Did Producer Timbaland Steal From the Demoscene?

[Ral-Clan]

update: text transcript (for the Youtube impaired)

Wow....er...."eloquently" argued by Timbaland.  ;-)

[Ral-Clan]

I´ll have to disagree on this point. A sample is a sample, there is no defined ¨industry standard sample lemgth¨.

The very word "sample" means "a small bit".  i.e. if you taste a little corner of a cake you are having a sample, but you cannot claim to still be "sampling" it if you eat the whole thing (like Timbaland did with Tempest's song).

[Ral-Clan]

merium webster defines it (in this instance)as
3 : an excerpt from a musical recording that is used in another artist's recording

And if you read carefully, that definition says EXCERPT.  An excerpt as defined by the American Heritage Dictionary is:

A passage or segment taken from a longer work, such as a literary or musical composition, a document, or a film.

So if you take the WHOLE thing, you are not taking an EXCERPT, which is then not a SAMPLE.  To SAMPLE something, you must take an EXCERPT, which is a PASSAGE or SEGMENT.

Otherwise, I could rip a whole 20 minute track off a BBC orchestra CD, add a vocal line or rythm track, and sell it as my own - arguing that I SAMPLED it.  No...this is a re-mix, and if done without crediting and paying the original copyright holder it is plagiarism and theft.

[Ral-Clan]

Please explain how Danger Mouse Grey Album, which is made from 100% samples taken from the Beatles White Album to re-create Jay-Z´s Black album would fit into your myopic view of what sampling is.

edit: (Wikipedia link on sampling)

Sampling!=sampling

To use your own defence against you, the Wikipedia article you cite above says in the very first sentence:

"In music, sampling is the act of taking a portion, or sample, of one sound recording...".

and...

"Often "samples" consist of one part of a song, such as a break, used in another..."

The key word here being PORTION or PART.  Not the entire track.  If you take and entire song and just layer stuff on then that is then a re-mix.

The art of sampling is to use small snippets of audio and re-create an entirely new work.  Much like  how in collage artists use small scraps of images to create an entirely new piece of visual art.  To paraphrase one YouTube pundit: to simply take an entire page out of a magazine, change it slightly and call it your own is plagiarism.

If the DANGER GREY MOUSE album you mention takes bits of the White Album and makes all new original works that don't mimic the original, then that I agree is SAMPLING.  If it merely takes the unmodified tracks and layers stuff on top, that is NOT sampling, it is re-mixing.

Another trait of a talented sampling artist is that he or she takes their short samples from lots of different sources to assemble a single new, original sounding work.  They don't simply plunder/sample a single song to create a new work.

[Ral-Clan]

Re-mixing and sampling are two sides of the same coin.

I don't agree with this statement.  Re-mixing can be totally unrelated to sampling.  For instance: think of the latest re-mix of the Beatles album "Let It Be" called "Let It Be - Naked".

The producer George Martin took the original multi-track masters and re-mixed them.  He changed the EQ and emphasis of some of the parts, turned up other parts that weren't as prominenent in the original mixes (i.e. Billy Preston's keyboard), and turned down or shut off other tracks (the Phil Spector orchestrations).  The resulting tracks were the same length as the originals, but sounded different due the the "re-mix" on the board.  I suppose you could also call what he did a re-master in some elements.

This, of course is an oversimplification of what he did, but my point is that the resulting tracks are re-mixes of the original.  No sampling was involved.  

This is close to what Timbaland did with Tempest's song.  He basically took the whole thing and layered on top of it his own drums and Nellie's vocals.  He turned down the original bass-line and added his own copy of it.  I've heard a lot of people say that what he did is "sampling"....they argue this as some sort of defence for what he did (I know you're not saying this).  But such a large, continuous use of an original tune doesn't fit any definition of sampling I've come across.  To me it's closer to a re-mix.

That doesn't mean that re-mixing can't involve sampling as part of the re-mix "twist".  The re-mixes of Bjork's songs (for instance by Moby and - er, I think - the Chemical Brothers) in many cases involved sampling.  But sampling alone does not equal re-mix nor vice-versa.  The two can be mutually exclusive.

I'm not trying to argue with you.  I'm just trying to clear up some misconceptions about sampling etc. I've seen floating around on the 'net.  While I'm not into rap or hip-hop, I've done a little bit of re-mixing and sampling. I'm NO professional, but I don't come into this discusssion from a totally uneducated standpoint about the two techniques.

