If you were to compile the best albums as measured by how often they get sampled by hip-hop producers, the list would look very different. There would be some famous names on it — James Brown, Led Zeppelin, P-Funk — but it wouldn’t necessarily include their best-known songs. And you’d see a lot of names that would be totally unfamiliar, unless you were a really devoted crate-digger. In the top ten, alongside tunes by The Honey Drippers, The Soul Searchers and The Incredible Bongo Band, you’d  find “The Champ” by The Mohawks.

Hip-hop fans will instantly recognize the organ riff that kicks off this song. It’s everywhere. Yet I had never heard of the Mohawks before looking into the source of the riff. They were an ad-hoc band of session musicians led by a British organist named Alan Hawkshaw, best known for his commercial jingles, library music and TV theme songs. He also played on records by Barbra Streisand and Olivia Newton John. Not the likeliest source of inspiration for Big Daddy Kane and Ol’ Dirty Bastard, is he? But the album grooves hard.

I probably first heard Alan Hawkshaw’s organ riff in “Eric B is President” by Eric B and Rakim — listen at 1:49.

The riff is one of the signature sounds of old-skool hip-hop. It’s in “Smooth Operator” by Big Daddy Kane, “The Big Payback” by EPMD, and “Miami Bass” by Stetsasonic. Its use may have tapered off a bit in the nineties but it’s still a go-to sample — Mary J Blige runs it under almost the entirety of “Gonna Breakthrough” from 2005.

Some producers reshape the riff to their own design. Guy reharmonizes it in “Groove Me,” changing the key from B to C# minor. Fu-shnickens flips it creatively in “La Schmoove” to make a different riff. KRS-One flips it even further, turning it into an almost entirely new melody on “Step Into A World (Rapture’s Delight),” named for its long quote of Blondie’s “Rapture.”

The biggest pop hit inspired by the organ riff doesn’t actually use the sample itself — Onyx shouts/sings its melody for the chorus of “Slam.”

The word being chanted at the front of the organ riff sounds more like “Tramp” than “Champ.” This has made it irresistible for anyone doing a song about a person with loose morals. The most obvious example is “Tramp” by Salt N Pepa (no embedding allowed, unfortunately, but don’t miss it.) De La Soul scratches “Tramp” on top of a stack of other hot samples in “Keepin’ The Faith” — I immediately recognized the beat from “Walk This Way” by Aerosmith.

Ice Cube uses the chant all the way through “Friday” and even Janelle Monáe scratches it into “Sincerely, Jane.”

A bunch of producers have mined other parts of “The Champ” too. Trust the RZA to look past the organ riff to the horn phrase a few seconds later as the basis for Wu-Tang’s “Shame On A N****a.” Main Source uses a completely different organ riff from later in the song in “Large Professor.” The Coup uses yet a different one on “Dig It.”

This listing barely scratches the surface of tracks that sample “The Champ.” It would probably be easier to list hip-hop artists who haven’t sampled it. After almost three decades of repurposing this one song, hip-hop’s collective imagination has probably not nearly exhausted its possibilities. If I missed one of your favorite uses, drop me a comment.

The track isn’t so much a song as it is an early mashup. Just about everything in it is a sample or quote. Here are the sources:

• The eighties version of the Doctor Who theme music
• “Rock and Roll (Part Two)” and “I’m the Leader of the Gang (I Am)” by Gary Glitter
• “Blockbuster!” by Sweet
• “Let’s Get Together Tonite” by Steve Walsh

Drummond and Cauty formed the KLF with the specific intent to thumb their nose at the concepts of ownership and copyright. Nevertheless, by the time of “Doctorin’ The Tardis,” they had attained enough commercial success that that they were able to license all of their samples and quotes. In spite of their not owning much of the publishing rights to their song, Drummond and Cauty ended up making over a million pounds from it. Not bad for a few days’ work. With a modern laptop and Pro Tools the track probably would have taken them twenty minutes.

