what about as exercise of style, musics exclusively created as patchworks of copyrighted samples ?

[Krakatau]

I'm slowly, step by step, building a totally iconoclastic project as a pure exercise of style in where compositions should be based exclusively on copyrighted samples of music

BUT...using all the current tools you can find, either audio applications or real-time effects that might modify the content of the sample while still keeping some aspects of the original one

the tools I currently know for such a task are :

- time stretch/crunch audio applications (like the one in audiosculpt,izotope Iris,etc...)
- mastering rebalance tools (like music rebalance in isotope ozone, or RipX,etc...)
- polyphonic autotune or alike (melodyne DNA, Zynaptic pitchman, etc...)

...or a smart combination of them

the idea is to recompose these samples from inside while keeping untouched some aspects of the original production that would then out of their new context, have been kept recognizable at some degree !

THEN, around the creative common license for instance, it would be interesting to consider the legal aspect of the question

as a (very) early example made on the fly with some sample collected and treated, of the so called exercise of style : https://mega.nz/file/cfFz1LDI#vNnzFiW2L ... piR6J7x7bs

let say though that the drum part isn't from a copyrighted sample, all other sources are...

[BertKoor]

The legal aspects are pretty simple. When a piece of copyrighted material can be identified, then you can expect to be sued for it.

It's just an exercise, right? You can do anything you like in private, just don't publish it.

[Michael L]

You can buy "patchworks of copyrighted samples" to make music.
They are called "construction kits" and include a licence.
e.g., https://intimatenoise.com/shop/

[revvy]

Listen to Avalanches.

For bonus points, they made it all sound f**king fabulous. Over two stunning albums.

Love VHS Head too. Similar approach, all samples from, of course, VHS.

[Krakatau]

The legal aspects are pretty simple. When a piece of copyrighted material can be identified, then you can expect to be sued for it.

It's just an exercise, right? You can do anything you like in private, just don't publish it.

yes indeed undoubtedly,
Laws being supposed to protect someone's creativity, but in such a case this process in itself has a huge potential of creativity so I assume it justify a softening at a certain degree
(...that is already the case with the concept of creative common license)

and the idea being not to plagiarize other's music at all, for instance in the short example you might still recognize, even after much treatments, the main theme of "Kasmir" from Led Zeppelin's Physical graffiti but...

1) the tempo has been modified by a time-stretch algorithm (Audiosculpt)
2) the drums has been removed by a music rebalance algorithm (Isotope RX)
3) Scale and modal transposition has been totally transformed by a so to say polyphonic pitch-corrector (Zynaptiq Pitchmap)

...so technically it isn't the same composition anymore, except perhaps for the structure of the original polyphonic phrase, and there is a (very) few aspects of the sound from the original production (published during the seventies so BEFORE the era of sequencers and arpeggiators) that has been kept ? ...and honestly it has lost too much of these production aspect to my taste, for instance acceleration of the sample has of course, drastically modify the heaviness of the groove (especially after removing drums, that left a few artifacts in the resulting sample by the way), but also the length of the reverb has been reduced as well as some associated psychoacoustic effects (shortened pre-delay)

Another sample that might be (perhaps) recognizable is the piano minor chord of the introduction of the song "roundabout" from the album "fragile" of the band Yes

except that it has been (re)reversed to respond like in a live situation...what is the most prominent aspects of this sample that I wanted to preserve it it response to compression and overall analog sounding...THIS is IMO what makes this sample recognizable more than anything else,( even reversed )

the point is that the current development of audio editors makes music samples more and more flexible,... I'll be interested to see the evolution of softwares like Voco, at the moment it would be capable to preserve the spectral profile of a known singer to make him sing and say different melody and narration

in itself this being of a huge potential of creativity ?

[Krakatau]

You can buy "patchworks of copyrighted samples" to make music.
They are called "construction kits" and include a licence.
e.g., https://intimatenoise.com/shop/

thanks for the info, but in the case I intend to do the entire work form scratch myself, you might have a glance if wanted in my preceding post why...

[Krakatau]

Listen to Avalanches.

For bonus points, they made it all sound f**king fabulous. Over two stunning albums.

Love VHS Head too. Similar approach, all samples from, of course, VHS.

from the wiki :

"Notability in Plunderphonics and sampling
The band has been noted as an important pioneering example of plunderphonics, with one reviewer referring to them as the "legendary plunderphonics powerhouse" .[42] Their first album, Since I Left You released in 2000, has been highlighted as influential,[43] a masterpiece [44] and a particular iconic example of the genre. [45] The album has been noted for the large amount of samples it uses,[46] around 3500, [47][43] [48]and the fact it is entirely made of samples with no live music. [49] It was also noted for its complexity and the use of dialogue samples. [50] [51] [52] The album has been described as incredibly complex, and even dadaist. [53] [54] Since I Left You has appeared on various top examples of the Plunderhouse genre [55],[56] and has also been described as one of the three pivotal plunderphonics albums, along with DJ Shadow’s Endtroducing in 1996,[57] [58] and J Dilla’s Donuts in 2006.[59]

A number of music critics, inlcluding Voksgieit, Amar Edirwira writing for Vinylfactory and others regard Since I Left You as the best plunderphonics album of all time. [60] [61] [62]

Its been noted by legal commentary that the small size of samples used by the Avalanches in their work may not cross the threshold of being significant, which would then allow for a legal case to be brought by the original sampled artist.[48]



undoubtely interesting...

[BertKoor]

Whatever justifications you come up with, you still have identifiable samples. Without clearing them, you run a risk when you publish it and it happens to get an altitude above the radar horizon.

[Krakatau]

Whatever justifications you come up with, you still have identifiable samples. Without clearing them, you run a risk when you publish it and it happens to get an altitude above the radar horizon.

Ok, then... apart from my detailed justifications, what would you recognise here ?


https://mega.nz/file/cfFz1LDI#vNnzFiW2L ... piR6J7x7bs

the point is for instance, someone skilled in sampling might recognize a transposed version of a sample, even when used through a polyphonic patch of a sampler ?

[Krakatau]

BTW...

...is it currently possible to create the spectral profile of someone's voice and a apply it to both speech and melody simultaneously ?

[BertKoor]

You're a brave man: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kashmir_( ... ight_issue
You said yourself (at least I got the impression it's what you meant) the point is to keep the samples somewhat recognisable.

For the law it doesn't matter whether you mashed it up beyond recognition or not. If you use a sample and not cleared it with the owner of the copyright, then there might be consequences.

Sorry if I come up as pedantic, but you explicitly asked for the legal implications and these are what they are.

...is it currently possible to create the spectral profile of someone's voice and a apply it to both speech and melody simultaneously ?

Isn't that what we call a vocoder?

[Krakatau]

You're a brave man: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kashmir_( ... ight_issue
You said yourself (at least I got the impression it's what you meant) the point is to keep the samples somewhat recognisable.

For the law it doesn't matter whether you mashed it up beyond recognition or not. You have used a sample and did not clear it.

Sorry if I come up as pedantic, but you explicitly asked for the legal implications and these are what they are.

no don't worry... I just regret such an inflexible status quo, nothing to do with you

[Krakatau]

Isn't that what we call a vocoder

well... more clearly in the case you should recognize the voice of a person, in the case of a vocoder you just recognize the phonemes

my bad