When is a sample so edited or altered that it is not copyrighted?

[dirtysnow]

...shaming the concept of sampling.

Truly.. Yes, you can uncreatively extract drum hits or sequences and effectively present them as your own which I would agree is ethically not cool, but you can also sample in such a way as to pay tribute to the original work. As in sampling _that_ particular slice of music/drums/whatever, situating it in a new context, and doing so in a way that tips the hat to the original work not despite but rather because it is being used as a basis for some new work. This is still art. This was and probably still is a big part of hip hop culture. Sampling, not in the abstract but as it is done in real life, can make social commentary, etc. Illegal doesn't necessarily mean unethical. Saying 'sampling is stealing therefor it is wrong' is a gross oversimplification of an act that can be performed in a space of complex cultural, political, and economic dimensions.

[jancivil]

(this particular subforum is Samplers, Sampling, and Sample Libraries)

T’would be fair to grant that I never “shamed the concept of sampling”.

[jancivil]

Saying 'sampling is stealing therefor it is wrong' is a gross oversimplification of an act that can be performed in a space of complex cultural, political, and economic dimensions.

There was a definite context you choose to ignore. Neither Dave nor I made such a statement. So beat the crap out of your strawman, whatev

OP,
Sample whatever you want.
Post it online.
Everyone does.

Aesthetically I don’t personally find the value as high as your remarks appear to grant the derivative work but that is another subject.

I was sampling by early 1986 at least.

[jancivil]

I knew someone was going to go for politics about right here.

“that tips the hat to” the original. I still believe the originator should be paid for use. That’s politically incorrect to someone, I’m okay with it.

[jancivil]

The drummer who did the break for Amen, Brother as well as the record company may have been ok with it being absolutely free, I can’t know.

[JoeCat]

(this particular subforum is Samplers, Sampling, and Sample Libraries)

T’would be fair to grant that I never “shamed the concept of sampling”.

Trudat, imma only noting the appropriateness of the topic

[monomaker]

Nice to see how these kinds of discussions have evolved over the past 30 years :

[dirtysnow]

I knew someone was going to go for politics about right here.

“that tips the hat to” the original. I still believe the originator should be paid for use. That’s politically incorrect to someone, I’m okay with it.

Shrug, maybe it is, but it is a sentiment I agree with so long as the derivative work makes money. However even when people agree that original creators should get compensation, when you take the enforcement of that to be an absolute that ignores the context ie that a particular sample might be a brief slice in time that was itself a small part of a 'collage' (this word comes up often) you end up limiting art. Public Enemy post-lawsuits couldn't make music in the same way. Beastie Boys 'Paul's Boutique' is said to have incurred more than ~$250k in sample-related costs which would involve seeking out the original creators, lawyers, contracts, etc.
So as with any law we need to look at what the effects are, and post 'get a license or do not sample' the effect was to limit artistic expression in music that featured electronic sampling. The bricolage disappeared. Anyway.

[AnX]

If your opinion is that sampling is morally wrong, period, youre a much bigger c**t than anyone doing it to even those morally wrong degrees.

i did not say sampling was wrong/whatever/blah blah.... maybe learn to read

nothing wrong with sampling at all, as long as you get permission from the original artist and/or pay them for using it if required

[MeneerJansen]

Better be informed about youtube's policy:
https://support.google.com/youtube/answer/6013276

Note that this is usually about using full music tracks as background music without having permission (relatively easy to police automarically), not about ripping the FunkyDrummer snare (near impossible to police)

Thank you for pointing me to that information! I'll read it.

[MeneerJansen]

[...]
The drummer who did the break for "Amen, Brother" as well as the record company may have been ok with it being absolutely free, I can’t know.

Apparently not. Wikipedia quotes his band mate: "[Coleman's] heart and soul went into that drum break. Now these guys copy and paste it and make millions.". Drummer Gregory Coleman passed away in 2006. I remember that in an interview (probably the one on Youtube that only features audio and a vinyl record is seen playing) his band mate Richard Spencer said that he lived in (relative) poverty and would have benefited greatly from royalties. Sad thing is that Mr. Spencer is entitled to those royalties and Coleman might not have gotten a cent. On the other hand, he might have gotten everything from Spencer... Who knows.

I think Clyde Stubblefield didn't get a single cent from James Brown.

[monomaker]

I think Clyde Stubblefield didn't get a single cent from James Brown.

Indeed, the drummer would never get paid in any of these examples. This is the irony of the argument, the songwriter gets the dough, the performers usually just get paid for the session. If that was over 50 years ago it's not going to help much now.

Colman, the Amen drummer, would never have got paid even if producers paid the royalties (which many actually did, yet Spencer (the songwriter) said he never received...another tale entirely). The money would go to someone who nearly certainly had nothing to do with the performance save perhaps saying "give the drummer 8 bars there". Isn't that a different kind of musical theft?

Here's a documentary with Clyde talking about this very thing, "free" on Amazon Prime :

https://www.amazon.com/Copyright-Crimin ... 07DS3F68H/

Also, for people using the "make your own" argument, Clyde, Bernard Purdie, Jabo Starks, and a lot of the other big funk drummers made legal sample CD's about 20 years back, often attempting to recreate their classic breaks. None of them quite captured the original aesthetics, there are entire companies dedicated to this pursuit now, yet none of them have managed to create a replacement for the Amen.

In the interim lawyers and songwriters have benefited greatly from break sampling, as the industry contracted two themes emerged - sue big hits but don't sweat the small stuff, because they've got no money anyway. None of this has helped the performer, the sampling artist nor musical culture as a whole, which has always thrived on feedback, repetition and re-contextualisation. As such I deem both sides of this argument as bad as each other, the real trick would be to work out how to pay the piper (hard mode).

[jancivil]

1986, for The Green Show at the old MOMA on Van Ness, for our Theme From Green Acres Mystery Intro I sampled bits of Vic Mizzy’s Theme From Green Acres off the TV. Mainly “darling I love you but” and the tattoo punctuating “I just adore a penthouse view” and that stuff, the #11 xylophone lick <datta tatta tatt>, you know the one. Eva Gabor chipmunked down two octaves was pretty effective.


Brazieal, the keyboardist in that group sampled numerous things for his Songs From The Empire in the early oughts, including entire passages of a Verdi Opera. But no one is going to mistake that for trying to pass that off as his. And it has a relationship with his harmonies, a whole new (and stunning) sonority is created.
I suppose he may have violated the mechanical rights in doing.

As to Drum and Bass where no one is doing either, it just seems more fun to originate. But I am not making any absolutist statement or interested at all in prejudging something based in that as ideology. Copping Under Pressure wholesale, or whatever it was that Hammer did turned out to be someone got caught stealing.

[monomaker]

Copping Under Pressure wholesale, or whatever it was that Hammer did turned out to be someone got caught stealing.

Think that was Vanilla Ice and it was wrong on so many levels - true musical crime.

I don't think anyone's suggesting robbing phrases wholesale, OP was talking about a drum break specifically. I think there are distinctions - if you're going to rob someone's music then you should pay them, whereas if you're robbing a drum break it'll be much harder to pay the right person.

I like to think in a musical utopia there would be a Musician's Court, where these things can be judged in terms of what's best for music and musicians, instead of lawyers and rights-holders. I can't see it happening in my lifetime or in this system.

[vurt]

hammer was super freak.


which is a weird sentence to type.