
Amen: the world's most famous sample and the rise of the musical copyright - mgeraci
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5SaFTm2bcac
======
sixtofour
The author's own site (including the video), Nate Harrison:

<http://nkhstudio.com/>

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p_monk
The "Amen Brother" drum break is far from the most sampled or most famous drum
break in history. Check out a list of more heavily sampled breaks here:
<http://the-breaks.com/stats.php>

The above list is far from complete, obviously. If I had to put my money on
it, id say the most sampled drum break is "Impeach The President"
<http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wqbEsS5kFb8>

~~~
jamesbritt
How does this site decide what to check for the use of a sample? We're at the
point where sampling is so easy, so ubiquitous, that counting usage is
impossible without some arbitrary selection criteria (e.g. "I've heard of it",
or, "The people who compile <some chart> have heard of it").

------
parenthesis
Another ubiquitous break is the `Apache' break:

<http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WY-Z6wm6TMQ>

~~~
mambodog
Here's a whole collection of them:
<http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SLQyWoBXb2M>

On a related note, I'm always amused by Youtube video descriptions
breathlessly claiming "NO COPY RIGHT INFRINGEMENT INTENEDED".

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CrazedGeek
TV Tropes has a list of examples:
<http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/AmenBreak>

~~~
Groxx
That's a _horrible_ TV Tropes article. It reads like Wikipedia...

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jinushaun
That's why drum and bass all sounds the same to me.

Reggaeton also has a similar situation, where everyone uses the exact same
beat for the rhythm. It's called the "Dem Bow" beat.

~~~
dgallagher
Lots of older drum and bass does sound very similar. Some of the newer stuff,
like Pendulum, Sub Focus, and The Qemists, have taken the genre to the next
level. It's much more interesting and exciting than in the past.

Pendulum - <http://www.youtube.com/user/pendulumlive#p/u/9/X6BKBIOtRXw>

Sub Focus - <http://www.youtube.com/user/subfocustv#p/a/u/1/MYO_0Xfh58k>

The Qemists - <http://www.theqemists.com/youtube/video/OTGJW0-QPuw/>

~~~
yangyang
There have always been loads of sub-genres. The stuff you mention there is
very commercial.

Looking at some of my vinyl from over 10 years ago, you can compare Jonny L
<http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3qo1aoR96oI> with Goldie
<http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x8u7MNG-ug8> or PFM feat Conrad (from '94)
<http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gxcMPPoZI7s>, or Roni Size / Reprazent
<http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cwI0gbGEyuI>.

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Figs
Interesting video. I wish the narrator didn't sound so robotic though.

~~~
sixtofour
I thought that was one of the best aspects of the video.

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fedd
i found the presented samples different from the original.

it would be better if the drum lines from different songs were showed as
notes, or i can't believe that they are derived.

i think it's a stretch to make a beautiful statement, that somebody invented
some loop in 60-s. i even thought the author wants to tell that if i wrote a
little break bit myself, i used that amen sample (just _rearranged and
manipulated in any number ways_ ). but i didn't i swear. never heard of this
before today.

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quinndupont
Weirdly melodic and somber, but interesting video nonetheless.

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fuddle
Checkout the Amen Break iPhone app too:
<https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ph7HnNLKh6Q>

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bobstobener
The break started here (at :05 sec)
<http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VUImpeQG66U>

~~~
lpolovets
FYI you can link to exact to exact times in youtube videos by appending
#t=XXXmYYYs to the link (m=minutes, s=seconds). For example:

<http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VUImpeQG66U#t=0m5s>

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code_duck
Strange, I just happened upon this for the first time 3 days ago seemingly at
random.

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pash
Glossed over in the video, and in the discussion here so far, is that _even
when a court rules a derivative work to infringe a copyright_ , there's no
need to obtain a license so long as the derivative work is "creative enough"
to qualify as fair use under US copyright law (and similarly in many other
jurisdictions). So while it's true that the Sixth Circuit ruled in 2005 [1]
that unlicensed samples of any duration constitute copyright infringement,
what's left unsaid is that samples still may be used without bothering about
licenses so long as they're used as part of a sufficiently creative new song.

But what's "creative enough"? Ah, there's the rub.

The real story here is how copyright owners are able to abuse a quirk of the
law in order to strong-arm musicians into paying licensing fees, even when
everybody knows full well there's probably no legal obligation to pay them.
"Sample trolls" exist precisely because fair use is only a _defense to
litigation_ , which means it can only be invoked in the course of a lawsuit.
So there's no sure way to know whether you need to license your use of a
sample until you get sued, you claim fair use, and a judge tells you whether
you should have (past tense) bought a license or not. It's much cheaper, of
course, just to pay for a license up front and be done with it.

Unfortunately, its hard to imagine a way to resolve this conundrum if
copyright holders are still to be granted monopolies over derivative works
[2]. Consider the canonical law-school example of a derivative work, Marcel
Duchamp's goteed Mona Lisa ( _LHOOQ_ ) [3]. If Leonardo had been around to
defend his copyright, would Marcel have been able successfully to invoke the
fair-use defense? It all depends on how creative the judge thinks it is to
give old Lisa a mustache. Reasonable judges may disagree.

And then consider Andy Warhol's colorful posterized Mona Lisa silkscreens, or
Kazimir Malevich's collage-cum-painting _Composition with Mona Lisa_ , which
incorporates a small copy of Leonardo's painting. Even if you thought Marcel's
work was a blatant rip-off, you might think Andy's or Kazimir's is fair use.
(Then there's Salvador Dali's _Self Portrait as Mona Lisa_.) Point is, it's
impossible to draw a bright line on fair use, even for a particular work.

But that's not to say there's no bright line anywhere. When it comes to
recorded music, one such line is whether a work actually incorporates a copy
of the recording. If it's not a sample, but a new recording that happens to
sound the same, there's no issue. (A ruling that duplicating any portion of a
musical _composition_ constitutes infringement is nigh unimaginable.) So just
go record your own version of the beat you want to use and there's no issue.

1: See
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bridgeport_Music,_Inc._v._Dimen...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bridgeport_Music,_Inc._v._Dimension_Films)
; a good write-up on the case is at
<http://www.ivanhoffman.com/fairusemusic.html> .

2: And maybe they shouldn't be. But then the debate would probably turn back
to what constitutes a derivative work.

3: This and other riffs on the Mona Lisa are shown at
<http://www.aiwaz.net/gallery/mona-lisa-as-modern-lisa/gc234> .

By the way, for those of you who doubt the ubiquity and permutivity of the
Amen Break in today's hip-hop, here are a few tracks I picked out in a quick
once-over of two albums by The Roots. From almost-a-sample to you-gotta-be-
paying-attention, these all use the Amen Break:

\- "Rolling with Heat" (slowed down, but otherwise almost unchanged)

\- "Thought @ Work" (syncopated by dropping a beat)

\- "Duck Down!" (very slow, syncopated)

\- "I Don't Care" (syncopated)

\- "Web" (very syncopated)

\- "Boom!" (very syncopated)

If you can hear the signature "bum bum BAH, buh-DUM buh-DUM" in those last
few, you can see why people call it the most ubiquitous break. It truly is all
over the place, albeit often in heavily manipulated form.

------
J3L2404
"Overprotecting intellectual property is as harmful as underprotecting it.
Culture is impossible without a rich public domain. Nothing today, like
nothing since we tamed fire, is genuinely new. Culture like science and
technology grows by accretion. Each new creator building on the works before.
Overprotecting stifles the very forces it is supposed to nurture."

