Sampling Questions

[Fatso Forgottso]

xx

[Johnny-Boy]

I don't see any lawful avenues for you Fatso.

 

John

[Anderton]

Well, you could try getting signed to Warners...

 

Seriously, it sounds problematic. The fact that they wouldn't even entertain the idea of you using it speaks volumes. I don't know if re-recording it could work with some kind of mechanical license or not - I don't know how that process works for film. I also don't know where lawyers draw the line - if you sang the line "I"m mad as hell, and I'm not going to take it any more" would you be sued

[daddymack]

Do not get tangled up with these guys over this...you will waste a lot more time than it is worth.

[MDLMUSIC]

I was driving through Bakersfield yesterday on my way home from a gig and I heard a commercial on the radio for a local hamburger joint. The first voice said, "Hello, zis is Ah-nuld..." then proceeded to state why he liked this particular establishment so much. Then a second voice came on stating, "Hi,ahm Bill Clinton..." and did the same thing. Usually when I hear something like this there is always a disclaimer stating that the celebrity voices were impersonated (in this case, pretty badly), but I didn't hear any disclaimer this time.

 

Can the station get into trouble for this, or is this covered under the parody section of the fair use laws?

 

I seem to recall something similar when some rap group sampled part of a song, then claimed it was meant as a parody and got away with it.

[daddymack]

parody will only get yo so far, but, there is a difference between this and using it in a song. People in the public eye are 'fair game', to a point to be parodied, impersonated, etc.

[Johnny-Boy]

Most music contracts have a clause asking if there are any uncleared samples in your track. Don't do it without clearance. You'll be sorry...

 

The bottom line; it's unethical and unlawful.

 

John

[LOLRECONLOL]

Most music contracts have a clause asking if there are any uncleared samples in your track. Don't do it without clearance. You'll be sorry... The bottom line; it's unethical and unlawful. John

 

Look at an artist like Girl Talk, he doesn't get clearance.

 

Just sayin'.

[daddymack]

there have been enough lawsuits over the last few decades due to uncleared sampling that anyone who thinks they can get away with it is wrong. No music outlet will carry your material if you can't show you have the rights to it, be it copyright or mechanical licenses.

 

I have no idea who 'Girl Talk' is, but if they are on a label, and the label didn't demand they get proper clearances, they will eventually get a C&D and/or be sued (jointly and severally, as they say). The major labels maintain a stable of staff lawyers for just this type of thing...they have deep pockets, too, so small labels rarely can sustain even a legitimate battle.

[Johnny-Boy]

Look at an artist like Girl Talk, he doesn't get clearance. Just sayin'.

 

So what you're saying is that it's alright to steal as long as others do?

 

Wrong is wrong is wrong. And this is wrong. Ding dong, ding dong.

[U&I]

So what you're saying is that it's alright to steal as long as others do? Wrong is wrong is wrong. And this is wrong. Ding dong, ding dong.

 

 

Depends on what your "stealing" - what if for example it's a single isolated rim shot, snare hit or ride cymbal (ie: 0.5 seconds a sample and then that is totally reprogrammed into a new beat) ? I have for example "micro sampled" fret buzz, finger noise or pieces of pick sliding on guitar strings from recordings (we're talking samples that are quite often less than 0.5 of a second here) and looped them, stretched them, reversed, filtered, granulated, enveloped, lfo modulated and reconstructed them into something completely different.

I also do my own field recording and found sound recordings to create samples for use and purchase a lot of cheap and cheerful toys like thumb piano's, ocarina, bamboo flute, a toy piano, odd percussion bits and bobs and the like and create custom sample sets from scratch that I blend with the above.

Sometimes I will lift a loop off vinyl and REX it, but never use the original loop but rather the production quality and sound of that loop and reconstruct it in various ways that do not sound remotely like the original.

My problem with your comment is that many people borrow chord progressions from songs and quite often are heavily influence by the melodic or harmonic structure of others material, right down to vocal phrasing, the mimicking of a fingering style or even a signature effects signal path in their own productions and compositions. Exactly where and when do you draw the line ?

