FREE: Alexis D-Four ... 90s drum sounds

[hollowsun]

Does this apply to instruments like the Roland D50 and D110 as well?

Yup.

And beware Roland - they have a zero tolerance attitude on this. It won't necessarily end up up in court (that would be silly) but expect a fairly severe Cease & Desist order from their legal eagles. Yes - they have a team looking for contraventions.


Stephen

[Xenobt]

Interesting, Stephen.

It seems like every e-drum sample lib I've bought over the last few years has 808 and 909 samples, which made me wonder.

I (perhaps wrongly) assumed that they were releasing those sounds into the wild with impunity, since major players like NI and IK freely use them and even call them by name.

You know what Groucho said, "Imitation is the flattest form of sincerity..."

KVR/eSoundz: Xenobt

[hollowsun]

There was even a guy selling them directly off his site at one point,

<snip>

And here's a current eBay auction for a clearly not "official" Sample CD.

Yes but, to use an analogy, just because a few people manage to get away with illegal car parking or reckless driving or speeding or drunk driving and escape a fine/ticket doesn't make it right. They broke the law but happened to get away with it or went unnoticed.

And so it is (technically) with this.

Contacting Alesis for permission is a good move.


Stephen

[hollowsun]

Interesting, Stephen.

It seems like every e-drum sample lib I've bought over the last few years has 808 and 909 samples, which made me wonder.

808 is fine - all analogue generated. Perfectly legal. 909, however, suspect...

Kick and snare are analogue (no problem) but toms and hats are samples so therefore, technically, prohibited.

Believe and trust me - I have been doing this for nearly 30 years, have consulted IP experts, have worked with major manufacturers who have legal teams to advise and so on - I am no lawyer but I know the score ... and a lot of it is common sense.


Stephen

[ghettosynth]

Interesting, Stephen.

It seems like every e-drum sample lib I've bought over the last few years has 808 and 909 samples, which made me wonder.

808 is fine - all analogue generated. Perfectly legal. 909, however, suspect...

Kick and snare are analogue (no problem) but toms and hats are samples so therefore, technically, prohibited.

Only the hats and cymbals are samples in the 909, the kick, snare, claps, and toms are all analogue.

See the schematic for details:

http://manuals.fdiskc.com/flat/Roland%2 ... Manual.pdf

You got this wrong in the last discussion about this, which I linked in my last post to this thread. It's important to get this right because getting it wrong spreads misinformation and is, in part, why people get confused.

[ghettosynth]

Does this apply to instruments like the Roland D50 and D110 as well?

Yup.

And beware Roland - they have a zero tolerance attitude on this. It won't necessarily end up up in court (that would be silly) but expect a fairly severe Cease & Desist order from their legal eagles. Yes - they have a team looking for contraventions.


Stephen

Yes, in fact, Roland has successfully sued people for copying what is essentially precisely the samples that are in the D110, which is for all intents and purposes, a more sophisticated MT32.

Although it is not true that ANY sampling of a D110 or MT32 is "illegal", for any sense that one would be interested in sampling such instruments, what Stephen says is true. By this I mean that the reason one would want to sample these instruments is mostly likely to provide users with a "soft-equivalent" of the instrument itself. So, in order to be complete, one would have to sample all of the built in PCM samples, which is not legal.

However, it is possible in most, if not all, of the LA-Synthesis based synths to create patches that use only the built in synth oscillators for partials. These patches would not use any PCM samples and thus would be perfectly legal to sample. There's probably very little reason to do this as it is precisely the combination of PCM samples for the attack portion of a sound combined with a traditional synth architecture for the sustained note that gives LA synthesis its distinctive quality. Without the samples, it's just a low quality subtractive synth with little distinction.

But, in the interest of being complete, that's the state of affairs. From a practical point of view, however, even if you made such a sample set you still might attract Roland's attention and I'm not sure if it would be worth it trying to convince them that none of their samples are in your work.

[Xenobt]

Okay, I get it now. The sample is the thing. Analog sources are actually slightly different on a scope each time, so there's really nothing to digitally copyright. But a sample is a sample...

