Description
The Art of Sampling: The Sampling Tradition of Hip Hop/Rap Music and Copyright Law, 3rd Edition
By Amir Said
Astute, intense, and thought-provoking, The Art of Sampling is the definitive book on sampling and copyright law and one of the most striking and poignant music studies to come along in years. The all new Third Edition of The Art of Sampling adds more than 80% new content over the previous edition. Divided into five primary parts, including an in-depth History part; a robust Composition and Instruction (how-to) part; an eye-opening Criticism part; an accessible and highly comprehensive Copyright Law part; and a no-holds-barred Sample Rights vs. Sample Clearance Part, The Art of Sampling is detailed, sharply informative, and engaging.
LIMITED TO 500 UNITS
INCLUDES HAND SIGNED AND NUMBERED EXCLUSIVE HARDCOVER EDITION
- PDF edition of The Art of Sampling, 3rd Edition.
- The BeatTips Manual, 6th Edition hardcover (PDF download available instantly).
- The Art of Sampling hoodie.
Please Note – This is a Pre-Order. Items are expected to ship in 6-8 weeks.
“When I started reading The Art of Sampling I was excited to get a deeper look at the history and execution of the art form. To be clear, the book more than delivers in that regard. Said offers up a very clear trajectory of hip hop production and sampling, from Kool Herc to the current trap music trend, that will help hip hop lovers understand how their favorite genre has grown and changed over the years. But what truly blew my mind open and inspired me to write this review was the book’s closing third, when Said breaks down the current state of fair use and copyright law. On its surface it sounds like a dry topic, but Said’s writing really helped me understand just how dramatically copyright’s original purpose [has] been hijacked by big business, and how copyright and fair use is now intertwined with all of our lives.”
—Nathan Slavik
“An incisive work of scholarship, equally valuable for its insights into process, nuanced musicology and its groundbreaking legal analysis.”
—Adam Mansbach
“This book is everything a sampling beatmaker needs.”
—Marco Polo
“A book that not only proves sampling is a legitimate art form, but uses sampling as a lens to show just how distorted copyright law’s original intentions have become…a must read for anyone interested in art, business and free speech…”
—DJ Booth
What’s in The Art of Sampling, 3rd Edition?
First, you should know: This is figuratively and literally a Big Book!
The Art of Sampling, 3rd Edition clocks in at a whopping 1,600 pages. It includes 26 chapters, and comes with an extensive index that’s perfect for music makers, educators, scholars, and hip hop/rap fans alike. Given it’s sheer size, scope, and detail, The Art of Sampling, 3rd Edition is truly the “Power Broker” of sampling & copyright law.
The Art of Sampling, 3rd Edition illustrates the different artistic, legal, and social questions related to music sampling as well as the continuum that sampling serves in Western popular music. To properly engage in a discussion about sampling and copyright law, one must possess four things: 1) A knowledge of the associated histories of the hip hop/rap music tradition; 2) A solid understanding of beatmaking, the chief compositional process of hip hop/rap music; 3) A keen awareness of the history, purpose, and rules of copyright law; and 4) A proper understanding of the concepts of originality, creativity, and authorship. There’s no excuse for sample-based musicians to remain in the dark about copyright law; and there’s no excuse for copyright scholars to disregard the compositional complexities of sampling. So here’s what in The Art of Sampling, 3rd Edition:
-
The early history of hip hop/rap music: How multiple art forms coalesced into one culture; and how hip hop was built upon a “culture of sampling”
-
The history of beatmakinng, the chief compositional process of hip hop/rap music, which is inextricably linked to the art of sampling
-
The mechanics of the art sampling, which includes an comprehensive examination of how sampling is done in the hip hop/rap music tradition
-
Detailed instruction with incredible insights for sample-based beatmakers (producers) and other musicians at the beginner, intermediate, and advanced level
-
An comprehensive examination of the story of rhythm in Black music
-
The history of United States copyright law, which includes an examination of how eighteenth-century concepts of originality, creativity, and authorship helped shape American copyright law, and how it continues to influence our modern notions of creativity
-
The criticism surrounding sampling, and the role that bias and privilege plays in this area
-
The implications that sampling holds for copyright, including an in-depth and unmatched analysis of the most important copyright infringement lawsuits involving sampling.
-
An examination of sample rights vs. sample clearance.
