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’ …
Continue reading “The Beastie Boys, James Newton, and phonographic orality”
I was not expecting to write a post on here about Taylor Swift. I have nothing against her and wish her the best, I’m just not her target audience. But when you have kids, you find yourself in all kinds of new situations. Ever since my daughter started second grade, she has gone from mildly …
This fall I’m teaching Musical Borrowing from Plainchant to Sampling at the New School for the first time. Here’s my syllabus. It will probably evolve as we go, but this is the initial plan. This course on “non-original” music explores how frequently existing compositions have been appropriated and adapted into new works, and how these …
Here’s one of the heaviest and most wonderful recordings ever made. The song is so mysterious, so intense, so ancient-sounding yet so fresh. John Lee Hooker recorded it in 1948 at United Sound Systems in Detroit. (He re-recorded it many more times afterwards.) It went to number one on the R&B chart, which is pretty …
Lorde has a new song. If you are a George Michael fan, parts of it will sound very familiar! The guitar part in the first verse is strongly reminiscent of the one in “Faith.” But people seem to be mainly worked up about the similarities in the overall rhythmic groove and chord changes to the …
I am not a lawyer, just a guy who studies hip-hop academically. But I’m married to a lawyer, and have spoken to various music industry people and done a lot of reading on this. My advice is to go ahead and post tracks with uncleared samples, even though doing so is technically illegal. Understand that …
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Back in 2009, Harmonix came out with The Beatles: Rock Band. In order to prepare the sound files for the game, the company needed the original multitrack stems for fifty Beatles songs. Someone at the company posted the stems online, and they remain in widespread circulation. (You can easily obtain them via a Google search.) …
I’m recently home from Ableton’s stupendous “summit for music makers,” and I’m still mentally unpacking it all. Loop was quite a different experience from last year, when Ableton held it in their home city of Berlin. This year, they moved it to Los Angeles to make it easier for people in Latin America and the …
My youngest private music production student is a kid named Ilan. He makes moody trip-hop and deep house using Ableton Live. For our session today, Ilan came in with a downtempo, jazzy hip-hop instrumental. I helped him refine and polish it, and then we talked about his ideas for what kind of vocal might work on top. He wanted an …
I love SoundCloud. I love it for being an exceptionally easy way to share my music with people all over the world. I love the community aspect, especially the Disquiet Junto. I have all of my students host their portfolios there. But like a lot of the electronic musicians who form the heart of the …