And I guess also explains why there are so many emulations based on purely analog vintage instruments, and so few on workstation keyboards and rack modules. Even vintage ones are rare. Korg released their own, and Emu sold the Proteus rights to Cakewalk, otherwise, the pickin's are slim. I'd love an official Roland 2080 VI, but I won't hold my breath!

The famous name players in the market make their real money on hardware for people who need/want hardware, like gigging players, writer/producers and churches who want the biggest, newest preset sounds instantly, no computer involved.

That means no soft versions to kill that golden goose! It all makes sense now...

KVR/eSoundz: Xenobt

[ghettosynth]

Okay, I get it now. The sample is the thing. Analog sources are actually slightly different on a scope each time, so there's really nothing to digitally copyright. But a sample is a sample...

Yes, well, almost The fact that analog signals are different every time has, in fact, nothing to do with it. Consider the D110, for example, it is NOT analog so it is very possible that, even using its built in synth and no samples, that two successive notes are not any more different than two notes that used PCM samples.

The important difference with respect to the law is quite clear. The reason samples get copyright protection here is because they are a "recording."

In fact, although to the best of my knowledge it's never been pushed, strictly speaking, all(unlicensed) melotron and optigan samples are illegal. Both of these instruments played back loop "recordings." Melotrons use loops of magnetic tape and the optigan use optical discs not unlike the technology that's use in film. Both technologies are too new for their "recordings" to have falling into the public domain.

And I guess also explains why there are so many emulations based on purely analog vintage instruments, and so few on workstation keyboards and rack modules. Even vintage ones are rare. Korg released their own, and Emu sold the Proteus rights to Cakewalk, otherwise, the pickin's are slim. I'd love an official Roland 2080 VI, but I won't hold my breath!

The famous name players in the market make their real money on hardware for people who need/want hardware, like gigging players, writer/producers and churches who want the biggest, newest preset sounds instantly, no computer involved.

That means no soft versions to kill that golden goose! It all makes sense now...

KVR/eSoundz: Xenobt

Exactly!

[Dewdman42]

what it really comes down to is that copyright law was originally not intended to protect pcm sample based musical instruments. It was intended to protect the work of artists and intellectuals that create works of the mind so that they may be of economic value to the author. That meant books, articles, music, songs, etc..

Eventually, recording technology came out and it became obvious that recordings of musical works and performances needed to be protected by copyright law, so it was refined to include those mediums.

Fast forward to sampling technology which is a different use of recording technology to create musical instruments, instead of musical works. Basically by virtue of the fact that recording technology had been spelled out in copyright law, some cases have been fought and won by claimants stating that their "copyrighted" musical instrument used samples and that the samples represent musical recordings which should be covered by copyright. Its a bit of a stretch philosophically since copyright was never intended to cover musical instruments, it was intended to cover intellectual property such as books and songs. But nonetheless, this stretch of it has held up in court thus far. It can't yet be stretched to protect analog instruments from being resampled because analog instruments are not technically musical recordings, which the original copyright law spelled out for a different reason, to protect musical works.

Now there are people that probably think musical instruments of any kind, including analog ones, should not be allowed to be resampled and sold as a sample library without permisssion of the original instrument creator. And there are probably some that think all resampling should be allowed. That is a philosophical question, but completely irrelevant to the discussion of what is currently legal.

But the bottom line is technology does make it hard for instrument makers to protect their instrument from being resampled and duplicated against their will, analog or not...and it probably SHOULD be protected by copyright. And as of now, anything with samples is protected. its not so different from software, the source code is protected by copyright. But if you can make some software that does exactly the same functionality with your own code, never copying any of their code (even though it might end up being very very similar), then copyright infringement has not taken place. There might be patent infringement, but that is a seperate issue.

However, that being said, here's a question I have for some of you about the legal side of it.

If we buy a PCM based instrument such as the Alesis D4 and make a bunch of tracks with it and they go on the radio and everything else, we are under no obligation to pay Alesis one single dime of royalties....its essentially royalty free using those samples to create a musical work. Where is it spelled out in copyright law the distinction between creating a musical work using samples or creating a new musical instrument by resampling it?

