The Beastie Boys, James Newton, and phonographic orality

One of the most complicated copyright situations covered in my Musical Borrowing class is the landmark sampling lawsuit Newton v. Diamond. “Newton” is jazz flutist and composer James Newton, not to be confused with James Newton Howard. “Diamond” is Michael Diamond, aka Mike D of the Beastie Boys. The song at issue is the Beasties’ “Pass the Mic” (1992).

The flute sample in the intro and throughout comes from James Newton’s piece “Choir” (1982).

If you want to sample legally, you need two separate licenses: one from the owner of the audio recording (typically a record label) and one from the owner of the underlying song or composition (typically the songwriter or composer, or their publisher.) The Beastie Boys got permission to use the recording of “Choir” from James Newton’s label, ECM, and paid a license fee. They did not, however, seek permission from Newton himself. ECM didn’t ask Newton either, and he didn’t even find out about the sample until eight years later, at which point he sued the Beasties for copyright infringement.

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Can I Kick It?

In order to shop at the Park Slope Food Coop, you have to do a monthly work shift. I do two a month, one for me and one for my wife, who is much too busy earning most of our money to do her own shifts. I work early mornings on the Receiving squad. As produce gets unloaded from trucks outside, we break down the pallets, bring everything into the basement, and organize it into the various walk-in coolers. One of the Receiving coordinators plays music from a mammoth Spotify playlist called Sea of Liquid Love, over 1,900 tracks spanning hip-hop, electronic dance music, reggae and other groove-oriented styles from around the world. During my last shift, “Can I Kick It?” came up in the rotation, and in spite of the fact that we were schlepping boxes of vegetables around before dawn, everybody lit up. Why is that track so great? How did these guys, all of whom were younger than twenty years old, record such an all-time banger?

Before I try to answer the bigger questions, let’s take a look at the samples in the order of their appearance in the track.

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You’re Gettin’ A Little Too Smart

After reading Dilla Time, I did a deep dive into Dilla’s preferred sample sources, including the Detroit Emeralds. Here’s one of their nastiest grooves:

I combined that opening groove with Charles Mingus and Vassily Kalinnikov to create one of my favorite of my own tracks:

According to WhoSampled.com, “You’re Getting A Little Too Smart” has been sampled in a couple of hundred rap songs. I drove myself crazy trying to figure out which part everybody was sampling. Was it the second bar? If so, how did they get the bass out? Or was it the break after the first chorus? But then how did they remove the reverbed-out cowbell and clave?

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Dies irae

This fall I’m teaching Musical Borrowing from Plainchant to Sampling at the New School. For the plainchant part of that, my example is the Dies irae sequence, which is to Western European classical music what the Funky Drummer break is to hip-hop. Dies irae (Latin for “the day of wrath”) is a medieval poem describing the Last Judgment from the Book of Revelation. Its first musical setting was a Gregorian chant in Dorian mode from the 13th century.

Fun fact! In Monty Python and the Holy Grail, the self-flagellating monks are chanting the last few lines of the Dies irae sequence.

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Little Simz and Ramsey Lewis

In 1973, the Ramsey Lewis Trio performed their arrangement of “Summer Breeze” by Seals and Crofts on German television. This performance has been viewed an astonishing 1.6 million times on YouTube.

I learned that fact fromĀ Paul Thompson‘s analysis of the performance, which includes transcriptions of several of Cleveland Eaton’s basslines. Paul’s YouTube channel is one of the most valuable music education resources on the internet.

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Playing “Giant Steps” as an instrument

Last weekend I went to a hip-hop jam session. There was a drummer, bassist, guitarist, pianist, and a couple of emcees, and I played samples from my laptop via Ableton. I was going through my jazz folder, dropping different things into Simplers and Drum Racks, and at one point I tried using the first few seconds of “Giant Steps“. That made me remember that I had remixed it a few years ago, and that I should try doing it again.

"Giant Steps" chart

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We’re just normal men

Why is this funny? I don’t know, but it is.

Here’s the background. It means nothing, is a reference to nothing. That is so much better than if it was an in-joke.

Does this have musical potential? I applied some Ableton audio-to-MIDI to find out.


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Don’t Sweat the Technique

I did not expect to hear a classic Eric B & Rakim track on The Crown, but at the end of season five, episode five, there was Dominic West as Prince Charles, dancing to this:

There is a lot going on here! The track opens with an upright bass and a drum kit playing a lightly swinging Latin rhythm. It sounds up close and full. After it plays twice, an entire funk band horn section riff enters, sounding like it’s being played on a small radio hanging from a nail on the wall. Then that same radio plays a riff from a single saxophone while Rakim’s voice, loud and clear, intones, “Don’t sweat the technique.” So that’s the first eight seconds. Next, a red hot distorted breakbeat enters, while the Latin bass/drums groove and the tinny radio sax riff continue looping. You would have no way of knowing that the breakbeat and the saxophone riff are sampled from the same recording, because they are mixed and processed so differently. This new groove plays four times, and then the saxophone riff switches to an angular and unpredictable funk riff using upper extensions of the Eb minor chord. All this before the first verse even starts. It’s a lot!

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Isaac Schankler remixes Beethoven

My kid is learning the Moonlight Sonata. It’s lovely and all, but for a truly fresh take on this piece, you need to hear Isaac Schankler’s version. You can think of the first movement as having three parts: the bassline, the arpeggios, and the melody. Isaac shifted the bassline a bar later and the melody a bar earlier. The result has the same somber vibe as the original, but it’s… off.

I don’t think Isaac meant this as a joke, and I don’t take it as one. I genuinely love how it sounds. It’s still recognizably tonal, but with less predictable and stable harmony. Beyond the outcome of this specific experiment, I also admire the larger cultural significance of Isaac’s willingness to tamper with a canonical masterpiece. YouTube is full of remixes of the Moonlight Sonata, but none of them are as musical or as inventive as Isaac’s.

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