Category Archives: Music

Sampling

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In this work, Vaidhyanathan is arguing for “thin” copyright protection (as opposed to “thick”) or copyright doctrine that is just strong enough to encourage the creative industries in art and business but also “porous” enough to allow for free flows of information and rich democratic speech. I think that this is the best way to view copyright law.

When it comes to sampling, like any other music sampling, it can be done incredibly well or used blatantly poorly. MC Hammer’s “U Cant’s Touch This” borrowed lengthy hooks and choruses from Rick James “Superfreak”, downgrading his song from a sample to a copy of the original. Sample- based music is not to be confused with piggy- backing on old music to create mega- hit, but the art of utilizing technology to remix and share music in new and innovative ways. Recording artists such as De La Soul, Public Enemy, and Beastie Boys used multiple brief samples that were often left completely unrecognizable to construct songs.

Music in Restaurants

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I recently came across this article which talks about copyright infringement.  BMI, Broadcast Music Inc., files copyright infringement lawsuits against restaurants and bars who fail to get licenses for playing music without paying royalties. I was surprised to learn that many of these lawsuits are not initiated by the artists themselves but rather, are initiated by BMI.  I was also surprised by how high and costly penalties can be.  It seems smart to splurge on the cost of subscribing with BMI or another organization like it because you may end up saving thousands later on.  I was left with the impression that companies like BMI don’t actually care about protecting an original artist’s rights or copyright but rather are taking advantage of restaurants that fail to get licenses solely for monetary gain.

Music Videos From Tuesday’s Class

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I was pretty intrigued by Kelsy’s comment in class about the reasoning behind the creation of Gotye’s video- Somebodies: A Youtube Orchestra. There definitely is a difference between creating the video for the sake of just sharing creative covers and creating the video in spite of the artists who made the covers- kind of giving them a taste of their own medicine.

I was pleasantly surprised when I revisited the youtube video on my own computer and noticed this: “Reluctant as I am to add to the mountain of interpretations of Somebody That I Used To Know seemingly taking over their own area of the internet, I couldn’t resist the massive remixability that such a large, varied yet connected bundle of source material offered.” This is a quote from the description of the video signed from Wally (Gotye) himself. Although at first he comes off a bit negative, towards the end of the quote his tone changes to be more lighthearted. He goes from sounding annoyed and offended to sounding happy to spread cool music around. Thus, I’m not exactly sure what his official motives were behind making this video. However, at least they do not come off as all bad.

The Making of a Renaissance Book

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Before beginning the short, 20 minute documentary, The Making of a Renaissance Book, I mentally prepared myself for what I believed would be an extremely boring video experience.  Much to my surprise, I found the documentary to be more interesting than I thought it would be. The documentary is in black and white giving it an older, more almost vintage, feel. The music they play throughout the documentary is enough to give you a headache, making me at times, want to turn it off.  The documentary really shows you how precise and time consuming making the letters that are to be used in printing is.  Until seeing craftsmen carve out the letters, I hadn’t realized just how time consuming the process is.  This made me appreciate all the books we saw at class.  When we went to EPI we only printed a sheet.  We didn’t have to lay out the letters which is also a time consuming process.  Until seeing this video, I hadn’t given as much thought to the process of making the letters as I had to other aspects of printing.  Craftsmen had to neatly and precisely create letters of different sizes and fonts.  Today, we simply just type away on our computers, just as I am doing now, with a multitude of fonts and sizes to choose from.  I always took this for granted.

Copyright Controversy – The Verve

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This week, I’ve spend much time working on the essay for the first portfolio, with the central theme of the essay being the history of copyright laws. Doing this made me think of an instance involving one of my favorite bands, The Verve. During the mid-90’s, while working on an album, the Verve came to an agreement with Decca Records, the company that deals with the music made by The Rolling Stones. Both parties agreed that for a small fee, the Verve would use a five note sample from a relatively unpopular Rolling Stones song in the composition of one of their own songs, “Bittersweet Symphony”. When the album as released in 1997, “Bittersweet Symphony” became a worldwide hit, bringing The Verve both enormous fame and album sales.