Table of Contents:
Introduction
PART 1 – THE HISTORY OF THE FOUR ELEMENTS OF HIP HOP CULTURE, BEATMAKING, and THE ART OF SAMPLING
Chapter 1 – A CULTURE OF SAMPLING: An Overview of the Four Elements of Hip Hop
Chapter 2 – THE ART OF BEATMAKING: The Birth and Rise of the Hip Hop/Rap Beatmaking Tradition: Eight Periods of Distinct Development
PART 2 – COMPOSITION AND INSTRUCTION AESTHETICS, COMPOSITIONAL ANALYSIS, PERFORMANCE, AND PHILOSOPHY OF THE ART OF SAMPLING
Chapter 3 – Grandmaster Flash Battled Mozart At The Fever and Mozart Got Burned: Hip Hop/Rap Music Theory and Beatmaking, The Chief Compositional Process of Hip Hop/Rap Music
Chapter 4 – Hook a Beat Up and Convert it Into Hip Hop Form: Composition, Programming, and Arrangement — Getting The Ingredients And Putting Them All Together
Chapter 5 – An Overview of The Art of Sampling
Chapter 6 – The Compositional Elements of Sampling: The Sampling Equation, and Composition and Arrangement in the Art of Sampling
Chapter 7 – Drums and Sampling
Chapter 8 – The Story of Rhythm in Black Music: The Origins of Rhythm in American Popular Music; Key Characteristics and Nuances of Rhythm and Groove; Rhythmic Feels; The Indelible Influence of James Brown on the Use of Rhythm in Popular Music; and Four Critical Factors That Impact Rhythm in Hip Hop/Rap Music
Chapter 9 – The Missing Context of The Click-and-Clock Rhythmic Feel
Chapter 10 – Sampling Techniques: Extended Sampling Techniques, Notes, Tips, and Analysis
PART 3 – THE CRITICISM SURROUNDING SAMPLING
Chapter 11 – The Function and Value of The Art of Sampling: Cultural Histories, Misconceptions, and Musical Hierarchies, Orientations, and Tastes That Influence Our Opinions of Sampling; and Why Sampling is a “Useful Art”
Chapter 12 – What David Sanjek’s essay “Don’t Have to DJ No More’: Sampling and The ‘Autonomous’ Creator” Reveals About Scholarship and Criticism Surrounding the Art of Sampling Musicianship vs. Technology, Preserving An Accurate Account of Hip Hop/Rap Music’s Role In the Development of Sampling, and the Importance of Understanding Copyright Law
PART 4 COPYRIGHT LAW
Chapter 13 – An Overview of Copyright Law Historical Clarity on Copyright Law and Policy in the United States
Chapter 14 – Demystifying Copyright Infringement: Substantial Similarity and the Complexity of Proving Infringement
Chapter 15 – The Unequal Protection of Black American Music Artists and How Copyright Law, Racial Discrimination, and Inequality Has Historically Disadvantaged Black Music Artists In America
Chapter 16 – Originality, Creativity and Authorship
Chapter 17 – Fair Use, Part 1: The Function of Fair Use
Chapter 18 – Fair Use, Part 2: Determining Fair Use: A Detailed Examination of The Four Factors of The Fair Use Test and How The Courts Typically Apply Them
Chapter 19 – Fair Use, Part 3: Fair Use, The Supreme Court, and The Music Industry What the United States Supreme Court Says About Fair Use and How the Music Industry Prefers to View Fair Use
Chapter 20 – Bridgeport
Chapter 21 – Post-Bridgeport, Part 1
Chapter 22 – Post-Bridgeport, Part 2
Part 5 – THE SAMPLE RIGHTS MANIFESTO
Chapter 23 – The Sample Clearance System
Chapter 24 – How to Fix Sample Clearance, Part 1
Chapter 25 – How to Fix Sample Clearance, Part 2
Chapter 26 – Sample Rights vs. Sample Clearance
Afterword
Appendix
Index
ABOUT SAMPLING AS AN ART FORM
The art of sampling is one of the most innovative art forms and music processes to emerge in the late-twentieth century. And it stands today as a celebrated cultural activity within the hip hop/rap music tradition and beyond. At the same time, sampling has become one of the most controversial and polarizing topics in pop culture. The debate about sampling and copyright law has been brewing for 40 years; and now this debate has become more intense than ever. The Art of Sampling, 3rd Edition by Amir Said examines this complex and controversial art form and music process and presents a study that illuminates its history, creative mechanics, and philosophy. Likewise, The Art of Sampling, 3rd Edition also explores the implications that sampling holds for copyright law, and it sheds much needed light on modern ideas of originality, creativity, and authorship.
In terms of sampling as an art form and music process, commentary — written mostly by academics and journalists beholden to a music hierarchy before hip hop/rap music emerged — has largely been about what sampling isn’t, i.e. that sampling really isn’t music making at all, that it’s not a “legitimate” music process, nor is it an art form. The irony of such commentary is that it overlooks the interconnectivity of all popular recorded music and what sampling actually does. Sampling, especially as it is best popularized and observed in the hip hop/rap music tradition, affirms the interconnectivity between all music forms. And sampling uses this interconnectivity to create a new music form that is at once every bit as new as it is old.
Further this point, the sampling tradition of hip hop/rap music popularized a music form that didn’t merely echo music of bygone eras (an activity at play in all music forms one way or the other). On the contrary, the art of sampling stitches fragments of actual music (often from the remote past) into the aesthetic itself. Much in the same way that writers borrow words and phrases from the works of other writers, and stitch them together in the process of creating new literary works.
ABOUT COPYRIGHT LAW AND SAMPLE RIGHTS VS. SAMPLE CLEARANCE: WHAT YOU SHOULD KNOW
(Source: Copyright Gov https://www.copyright.gov/what-is-copyright/)
What would you do if someone told you that you couldn’t write a song, a poem, a movie script, or even a grocery list without permission? And what would you do if someone told you that you couldn’t create art, that you couldn’t even engage with an art form, unless you first had a license to do so?
There are some who are working hard to get the public to believe that sampling is “illegal”. And their agenda isn’t really about upholding copyright law at all, but rather making the public believe every sample must be cleared, and that sampling, the actual activity itself, is “illegal” without a license. You may have already seen articles and headlines with language like, the “legal way” to sample or “legalize sampling.” If there is no pushback agains this sort of thing, what will happen next? Will we begin to see headlines like, “legalize writing“?
There’s a stark difference between between promoting the idea that there are times when something requires a license and pushing the false notion that something always requires a license, even the mere activity of borrowing itself. What’s critical to know is that copyright law proscribes certain limitations and exceptions, which allows for permissive borrowing to take place. A healthy understanding of copyright law means recognizing these limitations and exceptions. That’s why The Art of Sampling, 3rd Edition is designed to help the public better understand copyright law and its true objectives.
Publisher: Superchamp Books Hardcover: 1,600 Pages Dimensions: 6 x 9
ISBN: 978-0-9997306-8-3