Anyway, I guess we're on the same side and this has been argued out a lot.  So I hope Tempest gets something for the re-mix Timbaland did of his song.  Timbaland shouldn't be able to use the "fair use" sampling defence in this case because he didn't sample.

[Ral-Clan]

So George Martin taking the original tape reals and putting them onto a different medium is not sampling in your book?

When you're burning a copy of a CD in your computer or ripping it to your I-pod, do you tell people you are making a "sample"?

No. In George Martin's case I'd have to say that what he did is just archiving or making a transfer recording so he could start the re-mix process.  In fact, there's already a word for this action in audio/video tech circles - it's called a 'dub'.

A sample, to me, is a snippet or phrase of audio which can then be be used as a musical instrument in its own right.

i.e. a drum loop, or a brass hit, or a 1 or 2 bar bass phrase, or a James Brown "Yeeeahh!".  That sort of thing.

Otherwise, I could call the entire contents of a CD a "sample", the entire contents of my i-pod a "sample" or a whole library's audio section a "sample".  The work "sample" just gets watered down and meaningless if it is given no boundaries.

[Ral-Clan]

It will be difficult for me to get the songs you suggested, although I'm very curious to hear them (I only have dial up).

When you're burning a copy of a CD in your computer or ripping it to your I-pod, do you tell people you are making a "sample"?
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
No, becasue I am not creating a new piece of music.

So the very act of George transferring the old fragile multi-track reels to a hard-disc so he would then have something to work from is sampling then?  I think that's a bit of a stretch.  It's not like he was going to cut or paste phrases from the digitized tracks....

To you it may be that, but to millions more it doesn´t. Majority rules, you know that.

I don't know if Majority Rules is valid indicator of how true things are.  If public belief makes things true, then Saddam had something to do with 9/11 and Celine Dion is a good singer and the world was once flat.

If you're talking about majority rules, I think most people out there would agree with me that this was simply a digital transfer for backup purposes.  I think I'd be hard-pressed to find a single studio tech who though he or she was "sampling" (in the hip-hop sense of the word) by transferring old reels to hard drive for a remix/remastering job.

Based on most of the feedback and outrage I've seen on forums about this Timbaland controversy, I'd say that my definition of what sample vs. a rip is shared by a lot of people out there. :-)

[Ral-Clan]

Mostly the opinions of people without knowledge of music technology and terminology. So yes, the majority would probably agree with you.

Well, I'm not trying to toot my own horn, but I have worked semi-professionally in independant music for the past 15 years and do have some small degree of experience in music recording studios and doing live sound...I also maintain a small home recording studio. So I wouldn't exactly call my opinion "without knowledge".  

I've not met a tech who would use the word 'sampling' to describe doing an analogue to digital backup.

On a totally technical level, the computer is breaking up any audio into miniscule digital samples (16-bit 44.1Khz or 24-bit 96Khz) in order to digitize it....but you don't call making a copy "sampling", and even this use of the word sampling is distanced from the term as hip-hop artists use it.

Any A/V professionals out there who would use this terminology?

Anyway, I guess we've probably argued this out as far as we can take it: Timbaland bad, Tempest good.  We both agree on that.

Thanks for the links.  I'll check them out when I'm home.

[Ral-Clan]

uh ripping is copying a digitalsong from a cd.

sampling is recording a digital file from an analogsource. this can also apply to using digital files in such a way to create a song.

Sorry man, but sampling is taking audio from any source (digital or analog).  The very Wikipedia article you guys referred me to states that the earliest samplers were doing everything in the 1950s/60s with analog tape.  (analog to analog).  Today, a lot of people sample from both analog and digital sources.

the outrage has nothing to do with the definition of a sample or a ripped file and you know it.

I'm not sure you understand my original point.  I'm sorry if I haven't made myself clear.  What I was trying to point out is the fact that a lot of people (Timbaland included) are trying to defend what he did by saying Tempest was merely sampled.  By this logic, if Timbaland only SAMPLED Tempest then this somehow falls under fair use, and he did nothing wrong.  The point I'm trying to make is that, because Timbaland used the ENTIRE Tempest song as the basis for his "Do It", this is not sampling, but actually a rip/remix.  A lot of people are outraged because of this thin defence and broad misuse of the term "sampling" to disguise what he did.

Anyway, as another poster pointed out, argueing semantics is pointless.  It's up for the courts to decide.  So I guess that's the last I have to say on the issue.  You guys have a great day and all the best!

 :-)