“Doctorin’ The Tardis” was hot for a very brief instant in the UK, and an even briefer one here in America. I heard it on the radio probably once, after which I went around in an agony of frustration at never being able to track it down and hear it again. What I wouldn’t have given in the eighth grade for the internet. At the time, Doctor Who was a very fringe, very nerdy taste. Even the Trekkies looked down on Doctor Who fans.

Much as I love their one hit and their overall concept, I can’t say I’m too wild about the rest of the KLF’s music that I’ve heard. The only other track of theirs that really does it for me is another crazy mashup, “Whitney Joins The JAMS,” which combines “I Wanna Dance With Somebody,” “The Theme From Shaft” and the Mission: Impossible theme.

Also, Jimmy Cauty later went on to form The Orb, whose music I love as music and not just conceptually.

After their trip to the top of the charts, the KLF went on to write “The Manual: How To Have A Number One The Easy Way.” It’s an excellent guide to the production of electronic music generally. I was tempted to just paste the whole thing in, but that would have been ridiculous, so here are some choice quotes, along with my responses.

The emotional appetite that chart pop satisfies is constant. The hunger is forever. What does change is the technology this is always on the march. At some point in the future science will develop a commodity that will satisfy this emotional need in a more efficient way.

Hopefully something more participatory, interactive and gamelike?

To make pop music, you don’t need a band. You need a programmer.

Just after 1 pm Tuesday telephone the studio that you have booked and tell them you are going to need someone who can programme, ideally a programmer who can play the keyboards. Every studio can get one for you. This programmer is going to be the person who will provide, sample, originate, compute, even play all the music you will need on your record.

In hip-hop terms, this person is known as the beatmaker. The word producer is also sometimes loosely used for programmers/beatmakers.

The process of sequencing a pop or dance track is more like methodically cooking a meal or building a building than a wild Dionysian outburst.

It is going to be a construction job, fitting bits together. You will have to find the Frankenstein in you to make it work. Your magpie instincts must come to the fore. If you think this just sounds like a recipe for some horrific monster, be reassured by us, all music can only be the sum or part total of what has gone before. Every Number One song ever written is only made up from bits from other songs. There is no lost chord. No changes untried. No extra notes to the scale or hidden beats to the bar. There is no point in searching for originality. In the past, most writers of songs spent months in their lonely rooms strumming their guitars or bands in rehearsals have ground their way through endless riffs before arriving at the song that takes them to the very top. Of course, most of them would be mortally upset to be told that all they were doing was leaving it to chance before they stumbled across the tried and tested. They have to believe it is through this sojourn they arrive at the grail; the great and original song that the world will be unable to resist.

So why don’t all songs sound the same? Why are some artists great, write dozens of classics that move you to tears, say it like it’s never been said before, make you laugh, dance, blow your mind, fall in love, take to the streets and riot? Well, it’s because although the chords, notes, harmonies, beats and words have all been used before their own soul shines through; their personality demands attention. This doesn’t just come via the great vocalist or virtuoso instrumentalist. The Techno sound of Detroit, the most totally linear programmed music ever, lacking any human musicianship in its execution reeks of sweat, sex and desire. The creators of that music just press a few buttons and out comes – a million years of pain and lust.

Creators of music who desperately search for originality usually end up with music that has none because no room for their spirit has been left to get through. The complete history of the blues is based on one chord structure, hundreds of thousands of songs using the same three basic chords in the same pattern. Through this seemingly rigid formula has come some of the twentieth century’s greatest music.

Can I get an amen!

Inexperienced songwriters start with lyrics, treating the rest of the song as decoration. This is like building a house and starting with the wallpaper. Wiser songwriters start with a melody or chord progression, and the wisest ones start with the groove, the foundation of any musical structure:

Before we go any further we had better define “groove”. It is basically the drum and bass patterns and all the other musical sounds on the record that are neither hummable or singalongable to. Groove is the underlying sex element of the record and we are afraid for U.K. Number Ones this can never be left too rabidly raw on the 7″ format. It upsets our subliminal national moral code. We can cope with smut but not grind.

America is a little looser in this regard, but raw beats still make many of my fellow white people anxious.

In the same way that our sexual fantasies change and develop, sometimes double back over a period of months, so do our dance floor tastes in groove. It is always on the move, searching for the ultimate turn on and when you are almost there it’s off again and you’re left looking for a new direction.

