I "borrowed" the quote in my title from Howard Dietz, a New York/Broadway lyricist.
In this week’s presentation, Dr. Hlynka discussed issues regarding plagiarism, and how this is not a problem unique to the twenty-first century. He cited the melody of the Isreali song Hatikvah, and how it parallels many other songs such as “”Baa Baa Black sheep”, the ABC song, and others.
Indeed, music has always been a grey area regarding plagiarism. There are a finite number of chord progressions that can be used with the common chromatic scale used in most popular music. Many songs share the same chord structure such as the I-IV-V progression in the Beatles “Twist and Shout” and Ritchie Valens’ “La Bamba.” Borrowing musical ideas is part of the evolution of music. Elvis Presley borrowed heavily from American southern blues music, which borrowed heavily from gospel/spiritual music, which borrowed from earlier Christian hymns.
But… emerging technologies have continually added new layers to the debate of what is plagiarism, and what is simply borrowing a musical idea. In the 1980’s, sampling technology allowed artists to take audio snippets from one song, to incorporate into a new song. The hip hop group the Beastie Boys created the backbeats to their rap album “Licensed to Ill” from audio samples taken from a variety of different albums. This sampling technique had led to an entirely new genre of “scratch artists” or “turntable-ists”. These musicians take standard LP’s or CD’s, record a sample from one song, mix it with a drum beat of another song, and “scratch” in different audio effects to create an entirely new song. The vinyl record players and analog crossfaders used in the 1980’s has been replaced with all-digital equipment that utilize MP3 music files, and digital audio effects. And instead of the artist going to used-record stores to find vinyl records to “scratch”, artists can now shop on iTunes or other online sources of music.
This art form raises new issues of musical plagiarism, because it is not just a musical idea that is being imitated; the scratch artist uses the actual singing, drum beat, or guitar-riff that was played and recorded earlier by another artist. This borrowing of other musicians’ recordings is getting more prevalent, as the hardware once needed for this (sampling recorders, cross faders, vinyl record players) is now replaced with inexpensive computer software.
The art form has evolved from audio sampling to video sampling, with video “mash-ups” now a popular genre of video on Youtube. NHL hockey, realizing the popularity of this activity, decided to allow fans to make their own mashup NHL videos by providing video clips and an online forum for fans to share their favourite mashups: http://mashup.projects.fm/
All of this blurs the line of what is genuine art and what is plagiarism. It also blurs the line of copyright. If I take a copyrighted song and resample it, change its tempo, add other sounds, and alter it so much that it no longer resembles the original song, is it plagiarism? Or is this musical process similar to classical composers from generations ago, who “sampled” other composers’ ideas in their melodies to create “new” music.
Plagiarism is not a new idea. But technology is making it much easier to do. And, when it is so commonly practiced, is plagiarism becoming a new form of art?
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Great examples,Roland, these add to the examples Denis provided. Digital technology has made this area even muddier with mashups, remixing and so on. This is why some people have so many problems with copyright, what can we use? How much can be used? how can it be used/reused?Lots of questions and gray areas. A useful web site for some info about copyright, for those interested is the MB Ed wiki: http://lwictcopyright.wikispaces.com/
ReplyDeleteCopyright. I don't know much here, but I'll begin by asking, "Is plagiarism a violation of copyright?" Yes, but under the Cancopy (Access Copyright) license, we are allowed 10% or a chapter of a work, so long as the chapter is <= 20%. I like the idea of being able to create my own textbook by copying bits & pieces of existing ones, at no charge. Sounds like a musical mash-up with the sampling, no? See the Access Copyright page http://www.accesscopyright.ca/Default.aspx?id=101 for further information.
ReplyDeleteIntellectual property, what an issue. Think back to Newton & Leibniz. Both discovered calculus at about the same time. Who had the idea first? Leibniz is said to have published first. Newton is said to have made notations about calculus in 1666. This was nine years ahead of Leibniz. Bottom line, whose intellectual property was it? If one doesn't act to publish, it's his/her loss, though it may have been presenced/revealed first to the one who didn't move to publish. Seems like an injustice. Also, have you ever hear of VisiCalc, the first spreadsheet program? It wasn't patented, so all successors (SuperCalc, MultiPlan, Lotus 123), had to pay no royalties. My source for Leibniz, Newton & VisiCalc... Wikipedia, of course.
Thanks for the music angle, Roland!
I hate this last few years of music. People are taking good songs and making them terrible. It is neat that a young kid can do this, but they are mixing songs without any regard to copyright. Just look at how many You Tube videos are removed each day due to copyright. People are making nice original videos but they are inserting their favorite songs in them.
ReplyDelete