of its original musical context?
This calls attention to a further distinction that is somewhat murkier: how identifiable is the sample? Shocklee explained on the sound clip how he can take a brass stab from a particular song, then manipulate it with modern digital technologies to create something wholy different from the original sample, that doesn't even sound like a traditional instrument anymore. I think the line of 'identification' occurs somewhere between where individual notes become melodies or riffs. In the case of vocals, copyright perhaps needs to be more stringent. It is far easier to differentiate between human voices than instruments. For example, the typical James Brown grunt is absolutely distinctive, even when compared to the facsimile grunts by his back-up vocalist Bobby Byrd. In the case of mash-ups, sampling is at its most obvious and self-conscious, and vocals form the focal point of the composition. Due to the inherent nature of mash-ups as pop-music artifacts spliced together with minimal overt manipulation, the elements that constitute the original, individual songs are readily identifiable, and it is this identification that causes the biggest problem with relation to the status quo of copyright law.
Watch the excellent film about turntablism, Scratch (Doug Pray, 2001), to see an interview with DJ Shadow and other turntablists.
posted by Anonymous at 4:56 pm
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