Black American records have always been the most reliable source of dance groove. These records down through the years have inevitably laid so much emphasis on the altar of groove and so very little into fulfilling the other Golden Rules that they very rarely break through into the U.K. Top Ten, let alone making the Number One spot. A by-product of this situation is that gangsters of the groove from Bo Diddley on down believe they have been ripped off, not only by the business but by all the artists that have followed on from them. This is because the copyright laws that have grown over the past one hundred years have all been developed by whites of European descent and these laws state that fifty per cent of the copyright of any song should be for the lyrics, the other fifty per cent for the top line (sung) melody; groove doesn’t even get a look in. If the copyright laws had been in the hands of blacks of African descent, at least eighty per cent would have gone to the creators of the groove, the remainder split between the lyrics and the melody. If perchance you are reading this and you are both black and a lawyer, make a name for yourself. Right the wrongs.

The best place to find the groove that 7″ single buyers will want to be tapping their toes to in three months time is to get down to the hippest club in your part of the country that is playing import American black dance records. The unknown track the DJ plays that gets both the biggest response on the floor and has you joining the throng will have the groove you are looking for…

If there is neither a suitable club or specialist dance shop in your part of the country don’t throw in the towel as this is where the dance music compilations we have instructed you to buy on Monday morning come in. Stick them on the record player, turn it up loud and get lost in the groove, leave your mind on the bookshelf where it belongs, feel yourself if need be but keep going until you “feel the force” and you are “lost in music”, when the only answer to the question “can you feel it” is “yes”.

Pure dance music, if it has any lyrical content at all, will only deal in the emotions experienced within the four walls of a club late at night; basically desire and, more importantly, that area which is beyond desire at the very centre of the Human Psyche. Everything else is meaningless. Any creator of pure dance music that is attempting to communicate any other subject should be treated with deep suspicion. With a danger of getting too carried away on our own pretensions we state that it is through dance music and dancing we are able to get momentarily back to the Garden. Of course, in the clear light of day this is all very silly.

Not so silly, to my mind.

After the groove, the next key structural element is song structure. Like groove, it acts on your unconscious powerfully.

As we have already mentioned, the Golden Rule for a classic Number One single is intro, verse one, chorus one, verse two, chorus two, breakdown section, double chorus, outro.

Each of these sections will be made up of bars in groupings of multiples of four. So you might have an intro containing four bars, a verse sixteen bars and a chorus eight bars. At times the first verses can be double length verses, or the second chorus a double length. These sort of decisions are not going to have to be finally made until you reach the mixing stage of the record, when the engineer will have to start editing the whole track to make it work in the most concise and exciting way possible within three minutes and thirty seconds.

This last part is no longer strictly true. Pro Tools grid mode and MIDI editors make song-structural editing as easy as editing text in a word processor. You can work out structure in the midst of the recording/songwriting itself.

Hopefully, at sometime over the remaining days of the week, you will have been able to get out to a club and found the groove you need, been able to buy it on vinyl and get it home. It has to be the 12″ version as this will have whole great tracts of raw groove where each of the component parts of the groove are broken down and left exposed for your engineer and programmer to study and imitate when it comes to recording your record.

Again, the computer makes this easier. You can effortlessy loop a bar or two of any recording. Dance mixes do make it easier to find loop-worthy grooves, though.

The next thing you have got to have is a chorus. The chorus is the bit in the song that you can’t help but sing along with. It is the most important element in a hit single because it is the part that most people carry around with them in their head, when there is no radio to be heard, no video on TV, and they are far from the dance floor. It’s the part that nags you while day dreaming in the classroom or at work or as you walk down the street to sign on. It’s the part that finally convinces the punters to make that trip down to the record shop and buy it.

In other words, the chorus contains the meme, the earworm, the mind virus. Your conscious mind is not your friend when it comes time to grow a new meme. You need to reach behind it, into the more evolutionarily ancient and intuitive brain systems.

