Stories

A Word of Warning

The information provided on this website is just that: information. It is not legal advice.

If you have questions about the confluence of sampling and the law with regards to your own work, contact an attorney with experience in the area.

 

Sampling Law Stories: Past and Present

This is the story of a typical modern sampler, One Player Game. Also check the story of one of sampling's pioneers Dickie Goodman .

picThe number of Russian folk songs that are instantly hummable to the average American is, to be kind, low. Korobeiniki is one of the few that makes the cut, at least in a certain segment of society. Though the song’s title, which is translated as “the Peddlers,” may be completely unfamiliar to Americans who whiled away their formative years in the 1980s and early 1990s, the melody is not. To these people, the sound of Korobeiniki does not make them think of peddlers or even Russia. It makes them think of Tetris. Although versions of the game can now be played on computers, calculators, and cell phones, Tetris first saw wide distribution in 1989 when it was bundled with Nintendo’s extraordinarily popular Gameboy portable video game system. Along with its combination of simplicity and exasperation, one of the keys to Tetris’s addictive properties was its music, specifically Korobeiniki. To many people, music on a Gameboy starts and ends with the Russian folk song. Sam Rixey is not one of those people.

By day, Sam Rixey is a twenty-eight year old “Instructional Assistant / Computer Support Specialist” at Delaware County Community College in Media, Pennsylvania. By night Rixey operates as “One Player Game,” a prolific electronic musician based out of nearby Lansdowne, just outside of Philadelphia. As One Player Game, Rixey writes, records, and produces video game-inspired songs using a vintage Nintendo Gameboy and a computer. The results are a mixed bag of instrumental music ranging from Gameboy-driven soundscapes like “Over the Swingset”  to his most highly acclaimed work, “Big Top,” a Danny Elfmanesque collage of pots, pans, and chimes along with an undeniably catchy melody. From kitchenware to kids’ video games, One Player Game utilizes every sonic tool at his disposal. Just as important as any synthesizer or object capable of clanging, however, is a process. The process of sampling.

picListen carefully to One Player Game’s work and you will hear samples. Samplesof other musicians. Samples ofmachines. Samples of  beats. Although the samples are not crucial to his music, Sam Rixey uses them with meticulous enthusiasm. An analysis of just one song is illustrative. The song “Head Cold,” which can be found on One Player Game’s website, is a collage of rhythms and tones that can only be described as “digital.” Sounding like a cross between the music blasting out of speakers at a rave and a calculator, “Head Cold” boasts samples of pre-recorded music, television, and video games.

The song starts with a flurry of electronic noises, but one second in there is the warped sound of a piano chord. That sound, which repeats throughout most of the song, is actually a sample from a Glenn Miller number called “The Spirit is Willing.” Rixey got the song from the soundtrack of the movie “Sun Valley Serenade,” originally released in 1941. At the thirty-five second mark of “Head Cold,” Rixey brings in another sample, the sound of gunfire from the classic Atari video game, “Centipede.” A far cry from its original purpose, the sound is used as a substitute for a snare drum in the song’s rhythm section. The next two samples that appear in “Head Case” also originated from video games. Fifty-nine seconds into the song there is another sound from Centipede, while two minutes and twenty-seven seconds later there is a robot voice that Rixey modulated by raising the pitch by a major fifth. As to its origin, he says, “I am about eighty-five percent certain it is from the arcade game “Astro Blaster.” Finally, the song wraps up with a spoken word sample from the Incredible Hulk episode “Blind Alley.”
 
A variety of issues arise from the use of samples in just the one song. First, the use of the Glenn Miller tune is different from the use of, say, a Michael Jackson hit because it was recorded before 1972 and thus is not covered by a sound recording copyright. Second, the use of video games as a sampling source is interesting, because there does not seem to be a true “performer.” Computer musicians (like Rixey) and programmers simply give the video game machines instructions of what music to play when, much like a composer telling an orchestra what to play through sheet music. The performers are really the game machine’s processors and sound chips. Another interesting issue that arises from One Player Game’s “Head Cold” regards his comment that he is “eighty-five percent certain” that the source of a sample is a particular video game. What this shows is that there is a secondary market for samples. That is, the sampler does not necessarily need to have or even be aware of an original work in order to sample it. In this case, Rixey claims that the sample was found trawling the internet for sound clips.

“The use of samples and electronic music are inseparable.” - One Player Game

These three issues – the date of origin of the sampled work, the type of work sampled, and a lack of knowledge of a sample’s source, all add complexity to questions regarding the legality of the sampling use, even for an expert. For a hobbyist musician like Sam Rixey, these questions border on unanswerable. When interviewed, it was clear that Rixey does not know what the law is. He thinks that as long as his work is not-for-profit, the sampling use cannot be unlawful even though he distributes it freely on both his website and the popular myspace.com social networking site. When told that the use of a sample can violate a copyright, even when the resulting work does not result in any profit, Rixey shrugs. He does not think that this revelation will make him change how he makes music. “The use of samples and electronic music are inseparable.”

Sam Rixey is a typical musician. The kind of musician most people don’t know exists, let alone samples. While making music is not the primary source of his funds, it is certainly the primary destination of his free time. He uses whatever he has on hand to create music. For him, that means a Gameboy, household items, second-hand musical instruments, and, most importantly, a computer. The hardware he uses is inexpensive and the software he uses is free. And yet after nearly two decades and hundreds of songs, he does not follow, or even understand, the laws that govern his creations. The following section of this paper will propose a framework for understanding why performers like One Player Game continue to sample in the post-Bridgeport era.