Comments on: Mashups, Girl Talk and Me

By: Bring da Noize!

Bring da Noize! — Thu, 21 Aug 2008 07:34:23 +0000

Not to rehash, but to get the last word in…Carri you’re logic is flawed. So you’re saying that it becomes music (ergo art) because someone was PAID for the sample? Reread my post. Music is sounds, something that your hear live or comes out of the speakers. While the process of making it may be of importance to you, most listening couldn’t give 2-shits less. It lives or dies on the music itself. So argue that you don’t like the music, but don’t say it’s not music because he didn’t use a canned “professional” sample CD. Sure your stuff sounds great btw…..

By: social cache: we deal in uncommon cents. » Blog Archive » RIAA Gets It Wrong, Garfield Gets It Right

Wed, 20 Aug 2008 17:48:54 +0000

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By: Carri Bella

Carri Bella — Wed, 13 Aug 2008 00:46:36 +0000

Bring da Noize, you couldn’t be more wrong. On my CD, my producer/friend (who is a digital wizard) has already used PROFESSIONAL samples of some instruments to fill out some of the arrangements. The key here is that this is EXACTLY what those samples were created for; the people who originally played on them were PAID for their work, as was the company that publishes them. And none of those samples are pre-fab songs; they’re instrument tones (or hits) that a REAL musician or composer can use to CREATE a song.

I’m not anti-drum machine. I’m anti-ripping-people-off.

By: Bring da Noize!

Bring da Noize! — Tue, 12 Aug 2008 07:56:23 +0000

Carri Bella, you sound like the kind of person who stands outside Amoeba records handing out the Drum Machines Have No Soul stickers to anybody who’ll take them (not many these days). I suppose you’d also stare at a Pollock and simple see paint splatters. After all, a TRUE artist should know how to work his paint and brushes. Maybe Warhol should be relegated back to rip-off con-man as well, since all he did was appropriate other peoples images. Then again just shove Paul’s Boutique back in the racks since it’s not worth a listen due to all the samples they used (uncleared as well. at the time it was “legal”). You know, music is just something that comes out of the fucking speakers man. Don’t get all wrapped up in where it came from, how it was made, and if the person making it knew what they were doing. If it moves you, it’s music. If it doesn’t then move on and don’t judge or criticism. Clearly Girl Talk has struck a chord with plenty of people…and Foster, I don’t think a video editor would claim to be an athlete. That’s a pretty stupid analogy, work on it and come back tomorrow with a better one.

By: Joe Wallace

Joe Wallace — Tue, 12 Aug 2008 04:48:17 +0000

@Foster–they said the same thing about Marcel Duchamp’s Fountain…but it’s still doing the job today. I think the fact that we’re even having this debate is a critical part of what GirlTalk is doing regardless of whether he meant to do it or not.

Who is the musician in a situation where you have a composer with a score and an orchestra performing that score? Aren’t the members of the orchestra merely aping what’s been put down by somebody else–music made to order? Is this REALLY music or is it just work-for-hire like a bunch of interior decorators?

Or is the whole argument completely moot? There are sounds coming out and there are molecules being vibrated at specific frequencies. At the end of the day, we’re back to Duchamp and John Cage and the real measure of all this should be whether, as Frank Zappa once said, you think it’s “bitchin” or ir “sucks”.

By: Foster

Foster — Mon, 11 Aug 2008 15:16:49 +0000

A person with a bunch of talent in video editing could put together the best, most exciting sporting event by combining clips from different sporting events.

They may be good at editing, but they are no athlete.

If you can actually play the music, you are a musician.

By: Joe Wallace

Joe Wallace — Mon, 11 Aug 2008 13:17:26 +0000

GirlTalk’s days are numbered and here’s why: there’s already a legal precedent set on all this via the Negativland U2 single. Island sued them into oblivion and the financial trouble it brought the band for lasted years afterwards. It’s not that GT has no artistic merit—but it will only take one artist out of those 300 samples to ruin him. Being sued, regardless of the outcome, is an expensive and time wasting process. Add to that the fact that the labels that may wind up suing GT have big legal departments and a seeming endless supply of money (for now, heh).

There’s only one way GT can avoid being successfully sued–by not selling his work.

As for the debate over whether GirlTalk is a musician or not, maybe he should change his name to R. Mutt and go into the toilet business….then people would get it.

By: j ragel

j ragel — Mon, 11 Aug 2008 05:20:59 +0000

I say Greg is a really damn good producer with a good ear. I think that is more rare a talent than being a ‘musician’ (someone who plays an ‘instrument’). Of course, I’d argue his laptop becomes a live instrument the second he starts engaging an audience with it, which technically makes him a musician. You can then argue he didn’t ‘write’ his own parts but I could then point out that many so called ‘musicians’ don’t write their own parts either. Sid Vicious? There’s little point arguing anymore—software is an instrument—something that makes sound is an instrument—it’s all moot now as the human brain is the real instrument anyways (and always was all along). At least that’s what I say…

Fun topic.

By: Dave Allen

Dave Allen — Mon, 11 Aug 2008 04:17:27 +0000

Perhaps we should all revisit Byrne and Eno’s ‘My Life In The Bush Of Ghosts‘ album, probably the world’s first sample and mashup recording from 1981. No computers, just field recordings, found sounds, loops and edits of African and Arabian musicians mashed on to white boy rhythms back in a studio in New York.

Jon Pareles now the New York Times Chief Music Critic wrote when he was at Rolling Stone -

“What’s the difference between using evangelists’ rhetoric as lyrics (for “Once in a Lifetime” on Talking Heads’ Remain in Light) and using the voice of New Orleans preacher Reverend Paul Morton in “Help Me Somebody”? Plenty. “Once in a Lifetime” is obviously Byrne’s creation, complete on its own terms. “Help Me Somebody” is a falsified ritual, with its development truncated and its rhythm deformed. A psuedo-document, it teases us by being “real.” Even more annoying is “The Jezebel Spirit,” which utilizes a recorded exorcism. Byrne and Eno latch onto the rhythm of the exorcist’s dry laugh for the backup, but they fade out before we find out what happened to the possessed woman—which would have been a lot more interesting than the chattery band track. Blasphemy is beside the point: Byrne and Eno have trivialized the event.”

Pareles accused Byrne and Eno of cultural imperialism. Blasphemy and trivialization back in 1981 now revisited by Girl Tal in 2008. Nothing’s changed except the technology.