When does inspiration become plagiarism or theft ?

For example 'Drum and Bass' would not be what it is without the Winston's famous break and heaven knows several other breaks like the Apache etc have all been meticulously deconstructed, misappropriated and reconstructed in contexts far removed from their original intent.

Whole sale sampling that relies on the original source material and really adds nothing on it's own is indeed problematic and not terribly creative and dare I say it creative theft indeed (especially when insufficient credit is duly payed for the source material in question).

What happens when we take something out of context and so heavily manipulate it that the source material really becomes irrelevant ?

In literature, film and contemporary art we see the constant regurgitation of thematic lines, contexts, subplots, cultural "memes" if you will, of our surrounding environment and history and it seems perfectly acceptable when it doesn't border on outright plagiarism. However, we seem to take a totally different view of copyright law when it comes to music as an art form and creative pursuit in general.

My major gripe is the fact that large portions of such copy infringement cases seem to benefit the major labels and staple holders whilst doing nothing to actually protect, reimburse or compensate the originators of the said intellectual property in the first place ie: the artists who created it.

If your going to spew lines like the above, ask yourself first and foremost who benefits from such lawsuits. Yes it's predominantly the label INC as a business and not the supposed artists they are purportedly trying to protecting.

I could go on about much of this in depth, as copyright law has changed drastically in recent years to support the "Corporation" and not the creative individual and can in many respects be seen or deemed as stifling the very processes by which evolutionary creativity inherently evolves and works.

Many an artist has had a career resurrection on the back of someone sampling their back catalog.

Personally, I would rather have the option of co-crediting the originator in the writing credits and sharing the profits with them directly, as opposed to a copyright law that protects the "legal copyright holder", who is invariably and usually either a large publishing house, conglomerate or multinational corporate entity.

That said if I was using a large sample I would seek clearance and if I was looking at using a sample from a independent artist would, seek to share songwriting credits and give a full list of sample sources within that given release (unless I had already purchased said samples from a sample house that specializes in large format, rex file and other propriety commercial sample libraries).

It's a murky world out there and ruling all examples of "sampling" as outright theft is both a misnomer and unfair to those who have endeavored to make sampling a valid art form in and of itself.

As an electronic artist and musician (yes I played bass for 20 years), I am very mindful of respecting others work and always endeavor to use as much of my own original material as possible, programmed and designed from scratch, which often means using large high quality sample libraries of acoustic instruments (multi-samples) along with my own custom synth design - I've actually been using a lot more "physical modeling synthesis" for example lately than I had in the past.

A sample or vinyl lift does not always enhance or add to what was originally created in the first place by itself and there is far more to sampling than just using other peoples material unimaginatively.

It's also often a great exercise to see if you can mimic the source material yourself from scratch and the reverse engineering involved can be a whole educational process in and of itself.

That however is another discussion all together.

 

 

As a small anecdote - I was criticized via email on my last release, for using a selected bank of recognizable presets from a relatively well known VSTi . Which firstly raises the question of whether or not preset use shows a lack of creativity (another debate altogether). In my defense though, I was on the beta team for said instrument, and had actually programmed all the "presets" in question for the commercial release of the product.

Personally I'd be damn flattered to hear them being used in someones music that was moderately successful - which is more than i can say for my own noodlings ...........but I digress.

[Johnny-Boy]

U & I, he mentioned a voice clip from a movie. It could be something like "Make My Day" from Dirty Harry. A totally different animal.

 

John:cool:

[trevcda]

What about a voice impersonator? Kind of like when those eighties movies didn't get clearances for songs on the video release and everything got replaced with sound-alike songs.

[U&I]

 

U & I, he mentioned a voice clip from a movie. It could be something like "Make My Day" from Dirty Harry. A totally different animal. John:cool:

 

 

Look I would ask firstly -

 

A) how obscure is the sample

B) how is it going to be used

C) realistically - when you say "commercial release", how commercial (as in successful is it going to be ?)

