Whoa, Im shocked. So much for that.

Some very bold statements there. However, quite frankly I don't believe it- especially the stuff you were saying about how a sampled AND modified snare hit can be watermarked.

A snare hit is a fraction of a second. Now once you've did some minor modifications to that hit (such as adding compression) the wave shape changes radically- they don't even need to be major changes in order to make massive changes to the visual appearance of the wave!

Now, in my own experience I have in the past tried to tweak samples in Soundforge and it wouldn't let me. Perhaps this was to do with some kind of watermark process- I don't know. However, this problem is easily solved when you de-check the "save non-audio" data function that's on screen every time you save a file.

If this watermarking thing even does exist then how come we've not heard of it? I mean, there are some pretty serious musicians at this forum and in the 2 years or so that I've been coming here I've never heard anyone mention it. Is it some kind of top secret thing that they only tell you about if you sell a million records or something?

Secondly, can you quote us an example of one single court case where these technologies were used to catch someone out?

Listen... for all I know this watermark technique COULD be possible (perhaps if you added a mega high frequency through all your music, like a dog whistle or something), but it's not a mainstream technology we're talking about here.

I've never heard of ANYONE being sued for stealing someone else's snare hit and I'm 100% sure that I never will hear of such a thing.

All the examples I've ever heard of where people have been sued for stealing samples have been REALLY blatant, like when Vanilla Ice's "Ice Ice Baby" stole from a Queen song, for example.

The bottom line is this...
If you can give me one single example in the history of music where a person has been sued for stealing a snare sample then I'll eat my hat!

Some very bold statements there. However, quite frankly I don't believe it- especially the stuff you were saying about how a sampled AND modified snare hit can be watermarked.

A snare hit is a fraction of a second. Now once you've did some minor modifications to that hit (such as adding compression) the wave shape changes radically- they don't even need to be major changes in order to make massive changes to the visual appearance of the wave!

Now, in my own experience I have in the past tried to tweak samples in Soundforge and it wouldn't let me. Perhaps this was to do with some kind of watermark process- I don't know. However, this problem is easily solved when you de-check the "save non-audio" data function that's on screen every time you save a file.

If this watermarking thing even does exist then how come we've not heard of it? I mean, there are some pretty serious musicians at this forum and in the 2 years or so that I've been coming here I've never heard anyone mention it. Is it some kind of top secret thing that they only tell you about if you sell a million records or something?

Secondly, can you quote us an example of one single court case where these technologies were used to catch someone out?

Listen... for all I know this watermark technique COULD be possible (perhaps if you added a mega high frequency through all your music, like a dog whistle or something), but it's not a mainstream technology we're talking about here.

I've never heard of ANYONE being sued for stealing someone else's snare hit and I'm 100% sure that I never will hear of such a thing.

All the examples I've ever heard of where people have been sued for stealing samples have been REALLY blatant, like when Vanilla Ice's "Ice Ice Baby" stole from a Queen song, for example.

The bottom line is this...
If you can give me one single example in the history of music where a person has been sued for stealing a snare sample then I'll eat my hat!

Equalizer:
In my opinion, you're wrong and you're right.

Watermarking has been around for awhile now. I have no idea whether the manipulations you describe would make it go away, but, mathematically, it's possible to introduce stuff to a waveform that isn't "non-audio data" but that still marks it, and is in a detectible form even after major changes. (Of course, I speak in the abstract - I have no idea what the practice is.)

Having said that - you're absolutely correct about the state of the law. It's patently silly to assume that it is worth the time of some lawyer to go after something that small. If copyright violation is proven, they can make you pull that part of the track that violates it. But they wouldn't bother unless they could go the second step and establish grounds for financial compensation - that is, that the new cut owed a measurable amount of its profitability to the fact that one could recognize the commercial value of the original ripped sample within it. Even if such a suit were to happen, a single snare hit's contribution to a song's commercial success wouldn't produce a large enough settlement to make it interesting to the legal eagles.

The music industry is a place where practice and law collide. With the ease and thoroughness of electronic processing, it is almost impossible to define what a copyrightable artistic creation is, exactly, and what constitutes new sound. As a result, what splits the hairs is money, and it's got to be a lot before the lawyer's will even return folks' calls.

