New School vs. Old School
 

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?

This whole concept I find very interesting, especially since the majority of music I've listened to the past couple of years has been mash-ups... more on that later.

On the idea of producers not being musicians, I think that is a completely outdated thought. For the most part, the days of producers sitting in a lab and grabbing a cool sample, looping it, and adding a generic drum kick is over. There is a lot more creative, nuanced, live instrumentation, genre-crossing stuff out there for us to lower a lot of producers down. Production has become quite an art form.

On the copyright issue, most artists attempt to operate under the "Fair Use Doctrine" which gives them access to use the original work in certain ways without express consent. It has yet to be determined if this is a valid defense for mash-ups, let alone something as simple as a producer's sample... this hasn't stopped the RIAA from coming after people, and most people comply because it is less costly than litigation. It is my opinion that most creative/choppy mash-ups (a la Girl Talk) and rap sampling (like a lot of producers utilize) is valid under fair use in most cases. They are taking previous work and re-hashing it to a point that it becomes something completely new and different. When I pay for a rap track, I'm not paying for it because it sampled some obscure jazz musician from 30 years ago- they are not profiting specifically off the previous work. This can get complex when many mashups simply take vocals from one track and slap it on the backing track of another. Even though it's great, and I enjoy it, it's hard to argue that there was a huge creative process to change the work.

Bottom line for me is that I don't understand why artists don't embrace mash-up and sample work. First of all, it can improve their status and add new fans. Look at Jay-Z, who has gained much more of a broad following due to his Linkin Park vs. Jay-Z and Grey Album mashes. The Grey Album basically massively kick started Danger Mouse, and kept people interested in The Black Album after the fact. I think bringing light to an old track by sampling it can only improve the contributions towards that original artist as well.

Sorry this is so choppy, I'm having trouble typing up coherent ordered thoughts right now... too distracted.

The whole introducing new fans to their art is another thing I brought up in that discussion. Sure they sampled some soul artist from the 60s but with our internet generation if we like a sample we hear. We can research it so much quicker and find out who the original artist is. If we like what they have to offer then you get their whole discography and they gain another fan. It's like old timers want to monopolize on their music and not introduce to the younger generation because they feel like it's better than the younger generations music which doesn't make sense but that's their train of thought.

I found out the reason Dr. Dre is heading to the supreme court

it has to do with this article
http://hiphopspy.com/dr-dre-lawsuit-...t-of-michigan/

When the guy brought it up I thought he was talking about a song that was sampled not a full audio conversation that's slightly different.

They've clearly never heard J Dilla

J Dilla doesn't play on the radio.

They are comparing radio artists to artists that they know not the artists that our generation knows.

So what time period is it that they're talking about when they believe everyone had soul?

You know the typical time period.

60s and 70s.

They are trying to say only when people used analog to record and when there was more instrumentation used in songs instead of the digital format that started to pop up in the 80s.

Most rappers & music before 1998 is better then now

I strongly disagree. If you had said,"Most popular rappers & popular music before 1998 is better then now" then I could get down with that. However, I think that is very hard to just generalize whole time periods and say that one is better than the other. There were talented musicians back then, and there are talented musicians now (even though they might not be the most listened to). No time period is necessarily better (though everything is better than the 80's), they're just different.

you could basically say the same thing for any type of music.