After seeing the success of this song, former Rolling Stone manager Allen Klein filed a lawsuit against The Verve, arguing that they had used “too large of a sample” from the original song. This was an absurd claim, as not only did the Verve use the exact amount they agreed to, but their resulting song was essentially unrecognizable from the song that the five note sample came from. Nevertheless, the case went to court. Facing a difficult legal battle, in which there was the potential to lose much money and still lose the case, The Verve had no choice but to hand over 100 percent of their royalties from the song to the Rolling Stones.

This whole controversy represents a disgusting chapter in copyright history. Allen Klein, fueled by greed, created a false claim and cost The Verve all the money they would have made from a worldwide hit. What makes it even worse is that these are the types of instances that copyright laws are supposed to prevent, but it is arguable that they have created this problem.

http://www.thevervelive.com/2005/05/bitter-sweet-symphony-controversy-and.html

Trip to EPI

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One part of our class in the EPI building today that really struck me was when someone asked the professor, “why not just use a digital printer?” and while answering the question, the tone of her voice completely changed. In her answer you could really tell that the printing press meant a lot to her. Her words were not defensive of it, but rather were loving and sentimental. She emphasized how with the printing press you can really see all the work that is put into the process of printing, as opposed to the digital printer where you just press one button and you are done.

Just as I never thought of the book as evolving from stone tablets, I never really connected the modern digital printer to the much older printing press. In hindsight it seems stupid how I could not have made that connection sooner. But I think the fact that I was up close seeing exactly how a printing press worked today made me realize just how similar it actually is to digital printing. After reading some chapters in the book, Sound Recording, I found a metaphor connecting earlier music technology to CD’s that made me think about the connection between printing presses and digital printers. “The CD can be seen as offering merely incremental improvements over the previous generations of technology” (Morton 188). Now a days, most people view digital printing as such a novel phenomenon. Of course it is much easier and faster than using a printing press, however, when you think about it, how much thought was really put into the invention of the digital printer as opposed to the invention of the printing press? Just like the CD is the digital printer not just a “mere incremental improvement over previous generations of technology?”

Youtube is terrible

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So, I’m trying to get some study music off of youtube and I really felt like listening to Caparezza, an Italian artist. So youtube kept giving me a “This video has been blocked in your Country” message. Finally out of annoyance I went on the Italian language google page and still same thing.

I thought the whole purpose of Youtube and of the internet in general was to broaden the cultural horizons of the global population, so that as a global community people can share thoughts and ideas across borders. apparently this doesn’t apply to music.

Zero Draft Idea

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When I first thought about intellectual property I started to think back on a documentary I had watched last year on music sampling. In music, sampling is the act of taking a portion, or sample, of one sound recording and reusing it as an instrument or a sound recording in a different song or piece. In this manner, artists are able to build off of each other’s works. The original artist gets a certain royalty from the use of their old track and sampling often enables their old song to gain new exposure. As I became more interested in this topic I started to research Creative Commons Licenses. Creative Commons is a nonprofit organization that offers free legal tools to protect the use of creative work while maximizing the amount of material that is available for free and legal sharing, use, repurposing, and remixing (Creative Commons 2010). It is interesting to consider Creative Commons Licenses as an “alternative history” to copyright laws.

 

Zero Draft Portfolio 1

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Just a few things I am thinking about for my first essay.

In our contemporary world and modern day society, copyright functions as a control in different markets.  From music to publishing, copyright acts as a way for artists and creators to decide under what conditions, if any, others may use their work.  If we no longer had the protection of copyright, then we could essentially take control of these different markets, adapting the creations within each to our own personal perceptions.  How could this be beneficial to the public? How would the elimination of copyright impact artists? If printing houses hadn’t differentiated themselves from one another, would copyright exist today?