Support
Looper's Delight
|
Support |
|
|
At 07:19 PM 8/13/01 -0700, Caliban wrote: >This is also reflected in my own work. ... like the opening verse of >Ice-T's >"Colors" overlaid on the introduction to Lynyrd Skynyrd's "Sweet Home >Alabama". ... >So how do other people see this sort of thing? Do others use this kind >of contextual mixing? Is the presence of obscure meaning in a song a >bonus, or a liability? Not to open that whole "Are DJs *real* musicians" can o' worms again (which you can find in the archives if you're interested), but when you talk about lifting entire verses wholesale from other artists' music, to what extent can you really say it's your *own* work? Don't get me wrong, I'm not slamming the creative use of samples; artists like Negativland have done some really interesting things with the icons of pop culture, and Loop Guru, among many others, have used samples from all over the place to create a highly original imaginary travelogue. On the other hand, most of what I find creative about the use of sampled music comes from the way the artist puts an obscure sample into a new context that is not dependent on the sample's "former identity" or its connotations, or so completely mutates a familiar source that it's no longer recognisable, but assumes a new and compelling character of its own. If you stick the chorus of "Copacabana" on top of a Prodigy beat, it may be disturbing or funny or pathetic, and it'll probably be at least interesting but it's still, um, Barry Manilow's song. Juxtaposition of disparate elements is cool, but your example strikes me as a little blatant; I may be dating myself, but I've heard "Sweet Home Alabama" WAY too many times. It's not lost on me that that's your intent, to take a work that everyone knows if not likes and with which they have strong associations and to jar the listener's sensibilities by contrasting it with something that just doesn't fit, but it's not something I'd want to listen to very often. Remember "Stairway to Gilligan's Island"? If you'll check out the archives you may find a thread from, oh, a year and a half to two years ago (rough estimate) where the topic included discussions of just how long a sample may be before it crosses the line from creativity to theft (there's no *real* authoritative answer, but the opinions and legalistic views presented were interesting). You'll also find discussions of Plunderphonics, sampling ethics and a few other things germaine to the use of other people's music, but what you'll mostly find are threads concerned with real-time looping of musical instruments, usually (but not always) involving hardware loopers. Oh, and lots of threads about the hardware itself. (When's the Repeater coming out, anyway?) Please don't take my post as a personal attack. I've never heard your music and can't legitimately comment on it, but I got the impression from your intro that you'd enjoy having your opinions challenged! Tim