Please explain to me the what I can and cant sample

I keep hearing nightmares about sampling and infringement. I see threads on gear sluts saying be careful of the freaking drum hits you sample..

What is legal and what isn't, and what matters? I like sampling oldschool Chicago house records, Can i potentially release music with these samples? do you have to get permission?

I remember a Lone track where he basically sampled 8 bars of an 80s synth funk record with minimal and released it, did he get permission to use it or just bank on no one caring?

I don't think you're going to run into any problems unless you make a lot of money from your music or you sample Star Wars or something..

Trent Reznor said in some interview that a whole bunch of pretty hate machine is samples he ripped off and didn't get licenses for and he even ripped off some samples from a George Lucas movie and never heard a word about it but later on he got sued for an obscure sample from an 80's documentary because the guy who made it was a teacher and played the video and one of his students recognized the sound.

There is a lesson in there somewhere.

My gut tells me not to sample other music in the same genre ballpark as the one I'm playing with (don't shit where you eat) but I love grabbing odd bits from where the sun don't shine, fully knowing that if I ever release anything commercially I might wake up from lawyer nightmares with cold sweats.

  On 4/30/2012 at 7:28 AM, modey said:

I don't think you're going to run into any problems unless you make a lot of money from your music or you sample Star Wars or something..

Or Prince. I wouldn't fuck with Prince. He's got the money and the conviction to see it through.

legally speaking Modey is right, morally speaking it's much more of a grey area. There are a whole slew of artists nowadays making careers off of sampling very obscure and sometimes even electronic and experimental music.

examples -

Demdike stare

Gatekeeper

Justice

worst offenders -

Kink

3tronik

there is a moral grey area for me in here, because especially with artists like 3tronik who literally sample autechre but who's music ends up sounding like an autechre clone it's hard to understand.

If you sample an artist, they may be entitled to a large portion of the vast hundreds of dollars you can make from selling electronic music in 2012.

You can sample anything you like apart from AFX. That's just cheating.

  On 5/1/2012 at 1:04 AM, LUDD said:

You can sample anything you like apart from AFX. That's just cheating.

fixt.

but you can't publish anything you like, if you have, say, like modey said, a fuck off great Star Wars sample in the middle.

just use your common sense.

This isnt an issue until someone is actually willing to pay for your music.

  On 5/1/2012 at 12:41 AM, The Face Culler said:

If you sample an artist, they may be entitled to a large portion of the vast hundreds of dollars tens of free downloads you can make from selling electronic music in 2012.

fixt

But yeah this is probably a total non-issue for most WATMMers. Even if you achieved Aphex-level fame I doubt it would get noticed. Actually, I bet even if someone like Skrillex at the height of their popularity used a sample it might not need clearing, because most people see a difference between messing with dialogue from a movie versus sticking someone else's beat in your track.

do girl talk get permission or is there a legal max time your have to sample?

Fair use is a bit of a murky area...

This figure often gets thrown around:

  Quote

Music, lyrics, and music video:

Up to 10 percent of the work but no more than 30 seconds of the music or lyrics from an individual musical work.

But it's a total lie - you can easily be sued for using even just a small snippet of a song. If it were true, it would mean just about any sample would be OK since it's rare to sample more than 30 sec. of a song.

Here's the actual text in the US:

http://www.copyright.gov/fls/fl102.html

Ambiguous as fuck.

I wonder if Skam cleared any of the samples Gescom used in that plunderphonics EP they released a while back..

whatever you do, don't sample any b-side Winstons' drum breaks, those guys are real dicks.

  On 5/1/2012 at 2:01 AM, chassis said:

do girl talk get permission or is there a legal max time your have to sample?

I think he just skates by because people love him and he's only doing publicity for everyone he samples. If he cleared every sample it would probably cost a kings fortune not to mention how much time that would take.

I don't think short samples fall under some sort of fair use, its just a bit cut-throat. Might vary from country to country though.

sample everything, and don't make it the crux of your track

reinterpretation, reinterpolation, and flipping are key here.

if it's not recognisable nobody will sue you.

