:)
But actually the real crime here (I guess we're going into the discussion
here) isn't sampling "Every Breath You Take", but the uncreative way they
used it, which is a full 8-bar phrase. There's nothing wrong with sampling
a popular song, but there's everything wrong with lifting it note per note,
bar by bar. If you sampled it, at least have the creativity to mess with
it, change the chords around, so that the ear will think, "That's the tune"
but the mind will think, "That's not exactly the tune..." I did some
messing around with Cool Edit with a couple of samples from James Brown's
"The Big Payback." of course, everyone knows how the tune goes, but I
managed to cut it up and combine the intro with the main body of the
song...then I got the bassline of another JB tune, pitch-shifted it,
corrected the tempo and came up with this real crazy loop. You know where
the tunes came from right away, but it's not what you expect them to sound
like.
If you chose a more obscure sample source, I guess you can get away with
it. At least your creativity went into finding something fewer people would
obviously recognize, I guess.
But in the "I'll Be Missing You" situation, hey it's a victimless crime,
Puffy and Faith have a new hit record, B.I.G., wherever he is, feels
honored and Sting's youngest child is already financially set for that
Oxford degree... :)
Elson
-30-
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Elson Trinidad
Los Angeles, CA, USA
elson@westworld.com * http://www.westworld.com/~elson
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