So, slip on the 12″ or your dance compilation and sing along with the breakdown sections; any old words will do, just whatever comes out of your mouth. If you have difficulty in forming a tune in your head or you feel a bit inhibited, flick through your copy of the Guinness Book of Hits and pick any Top Five record that takes your fancy and see if you can sing the chorus of it along to the track.

Take for example:

“That’s the way a-ha, a-ha I like it a-ha, a-ha That’s the way a-ha, a-ha I like it a-ha, a-ha”

by K.C. and the Sunshine Band. That one usually works and should get you going in the right direction but there are hundreds to choose from.

The lyrics for the chorus must never deal with anything but the most basic of human emotions. This is not us trying to be cynical in a clever sort of way when we say “stick to the cliches”. The cliches are the cliches because they deal with the emotional topics we all feel. No records are bought in vast quantities because the lyrics are intellectually clever or deal in strange and new ideas. In fact, the lyrics can be quite meaningless in a literal sense but still have a great emotional pull. An obvious example of this was the chorus of our own record:

“Doctor Who, hey Doctor Who Doctor Who, in the Tardis Doctor Who, hey Doctor Who Doctor Who, Doc, Doctor Who Doctor Who, Doc, Doctor Who”

Gibberish of course, but every lad in the country under a certain age related instinctively to what it was about. The ones slightly older needed a couple of pints inside them to clear away the mind debris left by the passing years before it made sense. As for girls and our chorus, we think they must have seen it as pure crap. A fact that must have limited to zero our chances of staying at The Top for more than one week.

Stock, Aitkin and Waterman, however, are kings of writing chorus lyrics that go straight to the emotional heart of the 7″ single buying girls in this country. Their most successful records will kick into the chorus with a line which encapsulates the entire emotional meaning of the song. This will obviously be used as the title. As soon as Rick Astley hit the first line of the chorus on his debut single it was all over – the Number One position was guaranteed:

“I’m never going to give you up”

It says it all. It’s what every girl in the land whatever her age wants to hear her dream man tell her. Then to follow that line with:

“I’m never gonna let you down I’m never going to fool around or upset you”

GENIUS.

Michael Jackson may be the biggest singing star in the world. Sold more L.P.s than any other artist at any time in the history of pop but he has had very few U.K. Number Ones. If he would like to make amends on this front he should start co-writing with the SAW team or read this manual. He has quite a bit to learn about the opening line of a chorus.

Did these guys just compare Michael Jackson unfavorably to Rick Astley? Did I really just get rickrolled in a book written in 1988? That takes chutzpah.

We are afraid you can’t just go down to the local supermarket and listen to the check-out girls’ talk and hope you can pick up the right line before Waterman gets to it. The line has to come to you and when it does you’ve got to grab it. Mindlessly singing along to the 12″ groove track you have is the best way.

The routine practice now is to record this mindless improvisation into the computer. If something valuable tumbles out, you can easily grab it, copy and paste it and build the song around it.

You must be worrying by now how you, or if not you, who on earth is going to front this record! If you already think you are a great singer and a well happening front person, then we have a problem. It means you will have the sort of ego that will render it totally impossible for you to be objective about everything else that has got to be done. Singers have historically made the worst producers of their own work. The reason for this is simply that singers have to become so emotionally involved in their performance it cancels out any sort of over view. At the very least they need a musical partner that can give them some direction. If a singer was able to have this calculated view of their own work the end product would undoubtedly come over as cold and empty.

This is profoundly true. Singers like to mix vocals way out in front, with the instrumental track as a distant accompaniment. This sounds super corny and dated. Cool music puts the beat up front.

The club D.J. (like his forerunner the dance band leader of the thirties, forties and fifties) realises that the most important thing is keeping the dance floor full and the thing that keeps the dancers dancing now (as it was then) is the music with its underpinning groove factor. Singing throughout has always just provided a distraction from the main event – what is happening on the dance floor and not on the stage.

Music that’s meant to be listened to alone can be lyrics-oriented and built around a vocal sound. But social music needs to center on the beat.

