Chopping a song into loops

Every time I find myself in disagreement with someone like alien_brain on this topic, it always comes down to exactly that:

Where's the line between "music" and "not music"…the line between "a musician" and "not a musician"…

I'm only 25, so I don't have your years of experience, but I have been playing music my entire life. Music was (and is) critically important in my family; my father worked in radio (and later TV) and my mother was a ballet/modern dancer, then a choreographer, then a dance teacher. I wasn't long out of diapers before I was picking up instruments.

My dad's probably got 10 or 20 years on you alien_brain. Dude was at Woodstock, has seen damn near every musician/band worth seeing since the mid 60's. I'm sure he could argue convincingly why everything you think you know is bullshit, with the same degree of condescension you've shown everyone else in this thread. I know first hand; when I was 6 and wanted to learn to play guitar, I got piano lessons instead, because I needed to "learn the basics." When I was 13 and wanted turntables, I got guitars instead, because the work of DJ Shadow (one of my favorites at the time) and his ilk wasn't "real music."

In retrospect, I'm incredibly grateful for the piano part, especially because they eventually found me a crazy-awesome (but seriously, crazy) teacher from Spain, and she wasn't down with the shitty attitude American kids are all so great at. Plus she knew I was smart, so she had me taking Royal Academy theory tests meant for university students when I was in my early teens.

Sang in choirs for most of my preteen/teenage years (damn Catholic schools), played guitar and sang in bands, blah blah blah…I've done enough things in my life that involved playing instruments or reading music or singing with my own voice that I think I at least just barely qualify as a "musician."

Here's the thing: I never hear DJs or producers talking about how successful traditional musicians "don't get it" or "aren't making something real." In fact, those guys and girls are some of the most voracious consumers and scholars of music I've ever met in my life. I know "musicians" who've been playing in bands for decades but don't know Devo from Dizzy Gillespie. I also know DJs who—to the best of my knowledge—have never strummed a single barre chord, but can school anybody on the full catalog of Tropicalia, from Panis et Circencis to infinity.

Conversely, we seem to live in a universe full of alien_brains, who—rather than constantly learning about foreign concepts and wanting to be the first to give props to an artist who does something great—can't wait to start talking **** about anyone doing things that don't perfectly align with their misguided and soon obsolete worldview.

Of course there are bad DJs (or just misguided ones) who are out to make a quick buck and aren't interested in history or nuance or technique, but I'd argue you'll never find a bigger music fan than a great DJ. There are also bad producers (or just misguided ones), who boast of their dusty fingers but haven't played 90% of their records any longer than the 6 second break they bought them for. Then there are people who take this new art (and the delightful little internet that happened to spring up around the same time) as an opportunity to expose themselves to things they never would have otherwise had an interest in. They find opportunities to allow their preferences and musical style to grow and evolve.

These are not attitudes I find prevalent in the "I don't really listen to much music, I don't want it to affect my work" crowd. Too damn many "musicians" work in isolation, convincing themselves that taking cues from any prior art or adapting anything from the past would negatively impact the "integrity" of their work. You know what? Fxck your integrity. First of all, you don't know how your mind works, the worlds top neuroscientists don't know that, and a neuroscientist you are not. You don't get to choose what you remember, you don't pick from a list of items to be inspired by. Second, when you say "I don't want to be affected by other music," I hear either "I'm lazy and don't want to learn to do anything that I can't make up on my own" or "I don't give a **** about the brilliant and compelling history of Western Popular music in the last 60-70 years." Either way, I can't relate.

AND DESPITE ALL THAT, they still have two guitarists, a bassist and a drummer in their band, they still play basic-ass I IV V chord progressions, their songs still go verse-chorus-verse-chorus-bridge-chorus...oh what was that? You prevented yourself from being exposed to earth-shaking works of artistic genius because you wanted to make something original? Actually I've heard this song 15,000 times. Nice try though.

Honestly, I don't care if sampling makes me a musician or not. Maybe it makes me a performer, or a curator, or something else entirely. Maybe it disqualifies me as a musician forever, stripping me permanently of my "with the band" credentials. I do know this: if being a musician meant that I would be in any way associated with arrogant, myopic, backwards-thinking, never-evolving alien-brains—then a musician is the last thing in the universe I want to be.

(and I guess you'll have to come up with a new word for a person who can sit down and play Suite Bergamasque: Clair de Lune from memory, but isn't a "musician.")

 

bravo. just bravo. *sniffle*

 

I'm sorry, weren't you the guy jumping into other people's conversations spewing malformed theories on the nature of TRUE ART like a meth-addled professor emeritus of Juliard or something?

Can't say I'm surprised you couldn't find anything to even attempt to refute in a several hundred word diatribe, but most of that wasn't addressed to you anyway.

This is:

YOU ARE NOT INTELLIGENT, YOUR VIEWS ARE POORLY FORMED AND POORLY DEFENDED, YOUR INSISTANCE ON INJECTING THEM INTO CONVERSATIONS WHERE THEY ARE IRRELEVANT AND UNWELCOME MAKES YOU APPEAR TO BE AN EXTREMELY PATHETIC OLD MAN, AND ULTIMATELY IT SHOULD COME AS NO SURPRISE THAT NO ONE CARES ABOUT YOUR HATRED OF SAMPLING ON THE SAMPLER FORUM. IN ADDITION, THE THINGS YOU CLAIM TO DEFEND WERE NEVER YOURS TO CLAIM OWNERSHIP OF, JIMI HENDRIX AND PAUL MCCARTNEY WOULD ALSO HAVE THOUGHT YOU WERE A SIMPLE-MINDED TWAT, YOUR COMMAND OF ENGLISH IS A JOKE FOR A PERSON YOUR AGE WHO EXPECTS TO BE TAKEN SERIOUSLY BY ANYONE, AND YOUR RESENTMENT OF HIP HOP MAKES AN INEFFECTIVE VEIL FOR YOUR LATENT RACISM. I HOPE EACH SUCCESSIVE DAY IN A WORLD FILLED WITH INCREASING NUMBERS OF SAMPLE BASED COMPOSITIONS AND PEOPLE YOUNGER THAN YOU WHO ENJOY THEM DRIVES YOU SLOWLY AND PAINFULLY INSANE, YOUR KIDS ARE GOING TO HATE YOU.