Thanks for all of the replies to this thread thus far. See, I've always been against sampling, in respect to sampling other people's work (for myself anyway). It's just not my thing. The way a lot of samplists would take hits (meaning bass drum, snare drum, etc) from different records and construct a drum kit would fascinate me, but I have no interest in doing that.

I'm all for using kits in Sample Libraries, ROM Synths, etc. Interesting as the tangent on copyrighting was, it's somewhat irrelavant to me becuase I'm not really interested in sampling off already-made music.

I take all of us back to original questions. What module, synth, or sample library have you encountered some of the best drum sounds. I'm not talking about V-Drum type (read: expensive) modules, but the usual synth or Alesis DM5, Roland R8 type of ROMs.

The best I've enountered again was the Roland SRX-01 Dynamic Drums board. I really wish that a library with kits like these were available. These are the best sounding, most useful drum sounds I have ever come across. It's just too bad that my Roland XP60 can't except those newer SRX cards.

The Infamous Epu.

Hey man- this topic's evolved into an uncontrolable monster. It's too late to go back now! Infact, the way things are going, I wouldn't be surprized if in a couple of weeks time you saw this topic sprouting legs and running down the street consuming aLL IN ITS DEADLY PATH OF DEATH AND DESTRUCTION!!!!!!!!!!


*whispers*
The horror.... the horror...

Oh, sure, get us back on task! And after we was havin' so much fun!

Surprisingly, my little Roland JV has done quite well. I purchased the entry-level TD-6 on eBay, and re-sold it two weeks later. It wasn't good enough to bother, and the MIDI implementation was impossible.

"I've never heard of ANYONE being sued for stealing someone else's snare hit and I'm 100% sure that I never will hear of such a thing."

Keep this in mind. Alot of these legal situations go on behind closed doors, usually producer to producer, producer to publisher, etc. The artist is usually not even involved. Because once the publisher "publishes" the music, it's their responsibility. That's why you will NEVER see things like "Puff Daddy" sued for illegal use of snare sample, etc. Keep in mind both the publisher and copyright holder of the sample WANT to keep making sales! The only reason you would get sued (like another user stated) is if there was some serious money involved, OR they just want your particular song out of the way.

"All the examples I've ever heard of where people have been sued for stealing samples have been REALLY blatant, like when Vanilla Ice's "Ice Ice Baby" stole from a Queen song, for example."

I've read stories where the publishers of Queen's music knew about this WAY ahead of time and decided to wait on it to see if the song went anywhere, it did and the rest is marketing history! I remember getting interested in the song "only" because "someone" ripped Queen off!

"The bottom line is this...
If you can give me one single example in the history of music where a person has been sued for stealing a snare sample then I'll eat my hat!"

It happens all the time, you're just not going to hear about it in a public forum. Sometimes it's nothing more than, hey you owe me a 1 cent for every copy sold. Call up some local studios, talk to producers, publishers, I see no reason why they wouldn't tell you anything different.

I probably worded some of this stuff more "heavy" than it should have been. Bottom line, go rip, sample, anyone and everything. Just don't pretend it's your original work. Credit the original artist/copyright holder, and uh...wait for a phone call.

I stay away from the sampling records thing.

As for sounds, what I tend to do mostly to keep the volume down , is find a kit I like, either mine or a friends, take it to a decent room and record them and me playing hits at various velocities as well as fills and patterns. I just run to DAT cutting down down some of the Studio cost.

Bring the DAT or CD home and either chop it up in a Sampler or on my PC.

To get it right it really takes about 6 months minimum to get one kit library organized and programmed correctly for a wide range of uses.
It also gives you a custom library. Ok it is not the cheapest way but it works and doesn't need to be done in a super high cost studio to be effective for home studio projects.

Nunsie- you're a nice guy and I love you madly, but quite frankly you're talking shit.

YOu say and I quote,
"It happens all the time (people getting sued for stealing snare hits), you're just not going to hear about it in a public forum."

What a load of bull!!!!

If that's true then how do YOU know about it?

It sounds to me like somebody's half-read an article in some synth magazine or something and NOW they're trying to dazzle/freak everyone out with their amazing inside knowledge of the music business.