For the majority of people the sound of the vocals and the words that are being sung throughout the verses just merge into the over all sound of the track. The words that are being sung could be any old gibberish, only the words to the chorus have any real importance. Of course there are the exceptions when the classic narrative song breaks through and storms the Number One slot These can never be planned and I’m sure the performers of these freak hits are as surprised as anybody when it happens. So unless you want to risk everything on some bizarre tale you have to tell, stick with us.

Michael Jackson’s lyrics are usually totally incomprehensible, which is no obstacle to their enjoyment. It’s nice to have a blank slate to project your own imagination of the song onto.

So now you can tackle the construction of the verse without worrying about singers.

Using the basic groove you have decided upon you are now going to have to choose a bass line that will work as the basis for the whole song, or at least the verse sections. We take it there is no point in us trying to describe what the bass line is in any great detail, but it’s the bit in the record that throbs and keeps the flow going. In days gone by it was provided by the bass guitar player, now it is all played by the programmed keyboards. Even if you want it to sound like a real bass guitar, a sampled sound of a bass guitar will be used, then programmed. It’s easier than getting some thumb-slapping dick head in.

The groove might already have a killer bass line in there, making the whole thing happen and to remove it and exchange it for another might destroy what you have already got. There are plenty of monster bass lines out there to try. You will know them, they are the ones that you can almost hum. The great thing about bass lines is that they are in public domain. Nobody, even if they do recognise it, will seriously accuse you of ripping somebody else’s bass line off.

Michael Jackson, who we cited earlier on for not being that adept at coming up with the killer Number One hit choruses, CAN come up with the bass lines. “Billie Jean” was the turning point in Jackson’s career. That song, on his own admission, took him into the mega stratospheres where his myth now reigns. The fact is, “Billie Jean” would be nothing without that lynx-on-the-prowl bass line; but he wasn’t the first to use it. It had been featured in numerous dance tracks by various artists before him. Jackson and Quincy must have been hanging out around the pool table in their air conditioned dimmed light atmosphere, L.A. studio one evening wondering: “What next?” when one of them came up with the idea of using the old lynx- on-the-prowl standby. Without making that decision back in 1981 there would have been no Pepsi Cola sponsored jamboree in 1988.

We are not trying to deny any of the very real talent that Jackson has, just trying to emphasise the possible importance of the killer bass line.

Serious groove merchants hate it when a song has a dynamite bass line for the verse and then when the chorus comes the chords change, dragging the bass away from its “bad self” into having to follow those limp wristed chords. For them the whole movement of the song is destroyed for the sake of some nursery rhyme element they would rather see dumped.

Somehow these two important elements are going to have to be made to work together without the power of the chorus or the propulsion of verse bass riff being destroyed. Ideally, when a song hits its chorus it should feel it’s the natural thing to happen, a release from the tension of the verse. By the end of the chorus you must feel like nothing is desired more than to slide back down into the vice-like grip of the bass line.

Some groove merchants have a talent for getting it all their own way by coming up with a bass riff that never shifts from the beginning of the song until the end: intro, choruses, verses, breakdowns, outro all fitting around the same bass riff. For a song to sound like this and work away from the confines of the dance floor, it is going to have to be a real mutha of a riff. There must be some pretty insistent action going on on top of it to keep the casual radio listener interested. Even on “Billie Jean” they moved off the bass riff for the chorus.

Actually, the prechorus. But point taken.

Drummond and Cauty have a ton of other good songwriting advice. Like, don’t use a bridge, use a breakdown section instead. This breakdown section should be just the rhythm tracks with some ambiance on top, not a solo, because:

Nowadays, solos either get in the way or have to be fabulously stunning at the same time as being able to fit in with the studio sculpting that is going on around it. Having some guitarist give you his interpretation of what a really good guitar solo should sound like is totally out of the question. Guitar solos only work in modern pop records when they are over the top things full of hideous histrionics and lacking in any emotional depth whatsoever. This type of guitar solo is one of the very few things that heavy metal has given back to Top Ten chart music. Yet again, Jackson’s name comes in here. It all started when he used Eddie Van Halen on the “Thriller” L.P. So unless you have a mate that can play just like Eddie – forget it.