 

If you sell 25 copies I doubt they'll pay much attention - make a pretty penny and you are in all sorts of {censored} ( crass I know but very true).

 

Is it the dialog itself that's important or the reference to the movie - does it really need to be that sample ? Can you recreate an approximation of it that works just as effectively in context, is probably the best question to ask.

If the answer is yes the do a recreation of the dialogue itself.

Use lo-fi grainy sampling or bit reduction etc on the reworking for example.

If in doubt on the other hand, don't.

[U&I]

 

Finally, would it be possible for us to reconstruct this clip without violating the copyright? As in, if we could record it twice or whatever, does that make it void? We're mostly just looking for information regarding this topic, so thanks for any help.

 

 

If you are doing a recording of a recording of a recording of a piece of source material, I would still argue that the source material recorded was the copyright ownership of WB.

Between you and me, I am not as precious or cautious over vocal sample snippets or dialog from movies as I would be about lifting someone's music without permission (but that's just me).

Out of curiosity - is the sample in question to be found on "The Daily Wav" website - they have tonnes of movie samples archived.

[Paul McCartney]

You get away with it as long you don't earn anything with that song.

 

But when you make money with that song, we take everything from you, including your house, your salary, the car...

[Johnny-Boy]

You get away with it as long you don't earn anything with that song. But when you make money with that song, we take everything from you, including your house, your salary, the car...

[Lord Lav]

Fatso

 

It's difficult if they flat out say no to you. I think your best hope would be if you were to get signed to a label and use them to negotiate clearing the sample with Warner. If you don't have a label then I think you would be best off to give the song away for free or leave it out completely.

 

I'm a Hip Hop producer where sampling is very provident. I've spent a lot of time looking into sample clearance and here are my thoughts. I'm sure there will be people here that completely disagree with me, but this is all my personal opinion. I've looked into clearing samples as an independent artist and it really isn't financially feasible. However from speaking to the likes of Paul G from Morcheeba if you get signed to a label they will often pay to get clearance and have a lot of negotiating weight to make it happen, unlike you trying to do it independently Fatso. There are times where sampling can be very beneficial even if it's not cleared. Look at Danger Mouse's 'Grey Album'. The remix of Jay Z's Black Album and The Beatles White Album. He never cleared anything, got 3000 copies pressed and distributed it across indie stores. A big buzz about the record formed. Eventually EMI caught wind of it and threw a paddy. They sent him a 'seise letter' telling him to stop distribution of the record immediately! Danger Mouse obliged and made sure all the records were removed from sale. But the record was still being downloaded by people and got even more buzz. As a result Danger Mouse raised his profile and managed to get into the likes of Rolling Stone! It might not have been directly profitable for him and may perhaps have been a bit damaging but in the long-run it turned out to be very beneficial for him!

 

No one is going to care about what you sampled unless your record gets big. It's a bit of a potential risk, but one could argue that if your record gets big, you can get signed off the back of it and get the label to give you financial backing and weight to get the sample cleared. There are also companies like this http://www.diamondtime.net/services.php that you can pay to negotiate to get samples cleared. They aren't cheap but then if you were to get signed a label can pay those costs.

 

The sample clearance issue is always quite vague and there really isn't a clear way to go about it. By law if you sample anything without permission it is illegal in the eyes of the law whichever way you look at it, even if you make it unrecognisable, it is still illegal. Although if you make it unrecognisable to the point where no-one is going to know where it's from, then no-one is going to notice. Another thing is unless the record gets big and it shows you're making money off it, frankly no one's going to care because people have bigger fish to fry.

 

My personal standpoint on this is if you're unsigned and have no label backing then look to make all independent releases that you wish to make money from sample free. This way you get to own 100% of the royalties of what you make, which will give you more value and potentially be more financially stable in the future. However if you're giving stuff away for free for promotional use then although it is still technically illegal, I'd still go for it and use stuff with samples on it. How much financial damage are you really doing to someone when you are not making a financial profit? And on top of that, how much of a priority are you going to be, despite it being illegal? If you are signed to a label then go sample away. But make damn sure you can get that stuff cleared and use the power of the label to negotiate getting it done!