xoxo,
Ryan

 

youre a poet of the just variety i can tell

 

I posted this quote before in a previous thread in response to Alien_Brain's 'bull in a china shop' rhetoric. I hope more people understand and take inspiration from the idea of 'borrowing' music (or any other forms of art) to re-contextualise and create something new.


“Nothing is original. Steal from anywhere that resonates with inspiration or fuels your imagination. Devour old films, new films, music, books, paintings, photographs, poems, dreams, random conversations, architecture, bridges, street signs, trees, clouds, bodies of water, light and shadows. Select only things to steal from that speak directly to your soul. If you do this, your work (and theft) will be authentic. Authenticity is invaluable; originality is non-existent . And don’t bother concealing your thievery - celebrate it if you feel like it. In any case, always remember what Jean-Luc Godard said: “It’s not where you take things from - it’s where you take them to.”
― Jim Jarmusch

 

well youre right about plagiarists being unoriginal. ill give you that much. its the same tired old rip off it always was.

 

[ame="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_yC81QhR_xk"]Lawrence Lessig - Remix - YouTube[/ame]

 

That was brilliant. If you have an hour to kill and interested in copyright this lecture is really well put together and well informed.

 

i agree that plagiarism is a shame and is all too prevalent in this day and age. people should put the time in necessary to write their own music rather than use a recording of something they found. unless its a remix of course.

 

I agree that plagiarism is all too prevalent which I think is mainly due to the fault of very weak and lazy musicianship. Creative sampling and the ability to re-contextualize audio is an art form, whether that be mash-ups, remixes or something wholly new.

 

Yeah! Anyone who plagiarizes and attempts to build a career on the backs of other artists is a fraud, and an undeniably terrible musician!

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_songs_covered_by_The_Beatles

 

yeah but wut about iff dass all you got? wut if you ainn got no originals? den you ainn got shiiiiii cept sum body elses shiii up in yo shiii knowum sayin?

 

oh i dont think alien is sayin yall cant, hes sayin yall shouldnt.

 

"is saying"?

You're terrible at this.

"He" was banned before "you" signed up, remember? At least get the tenses right.

And quit plagiarizing yourself.

 

Yo Rmyf, nice vid; saw this a while back- very entertaining and thoughtful....
If I were to be losing an argument on here, would it be cool to join the forum under different names to make my one voice into many?
Just asking yo...

 

Thanks man. If you're into it, check out some videos from Clay Shirky (my other favorite non-artist thinker on the topic) and maybe even read some of Lessig's books (almost all are free PDF downloads on his website, or you can pay him for dead tree versions if you want).

Great question.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sockpuppet_(Internet)
http://encyclopediadramatica.ch/Sock_puppet (probably nsfw)

and finally

http://www.native-instruments.com/forum/rules.php

 

what are yous guyses talkin bouts? i tink yous could have me mixed up wit someone elses!

 

You do realize you're not even staying in character, right?

First it was a Mr. Nice guy routine—incidentally, no one would have cared if you'd written things like this the whole time; instead you've shown us your personality so we have to assume it's just pretense:

Oh no. "unless its a remix of course." It must have been awful for you to have to write that. Just terrible. Are you feeling alright?

Then came your offensive 21st-century Sambo thing:

"den you ainn got shiiiiii cept sum body elses shiii up in yo shiii"? Really? So then, that's really what it amounts to for you? Sampling is proxy for hip-hop culture and by extension some group of brown people you want to mock?

Or, since that version of you was also calling into question the artistic validity and personal integrity you find lacking in sampling, you thought it might be valuable to have one of "them" backing you up? Because that's the way you think black (or Latino, or whatever) Americans talk (or think)? Or perhaps the way that any people who enjoy hip hop—& good rap, & great rap, & terrible rap completely devoid of compelling lyrical content/narrative but that simply makes a room of people want to dance—maybe that's the way they talk (or think)?

Now:

What is that? [ame="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BFd3rGIa5UY"]Balki[/ame]
?

[ame="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C-I0n8Y87QY"]Toki from Metalocalypse[/ame]
?

Who is this one even intended to appeal to? People who say "internets" and look at cat pictures on them? Immigrants learning a new language? I'm at a loss. That smiley at the end really puts a bow on everything, though. Great job.

Give it a rest. Take a walk, make some music, whatever.

Do you remember that time when you got banned, and instead of doing what I and several others on this forum would have preferred and banning your IP range outright, the forum's administrator temp-banned you and very specifically called it a:

Do you remember that? What you're doing right now is the opposite of cooling down. A week. God damn.

 

are you harassing me dude? look at all the time you devote to hating hahaha

 

I actually both think and type extremely quickly, but I appreciate your concern.

However, you're right about one thing, I shouldn't waste my time getting trolled. You're not even very good at it. I told sowari I'd block you, I did, then I let my curiosity get the best of me and took a look at something you said. Poor decision.

It's been real, man. Good luck not getting banned again.