Hacker News Reader

Comment by DougN7 | Hacker News Reader

I'm the first to admit I'm musically illierate but how likely is it that no one has never played a (simple?) six second beat like that before? I don't know what drum music looks like on paper but six seconds can't have so much information content that it hasn't been hit upon by others in the past, can it?

View on HN

People are not copying the composed phrase, they are using the performance directly. The original audio recording is sampled, processed and replayed as a component of a new song.

It's a very punchy, very energetic fill or break that's just proven extremely versatile and great sounding, especially for drum and bass. It just sounds good! There are some other very famous breaks too, the Funky Drummer for example.

The words "I" "have" "a" "dream" take less than six seconds to say, so surely that information content has been hit upon by others in the past... As someone else has posted, there's a great documentary about the whole sampling/resampling scene that explains a bit about the attractions of this particular sonic segment : Suffice to say, there's a lot more to it than just a 1-2-3-4 pattern.

Funny you should mention that, the mlk family retain copyright of the recording, after a lawsuit with CBS, of that speech which is why you don't hear it in full.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/I_Have_a_Dream

Though I suspect you know that already.

It is kind of absurd. Music is intrinsically about reuse, recycling, and reinvention [1]. Sampling is really just a continuation of that.

[1] Axis of Awesome, The Four Chord Song, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5pidokakU4I

it's not just about the notes that are being played, but also the specific sound of that recording. AFAIK no one has been able to reproduce that exact sound , with the exact timing. That beat launched an entire kind of music (90's UK hardcore techno, then jungle/drum'n'bass)

Recordings are copyrighted.

I don't think anyone's suggesting that the Winstons own the pattern, just that they deserve more compensation for this particular rendering of it.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com