The only other reason for having a meaningless solo on your track is to give the record some instant profile upon the record’s release by making it known in the media that it features a boring but sainted muso, thus giving it some fake cred. The tried and tested guest soloists of the late eighties are: Miles Davis on trumpet, Courtney Pine on saxophone and Stevie Wonder on harmonica. Untried possibilities that might create some interest would be Jimmy Page or Junior Walker. But really we would recommend you don’t bother – unless you can get Jimi Hendrix to do it.

Finally, here’s a perfect description of how the production process feels at its best:

From now on in you will begin to feel the inevitable pull of the unseen life force of the record you have allowed to be created. It will be as if you are in a sailing boat and suddenly from nowhere a wisp of wind fills the sails. Your job is to hold onto the rudder and at all times never lose sight of the harbour lights. Let the crew bail out the water. Let the crew trim the sails. Let the crew man the galley. Remember, if you ever leave go of the rudder to help the crew all hands may be lost – along with any chance of ever hearing your record being played at five minutes to seven on Radio One on a Sunday evening.

Very zen. Very true.

Doesn’t sound much like the Verve, does it? Here’s the Andrew Oldham Orchestra‘s version, the sample will jump right out at you twenty-five seconds in.

Although “Bitter Sweet Melody” was written by Verve frontman Richard Ashcroft, its publishing rights are held by Keith Richards and Mick Jagger. This bit of legal absurdity is due to the Rolling Stones’ manager Allen Klein, who also holds many of the band’s earlier copyrights. Klein successfully sued The Verve for plagiarizing “Bitter Sweet Symphony” from “The Last Time.”

The Verve had legally licensed the Andrew Oldham Orchestra sample, but once their song became a hit, Klein challenged the terms of the license in court. His legal argument was that the Verve had used too much of the sample to be able to claim any authorship over “Bitter Sweet Symphony” at all. The Verve didn’t think they’d win the case and didn’t have the resources to pursue it. They agreed to a court settlement that gave the song’s publishing rights to Allen Klein’s company and songwriting credits to Jagger and Richards.

This case was tried in the UK, not America. Still, if the Biz Markie lawsuit and others like it are any indication, our courts would have probably produced a similar outcome. This is lame. The US Constitution says that the point of copyright is “To promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts, by securing for limited Times to Authors and Inventors the exclusive Right to their respective Writings and Discoveries.” If you think, like I do, that sample-based music is a useful Art, then copyright law as it’s presently interpreted is not doing its job. Allen Klein didn’t contribute creatively to the Stones’ original song, the orchestral arrangement or the Verve song. He has nevertheless managed to collect a lot of the money all three recordings have made over the years. The Stones and The Verve get performance royalties for their songs, respectively, but when their songs get used in movies or video games or commercials, they get bupkes.

US copyright law says that works based or derived from another copyrighted work is the exclusive province of the owner of the original work. The problem with this statement is that all new works are derivative. All creative thinking consists of adapting existing ideas, especially in music. Nevertheless, the law says that if you write or record a song based on an existing copyrighted song, you need the copyright owner’s permission. Same if you write a story or shoot a movie using settings or characters from an existing copyrighted story or movie. Justice Sandra Day O’Connor said in Feist Publications Inc v Rural Telephone Service Company that “copyright assures authors the right to their original expression, but encourages others to build freely upon the ideas and information conveyed by a work… It is the means by which copyright advances the progress of science and art.” O’Connor thinks that “the sine qua non of copyright is originality”, but as Wikipedia observes, the standard for creativity is not completely based on a work’s novelty. A work needs only a “spark” or “minimal degree” of originality. I’d say that The Verve’s song has more than enough of that spark to meet the standard of an original work.

The fragment of orchestral melody the Verve used for their song is totally unrecognizable as having any connection to the Rolling Stones, unless you know its history. There is a connection, a family lineage, but the Verve can’t reasonably be accused of having stolen anything. The sample is from a melody written by Andrew Oldham that sets up the Rolling Stones’ melody, but is distinct from it. If the Verve had had the foresight to hire a bunch of violinists and percussionists to play an identical snatch of music, the Stones would have no claim whatsoever.