~~~
jannes
I, too, found this quote very remarkable. But it left me wondering.

Can anybody tell me where the harm in underprotecting "intellectual property"
comes from? This is an honest question. I don't understand it. Maybe it's
because I'm too young and don't depend on "intellectual property" protection
yet. I don't understand where this idea comes from that ideas can be owned by
anyone.

What if the limit of copying would become what's copyable and not what is
allowed to be copied? Wouldn't that accellerate innovation? Isn't innovation
more valuable to a society than anything else? Why do we put a tax on it?

~~~
seabee
> _Can anybody tell me where the harm in underprotecting "intellectual
> property" comes from?_

I will speculate that, without any protection, there will be significantly
less investment in intellectual property, and any projects will be smaller.
People have to eat, if you make a business of content creation you get to
spend more time doing it than if it's just people working in their spare time.

Either that, or rely on rich patrons to fund the arts. But you would never
have Hollywood with just their help. This is both a bad and a good thing, for
reasons easily imagined.

~~~
cturner
You're framing the issue by saying that creation of IP happens for the reason
of selling it later on. This is circular (IP wouldn't exist - it is a direct
product of prootection), but I'll assume you meant that there'd be less
investment in ideas in an environment without IP.

I disagree with your framing and conclusion. People work with ideas for the
purpose of solving problems or satisfying interest that they have, not just
directly commercialising the results. I write software in order that my
business can operate in its environment. Mendelssohn was inspired to write the
Scottish symphony. Free software authors have a commercial interest for their
work because it increases their chances of getting good work, and the same
applies for music teachers who compose and record, and literature professors
who write, and scientists who publish.

Creating an ecoosystem that is oriented around direct commercialisation
through the mechanism of IP cannibalises the innovation of people who solve
problems and satisfying interest because of the extra weight of restrictions
it places upon them. Many of the tunes in Handel's _Israel in Egypt_ were
directly ripped from other work he had access to. That oratorio could not have
been created in the current IP atmosphere.

Further, ideas benefit from network effects in a liberal idea space. Copyright
hampers the exchange.

You equate IP with being all protection - this is misleading. IP is just one
form of protection, one that is government backed. Consider Steam - a
mechanism that furthers commercialisation of ideas without leveraging IP. The
growth of models where businesses take responsibility for their own commercial
model is stunted by the government protectionism offered in the form of easy
copyright. This further fuels arguments like the one you've made. We look
around us and see copyright everywhere tied up in ideas, and fail to
appreciate the opportunity cost of the situation.

Without copyright you wouldn't have Hollywood, but you would have something
else.

------
thepumpkin1979
This is an interesting video, but how does this has anything to do with
Startups, Technology, Development, UX or Tech Business... This is the why I
think HN is becoming another Reddit. It's a shame...

~~~
danilocampos
Anyone who works in technology is going to have to deal with intellectual
property, as well as the laws/attitudes around the same.

Moreover, music is an essential component of culture, which means
comprehension of music, or at least its recombinant nature, may improve your
chances of creating a consumer product people love.

edit: And come on, you've been around long enough to have read the FAQ:

"On-Topic: Anything that good hackers would find interesting. _That includes
more than hacking and startups._ If you had to reduce it to a sentence, the
answer might be: anything that gratifies one's intellectual curiosity."

(my emphasis)

This passes by any measure. Being well-rounded is a good idea. I love seeing
content like this way more than the insipid, obvious, naval-gazing,
circlejerking blog nonsense that often passes for worthwhile reading just
because the author mentions "funding" or "startups" or anything else in vogue
n times before the post finishes.