Extrapolation beats (re)interpolation when it comes to music making!

some good reads:

Bridgeport, Audio Sampling and Transaction Costs

http://andrewraff.co...eport-audi.html

Bridgeport Music, Inc. v. Dimension Films (USA), Metall auf

Metall (Germany) and Digital Sound Sampling – “Bright Line

Rules”?

p.331–350..up-to-date analysis..Intellectual Property Journal (Zeitschrift für Geistiges Eigentum)

http://www.mohr.de/f...011/ZGE_2_3.pdf

Sample Clearance

The SOS Guide To Copyright Law On Sampling

http://www.soundonso...arance_0308.htm

A Short History of Sample Clearing

http://clearance13-8...anceHistory.htm

heavier stuff:

http://www.law.depau...illyT_Paper.pdf

http://www.law.india.../22_Mueller.pdf

http://www.wcl.ameri.../lewis.pdf?rd=1

cheers,

io

sorry, small update..

just p.101-120..but thats the full article..

Bridgeport Music, Inc. v. Dimension Films (USA), Metall auf

Metall (Germany) and Digital Sound Sampling – “Bright Line

Rules”?

http://www.mohr.de/f...011/ZGE_2_3.pdf

  On 5/1/2012 at 2:31 AM, Velazquez said:

whatever you do, don't sample any b-side Winstons' drum breaks, those guys are real dicks.

LOL

Just move to sweden.

  On 5/1/2012 at 10:12 PM, slightlydrybeans said:

Just move to sweden. hot air baloon

There is so much gray area regarding sampling and it's a tricky issue to tackle. You'll have godawful Vanilla Ice-esque "pro-sampling" explanations from people like Timbaland, with circular arguments like this bullshit:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JTvY3wZrHrQ

Then on the other end of the spectrum you'll have people completely swear off ANY form of sampling, completely ignoring the facts that music references and builds upon past ideas (anything derived from blues especially) and it's irrelevant whether you picked up and recorded yourself playing instrument versus sampling and manipulating pre-existing audio. In that sense, sampling is just a more complicated (morally and legally) form of making music. If you play, say eight bars of an existing tune and record it as the chorus of your song without citing it then it's legally plagiarism. It was still harder to do that loop 8 bars of audio or import 8 bars of the MIDI of that existing song. And on top that, whether you get sued is up to the artist and likely up to how famous you are, and whether you and/or your label could fight it in court. Whether it's noticed is up to your audience and your notoriety.

This probably the best doc I've seen about the subject:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IsS7F5H2VpM

I have no qualms with sampling, done right it's brilliant. Done lazily it's an absolute travesty. It could be very subtle musically how much a sample in one tune could piss you off versus make you go "holy shit this is awesome!" - those reactions depend so much on context. I'd say this: manipulate, chop up, pitch-bend, backmask, etc your samples to make them worthwhile. If you want it to be immediately recognizable, use it in a way that adds to your own song. Don't use a looped sample as an easy melody, re-appropriate it so it works in completely different way on your own track. Ask yourself "why I am sampling this, and could (and should I) simply make this sound myself." And on top of everything, ask yourself what you'd do if someone sampled you, and to what extent they did so... that could help you shape how and when you do the act yourself.

Now that I think of it the only thing I actually sampled in one of my finished tracks as opposed to recording it myself was some Jurassic Park insects noises a few years back (towards the end). Spielberg hasn't even threatened to sue :'(

But yeah I've always been annoyed by people who look at any sampling, no matter how minor or abstractly implemented, & act like it totally invalidates the track & makes the composer a talentless hack. Not to stereotype but in my experience these are mostly the same guys who call synths fake instruments & mostly just write 4chord guitar-strum songs about girls.

  On 5/1/2012 at 10:39 PM, joshuatx said:

This probably the best doc I've seen about the subject:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IsS7F5H2VpM

 

Oh god why do I find Maggie Gyllenhaal's voice so sexy

It's like my Imipolex G