 

For all you peeps reading this that are sampling geeks you should check this very interesting YouTube video/brief documentary on the 'Amen Break'

[daddymack]

First, the legal, and I sincerely think anyone who uses samples needs to think this through: Intellectual Property laws are becoming huge. If you use someone's material, and you can't get the rights to do so, you are ripping off someone. Period. I don't care if it is a millisecond of audio. It doesn't matter. It really doesn't matter why you use it either. Or if you are going to make money from it. Wrong is wrong.

Next, the creative: If you are so inept that you can't create your own material and see your only hope is to rip off someone else...you should quit before your karma catches up to you.

 

To FF, the OP: have you exhausted all the clearance avenues? Most large corporations will not deal with the Joe Blow Band from Podunk, but will with a clearance house where they know money will change hands.

[U&I]

 

Next, the creative: If you are so inept that you can't create your own material and see your only hope is to rip off someone else...you should quit before your karma catches up to you.

 

 

 

I agree that lifting loops, riffs and melodic content and banging it together into something you call your own is dubious territory and not terribly creative if you aren't using the said sources creatively (let alone legally) where do you draw the line on that comment.

 

Are people who buy sampling workstations that use presets equally as uncreative, because they didn't sample their own Grand Piano from scratch, or because they used a highly voice articulated cello patch rather than learning to play the instrument them self. There are many modern genres we take for granted that would be what they are without the advent of sampling.

Can I just add that one can be highly creative with a sampler and (for me at least) the vast majority of sample sources are found sound based (ie: household items, field recordings, things like radio static, spray cans for hats, taught paper that is flicked till it snaps for a snare attack and all other sorts of goodies). I have used for example a marble spinning in a metal bowl as part of as drone pad in one of my tracks on my last release.

I have also heard some incredibly creative tracks that use sampling - and yes clearances where gathered and everything was legit.

At what point does the process diverge from "ripping somebody off" to "creating your own material" ? Is it as perfectly binary and clear cut as that, or are there shades of grey ? You can rip off artists and intellectual property holders in a million and one ways artistically speaking and none of them would involve going near a sampler.... but I digress.

 

Note: I am not condoning illegal sampling or the breach of copyright laws here but just playing devils advocate to your above comment. Don't want to be viewed as antagonistic either and perhaps healthy debate on the topic might be worthwhile in a different thread, as it is a contentious issue with many people on both sides of the fence, and those that sit somewhere in between.

 

 

Oh and if you are going to sample other artists for the love of all things holy give full credit where credit is due.

 

 

 

[Johnny-Boy]

"It's certainly not an iconic sample. For example, if you google the exact quote, no results on the first page lead to a web page referencing the movie. However, if you GIS the quote, you get 3+ pictures of the character who speaks the line. It's a fairly popular movie from the early '80s" _ Fatso

 

You can't mention the title of the movie or the quote? I don't think you need clearance for that.

 

Bottom-line; Warner Brothers denied you clearance for the clip.

 

John

[daddymack]

