djchameleon

I forgot to search to see if there was already a topic talking about this but anyways. I wanted to share the pain that I had to deal with yesterday afternoon.

I was cornered by three old timers who were trying to convince me that all the soul/heart in music isn't around anymore thanks to everything being done digitally. Next they decided to attack producers and say that they are not artists.

I basically told them that they are artists because even though they are taking a small sample they ARE adding their own little twist on it to make it their own creation. Of course that didn't go over well and they weren't trying to hear that. Then somehow they went from saying that producers aren't artists OR musicians. When they added in the musicians part I agreed with them but I still felt like they ARE artists. There are only a few producers that dabble with instruments such as Madlib and I think even Timbaland does as well. I even tried to mention to them that a beatbox/drum machine is an instrument but of course yet again they were not trying to hear that because it is digital and they just seem afraid of technology. They also feel that technology is easy and it takes no skill to reproduce some works of art. I disagreed with them on that.

As far as the no soul in music today, I had to tell them that there is more music than what you hear on the radio. For some reason they couldn't grasp that concept that underground artists do exist. They couldn't wrap their minds that there are new classical/Jazz musicians still creating original pieces on a daily basis. I even showed them the best new artist Grammy winner as an example and that shut them up about it for a bit.

One interesting thing that came up from this discussion though was the idea that producers creating their own work off of samples don't get credit as it being an original idea so they can't get it copyrighted? Is that true? I have to do some reason but he brought up the example of Dr. Dre being taken to court over some sample abuse and Dr. Dre claiming that he was a musician and create the newer beats adding his own touches to it and it should be claimed as his own because it's now modified.

I have to do some more research on this but I just thought I would open up this for discussion. The whole copyright issue, what are your thoughts on it?

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Fame, fortune, power, titties. People say these are the most crucial things in life, but you can have a pocket full o' gold and it doesn't mean sh*t if you don't have someone to share that gold with. Seems simple. Yet it's an important lesson to learn. Even lone wolves run in packs sometimes.