Another irony is that the “original” Stones song is hardly original. Keith Richards freely admits that he borrowed the idea for “The Last Time” from a 1955 Staple Singers record.

This is nothing against the Stones. The Staple Singers were adapting a traditional song that has been widely replicated throughout the gospel world. Plenty of other musicians have derived new original works from the Last Time meme, the idea of a vocalist running out of patience for someone over a rhythm and blues setting. For example, James Brown recorded a song in 1964 called “Maybe The Last Time.”

To compound the ironies, Klein’s claim of 100% of the publishing of “Bitter Sweet Symphony” crowds other would-be stakeholders. The beat sampled in the song comes from “Doggone By Love” by George Suranovich, but he has no share in the song; he clearly doesn’t have the same legal acumen that Klein does.

The Verve’s song is arguably a lot more original than the Stones’, but because of the peculiarities of modern copyright, they’ve been screwed out of a lot of the money. Richard Ashcroft’s lyrics take on a dark irony given how the life of his song played out: “You’re a slave to money, then you die.” Klein licensed “Bitter Sweet Symphony” to Nike, Opel and Vauxhall for TV commercials against The Verve’s wishes, and Richard Ashcroft didn’t get a dime. Same thing when the song is used in video games, movies and TV shows.

Musicians mostly continue to disregard the law when it impedes their creativity. “Bitter Sweet Melody” has been covered, sampled and repurposed endlessly. Michael Jackson fans make tribute videos set to it. Kanye West and Wale rap over it, and it’s been sampled and interpolated for tons of techno and dance tracks, for example this one by David May.

Hear a mashup of most of the tracks referenced above.

Bittersweet Symphony Megamix by ethanhein

Update: this post was used in a Williams College English course called Borrowing and Stealing: Originality in Literature and Culture. It followed a discussion of Andy Warhol’s a, A Novel and Pope’s An Essay On Criticism. Thanks, Professor McWeeny!

If you haven’t had the pleasure, Doctor Who is an extremely long-running, low-budget British science fiction show about a time-traveling alien being who looks like a flamboyant Oxford don. Or actually a series of flamboyant Oxford dons. The original actor playing Doctor Who was elderly and became ill while the show was just getting to be popular. When he couldn’t continue, the BBC ingeniously decided to have the Doctor’s species periodically reincarnate as a routine part of their life cycle. They were thus able to keep the show going through many changes of lead actor. Doctor Who has been on the air for most of the past forty-five years with no signs of stopping anytime soon.

Here’s the original 1963 title sequence, with music composed by Ron Grainer and arranged, produced and recorded by Delia Derbyshire:

Let’s talk for a second about Delia Derbyshire.

She produced the Doctor Who theme music using analog oscillators and tape loops, laboriously, over a period of many weeks. Here she talks about her process.

Her name suggests that she might have been a professor at Hogwarts, but Delia Derbyshire was a genuine hipster ambient techno producer, decades before such a thing existed. She was buddies with Paul McCartney, Yoko Ono, Brian Jones and the guys in Pink Floyd. In addition to the Doctor Who theme, she produced a bunch of other tripped-out electronica. Hear a sample:

Delia Derbyshire – “Planetarium”

The Doctor Who theme I was hearing in the eighties as a third grader was a newer arrangement by Peter Howell:

The Delia Derbyshire version broke a lot of new ground, but the eighties version is the one that really works for me musically. The groove is tighter because the bass was recorded to a click track. The main melody is played on an Arp Odyssey, a more sophisticated version of the synth they used for R2D2′s voice. Peter Howell sings the B section melody wordlessly through a vocoder. Here’s a behind-the-scenes video if you want to really geek all the way out. Dude isn’t the world’s most dynamic camera presence, but he demonstrates all the different retrofuture gear one piece at a time.

In 1988, The KLF had a number one pop hit in the UK with “Doctorin’ The Tardis” which includes a sample of the Peter Howell theme.

What I like about electronic music is how it makes the strange familiar, and the familiar strange. The best science fiction does that too. Nothing could have sounded more futuristic or otherworldly to me as a kid than those synths and that vocoder. Now they’re museum pieces.