I agree that lifting loops, riffs and melodic content and banging it together into something you call your own is dubious territory and not terribly creative if you aren't using the said sources creatively (let alone legally) where do you draw the line on that comment. Are people who buy sampling workstations that use presets equally as uncreative, because they didn't sample their own Grand Piano from scratch, or because they used a highly voice articulated cello patch rather than learning to play the instrument them self. There are many modern genres we take for granted that would be what they are without the advent of sampling. Can I just add that one can be highly creative with a sampler and (for me at least) the vast majority of sample sources are found sound based (ie: household items, field recordings, things like radio static, spray cans for hats, taught paper that is flicked till it snaps for a snare attack and all other sorts of goodies). I have used for example a marble spinning in a metal bowl as part of as drone pad in one of my tracks on my last release. I have also heard some incredibly creative tracks that use sampling - and yes clearances where gathered and everything was legit. At what point does the process diverge from "ripping somebody off" to "creating your own material" ? Is it as perfectly binary and clear cut as that, or are there shades of grey ? You can rip off artists and intellectual property holders in a million and one ways artistically speaking and none of them would involve going near a sampler.... but I digress. Note: I am not condoning illegal sampling or the breach of copyright laws here but just playing devils advocate to your above comment. Don't want to be viewed as antagonistic either and perhaps healthy debate on the topic might be worthwhile in a different thread, as it is a contentious issue with many people on both sides of the fence, and those that sit somewhere in between. Oh and if you are going to sample other artists for the love of all things holy give full credit where credit is due. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6ZYLp5uX9Yw

Those are totally different concepts of sampling, and you know it. My thrust was about using illegal samples of other people's IP, and additionally that if you are going to do something 'creative', then...create it. Don't copy it, don't imitate; create, innovate.

I personally find all the 'we modified it to the point it is unrecognizable' argument patently ridiculous. If it isn't recognizable, then what did you need it for?

'Clever' is not necessarily 'creative', nor is 'different', 'derivative', etc...and yeah, my personal philosophy is if I am going to promote something as mine, it should be mine, otherwise attribution is a must.

Would I use a drum machine? Sure, the machine makes it easier to lay my concept down. The drums are not crucial to the 'creation', simply an adjunct in this case. And as part of the price of the machine when purchased was some value to the 'programmer'. But the final presentation version would have a live drummer with whom I had rehearsed and discussed the percussion parts at length.

Using a tone in a tone bank, to me, is fine, because that is all it is, a tone, not a note per se, and so as they perform the piece, that they used a digital piano vs a steinway grand does'nt mean anything. That is just splitting hairs in the realm of what a sample is...no different than using a modeling amp...it is simply recreating a tone, not a piece of music.

I have done some odd 'samples' in the past...I wanted the sound of a seagull at the beginning of a song...but I didn't really want to go find one seagull and wait for him to make that sound...so I tested hinges all over my house, and finally found a chair that had a similar squeal to it, recordeded it into a delay and voila, it sounds like a seagull...there is a big difference between that, and using someone's actual recording of a seagull...

[U&I]

Those are totally different concepts of sampling, and you know it. My thrust was about using illegal samples of other people's IP, and additionally that if you are going to do something 'creative', then...create it. Don't copy it, don't imitate; create, innovate. I personally find all the 'we modified it to the point it is unrecognizable' argument patently ridiculous. If it isn't recognizable, then what did you need it for? 'Clever' is not necessarily 'creative', nor is 'different', 'derivative', etc...and yeah, my personal philosophy is if I am going to promote something as mine , it should be mine, otherwise attribution is a must. Would I use a drum machine? Sure, the machine makes it easier to lay my concept down. The drums are not crucial to the 'creation', simply an adjunct in this case. And as part of the price of the machine when purchased was some value to the 'programmer'. But the final presentation version would have a live drummer with whom I had rehearsed and discussed the percussion parts at length. Using a tone in a tone bank, to me, is fine, because that is all it is, a tone, not a note per se, and so as they perform the piece, that they used a digital piano vs a steinway grand does'nt mean anything. That is just splitting hairs in the realm of what a sample is...no different than using a modeling amp...it is simply recreating a tone, not a piece of music . I have done some odd 'samples' in the past...I wanted the sound of a seagull at the beginning of a song...but I didn't really want to go find one seagull and wait for him to make that sound...so I tested hinges all over my house, and finally found a chair that had a similar squeal to it, recordeded it into a delay and voila , it sounds like a seagull...there is a big difference between that, and using someone's actual recording of a seagull...

 

 

Thanks for taking the time to reply.

It's always healthy to get another persons spin and perspective on a subject and wanted you to know the input was/is greatly appreciated .