[ghettosynth]

If we buy a PCM based instrument such as the Alesis D4 and make a bunch of tracks with it and they go on the radio and everything else, we are under no obligation to pay Alesis one single dime of royalties....its essentially royalty free using those samples to create a musical work. Where is it spelled out in copyright law the distinction between creating a musical work using samples or creating a new musical instrument by resampling it?

Nice post, I snipped the first part only because I didn't want to write a lot about it and much of that ground has been discussed to death and it often upsets people around here, but, yes, you're right and at some point I would expect at least some pushback on this. There's really a lot more to discuss, but I'll leave it be for now.

But, the quoted question is a good question. The answer is, that copyright law says that you can do nothing at all without getting permission. Everyone states that there is some sort of "implicit" license, which these days has become explicit, but, really is this even a legal concept?

What is closer to the truth is that no company wants to sue users for using their instruments in the way that the company intends for you to use it. This risks having the definition of "recording" challenged.

So, really there's no distinction whatsoever and this is probably why these days the "license" is not implicit but explicit.

[pc2000]

The sounds, phrases and patterns contained in this product are sound recordings protected by copyright. Roland hereby grants to purchasers of this product the permission to utilize the sound recordings contained in this product for the creation and recording of original musical works; provided however, the sound recordings contained in this product may not be sampled, downloaded or otherwise re-recorded, in whole or in part, for any other purpose, including but not limited to the transmission of all or any part of the sound recordings via the internet or other digital or analog means of transmission, and/or the manufacture, for sale or otherwise, of any collection of sampled sounds, phrases or patterns, on CD-ROM or equivalent means.

The sound recordings contained in this product are the original works of Roland Corporation. Roland is not responsible for the use of the sound recordings contained in this product, and assumes no liability for any infringement of any copyright of any third party arising out of use of the sounds, phrases and patterns in this product.

I got this from the manual of the Roland MC307 groovebox, which I own. This was only listed for the preset patterns list section- which shows next to each pattern the programmer of the patterns. I always assumed they were basically referring to the recorded performances that someone may try to sample and use as loops with the sounds used for those performances.

I didn't see any legal jargon for the samples listing section, only seen it for the preset patterns. It's probably best not to mention the source when making these sorts of offerings. A way around sharing samples from hardware devices is to play the samples as a whole performance where the sounds are comprised of single hits leaving it to the user to chop the sounds. They can't dictate how to play a performance!

Does anyone see similar legal notices in other products by various manufacturers?

[whyterabbyt]

A way around sharing samples from hardware devices is to play the samples as a whole performance where the sounds are comprised of single hits leaving it to the user to chop the sounds. They can't dictate how to play a performance!

Erm, no. If you tried this argument in court, you'd lose; this would afford zero legal protection, as it would be incredibly obvious its not actually a musical 'whole performance' at all.

[whyterabbyt]

But, the quoted question is a good question. The answer is, that copyright law says that you can do nothing at all without getting permission.

That's not true. There are indeed specific things under copyright law which one can do without permission, as per the fair use provisions of just about every set of copyright laws in existence.

[Acid Mitch]

Just letting everybody download them freely now would leave everyone out there with 3000 (really) samples and very likely no idea what to do with them, or losing interest quickly because browsing them would get tiresome soon.

Plus some Kontakt crack would maybe/probably come up with a Kontakt instrument of their own ... which would basically make the whole effort worthless to me.

So you wouldn't mind if I set up a project to record performances of your drum sounds, edit the performances and redistribute them ?

Sweet, who needs the sounds in Kontakt format or as individual wavs ?

[ghettosynth]

But, the quoted question is a good question. The answer is, that copyright law says that you can do nothing at all without getting permission.

That's not true. There are indeed specific things under copyright law which one can do without permission, as per the fair use provisions of just about every set of copyright laws in existence.

Of course, but with respect to sampling, there are virtually no fair use cases that are of interest here. I was specifically referring to the context that was presented. Essentially, unless your track is parody ala weird al, there aren't really any fair use arguments that apply to a release. Moreover, even if it is satire, fair use doesn't apply unless you are making fun of the D4 samples. Making fun of stuff doesn't give you the right to copy at will, you only get the right to use the thing that you're making fun of.