Monthly Archives: November 2014

Copyright, licensing, ownership rights, over music nowadays is a huge debate and the difference between what is right and wrong is grey and fuzzy. Once one downloads a song of the internet, or purchases a CD, they believe that the song(s) are theirs to use however they would like because they purchased the piece. However buying a song only gives you the freedom to listen to the music legally and not to distribute it, use it in projects, or to alter it in any way unless the music is royalty free, under the creative commons license, or you have explicit permission to use the song from the artist/label company. With the internet and so many songs and information being available with the click of a button it is hard to make the distinction between what is right and wrong.

Is making a remix illegal? Is using someones work in your own wrong? At the end of the day you didn’t create the original songs however you did dedicate time and effort to create a completely unique song using snip-its from others. For artists navigating the copyright laws is very tricky and I myself am unsure of it re-mixing should be allowed under copyright laws or restricted because I can understand and make cases for both sides and point of views. On one hand the remix artist is creating a unique piece, however to create that piece they are using someones hard work to their own benefit. With the loss of music sales due to illegal downloading I understand why artists are upset with their work  being used without permission or compensation.

But should the art of remixing end? No! A remix or mash-up is art in it’s own way and millions of people enjoy remixed versions of songs, sometimes even more than the original piece itself.  As long as the original artist is getting recognition and people can still make out what the original song is then I don’t believe the artists should be upset because having their work reproduced will only give them more recognition and publicity.

I never thought about the process of creating a remix or mash-up so it was very eye opening and interesting to see how everything comes together and all the work behind it. I think what the artists do is very cool and unique. It takes a lot of skill to be able to pull apart multiple songs and then rearrange them in such a way that they fit together once again but in a completely new and beautiful way.

I love the idea that “culture builds on the past” which to me means that nothing is really new but we are just taking old ideas and changing them to fit our own modern needs. Everything starts from somewhere and then it builds up throughout time eventually changing to something completely different however the base and foundation of that thing is something that was already there. With this mentality one can argue that everything in the world is copyrighted and nothing is ever truly our own nor unique.

Something else that stands out is the idea that once copyright was used to encourage people to create and that everything was in the public domain. That idea is so hard to imagine because now a days there are so many barriers which signify that creativity is not entourage but looked down upon since the fees and laws are so vast.

I never thought about if the song “Happy Birthday” was copyrighted! I never considered it to be illegal to use in a public place because it seems like something that would have no copyright claim or at least be in the public domain. That is crazy to think that every time such a common song and something that is a tradition to sing at birthdays would have such strings attached to it.

http://bfpa.dreamhosters.com/nma2050/angelika/

Russolo’s presented a very unique view in The Art of Noise. Russolo discussed the past, present, and future of music and noise. Can noise be music? Can noise be beautiful? Can noise be interesting? When I hear and think about the word noise, I think of something annoying, loud, and an inconvenience such as construction work, a baby crying, or a cat screeching. To think about noise as something special and worthy of our ears is a unique concept but it does make sense because essentially all music is noise, all sound is noise, it is us the people who put meaning to the noise, and it is us who decide what is beautiful, and it is us who distinguish what to our ears is good noise and bad noise.

One point that Russolo made that I thought really supported his claims was that the sounds we can produce from instruments is limited, however the sounds we can make using everything around us is limitless and that way we can create any composition of sound “noise” that we can imagine without any restraints.

The piece I picked from Ubu Web Sound is by Giovanni Fontana and immediately I was intrigued by this weird composition because it immediately reminded me of something I might hear in a Harry Potter movie or any movie about magic and the dark arts. The whole piece has an eerie feel to it, it is composed of someone muttering in a different language, which his voice echoing, and being supported by voices yelling in the distance, and with  repetitive whispering. It sounds like he is casting a spell/curse and it is quite intriguing and fun to listen to. I can make out the sound of water dripping, bells chiming, and what I believe as something to be bubbling, or boiling. All the sounds would be considered as noise on there own, but together this composition comes together nicely.

http://www.ubu.com/sound/fontana.html