Something strange

This person is making a lot of videos composing accompaniment for drum solo videos by some well known players, “adding music”, as he says. The first few minutes explain this was done, then there's an extended drum solo by Simon Phillips, with his added accompaniment:

That's highly strange and ethically suspect on a number of levels: 

1. The solo was music in the first place, calling it a drum solo “with music” puts me in a bad mood about it from the get go. 

2. Did he get permission to do it? From the people who own the videos, or the drummers involved? Did they consent to having their playing used this way? There's no indication of that. Why not call them up and ask permission, and then put a big thank you in the video description? 

3. Are they getting paid for it? Well... very likely they are. At least the entity that was getting paid for the original video probably is. YouTube is good about detecting copyright violations and paying the infringed party. So if you make a cat video with Coltrane's Interstellar Space on the soundtrack, or if I sample somebody's recording to make a practice loop, the rights holder there will probably get paid, you and I would not get paid.   

4. Copyright is weirdly inverted. He's mimicking something uncopyrighted (the musical content of the drum solo) to make something copyrighted. Basically the melodic content was created by the drummer, and he seized ownership of it by assigning pitches to it.

5. He's involuntarily reassigning these players' performances to be accompaniment for his music, but those drummers would not necessarily make the same choices interpreting that piece if it had been written first— as in normal playing situations. Making choices in how we play an arrangement is a major aspect of a drummer's voice, and of how you judge someone's performance. While it is clear that the drum solo came first, by creating this context around it he's putting words in the drummer's mouth: here is how you will handle this situation. 

7. Usually you don't steal somebody's performance in its entirety. Even making a fair use legal argument, that's not fair use. 

8. Mickey Mousing is a term from film scoring, where the music exactly mimics the action on screen, and it is considered to be very bad writing. Here the added orchestration is flashy but primitive, Mickey Mousing the drum solo exactly in unison with it— drummer hits a high note / orchestra plays a high note with him, drummer plays a low note, orchestra plays a low note. There's no interaction. It does open up a bit on the groove portions of the solo, but it's 95% simple mimicry. 

Here, here's a quick lesson in doing things other than that in creating an accompaniment, and in altering a melodic line generally. 

9. If he wants to create a derivative work that is largely a note-for-note copy of someone else's improvised performance, he can do that, but his piece should be able to stand on its own. There's nothing here anyone would want to listen to without the original drumming performance. 

My complaints in rapid fire. Maybe none of it really matters. For people trying to make it in social media, whatever gets me attention = good. I expect that's the position of the person who made the videos, and maybe even for some of the drummers involved, if they were informed of it. Music has been so devalued in the last 25 years that, for many people, its major (or only) purpose may be as a device for grabbing social media attention. 

There are artistic/critical theories supporting this kind of thing— e.g. “appropriation”, sampling in hip hop— but which do not make it legal or ethical, when done non-consensually. Other artists' performances are not your found objects. You have to clear it, there has to be consent.  

Whether or not you personally agree with any part of this, there are legal issues you have to be aware of, and answer for when engaging in this kind of work, if you're doing music professionally, or want to be doing it professionally. It's going to matter to some people, possibly to the point of making your work unpresentable publicly. 

Your big paycheck is just around the corner.

In Salon today is a conversation with Marc Ribot about the future of copyright, the Internet, and the state of the music business in general. What started the conversation was some statements by producer Steve Albini, and Ribot's open letter in response to him:

Dear Steve Albini: 

I’m writing as a recording artist, musician, and activist with c3, the Content Creators Coalition, a working-artist-run organization dedicated to economic justice in the digital domain.  

In a recent Billboard article you referred to copyright as an “expired concept”. 

You further stated that:  “… the intellectual construct of copyright and intellectual property ownership is not realistic…That old copyright model of the person who wrote something down owns it and anyone else who wants to use it or see it has to pay him, I think that model has expired.” 

If you truly believe that “Ideas, once expressed, become part of the common mentality. And music, once expressed, becomes part of the common environment…”, are you willing to sign a Creative Commons license placing your entire catalogue in the public domain? 

Or are you just another lousy hypocrite shilling for Google and other huge tech corporations who have made billions in ad-based profits while using our work, often without paying us or asking our permission, as click bait to increase their advertising rates? 

Working artists and musicians, at least those of us who can’t afford to make another record unless the last one paid its production costs, await your response. 

Sincerely, Marc Ribot

In perhaps the least-surprising outcome of the century, Albini has declined to move his catalog over to Creative Commons.

Here's the rabble-rousing conclusion of the Salon conversation with Ribot; do go read the whole thing.

What showed you just how bad the current situation was? 

Well, first of all, like everybody, in the beginning I thought the digital revolution was going to be the best thing since bread was sliced. I remember, my manager at the time was always telling me, “Oh, no, this is going to be fantastic, don’t worry about a thing.” 

And then, I started seeing something. I started seeing the record deals that were being offered cut in half. Then cut by two thirds. I started seeing the checks that were coming in cut in half, cut by two thirds. And everybody saying, “Don’t worry, you’re going to get checks from new digital sources, and they’re going to be much better, they’re going to make up for that.” And so we waited, and waited, and waited, and then I got my check, and it was for six dollars. I think that my first SoundExchange check or something like that. 

And I thought, this can’t be right, I must have done something wrong. I must have failed to register. And then I found out, no, we’ve done everything right, we’ve registered, and meanwhile — and I started talking to other musicians, they were having the same experience — but meanwhile, the hype was going on: “No, this is great! This is fantastic!” 

And, when people started to speak out about it, started to ask questions, “Well, how come we’re not getting paid, and how can we get paid if these people on the pirate sites are posting our stuff for free download?” Anyways, I saw that there was a lot of hype going around. I saw that there was a taboo against us speaking up about what was really going on. And, you know, I’ve always thought rock and roll is about farting in church, you know. 

So, I started to say what I wasn’t supposed to say. And that’s when I started to get involved. I started to see more and more hype, more and more bullshit. I started to see half of the people who were defending what was going on, saying, “No, utopia is just around the corner,” and “Oh, your big economic — your big paycheck is just around the corner!” And the other half were saying, “You don’t have the right to get paid at all! You know, we’re saying copyright is bad…”

Also see this VOQOTD by Ribot. Visit his site to read about the Content Creators Coalition, and follow them on Facebook, Twitter, etc.