Sampling works from different artist is not a foreign concept in today’s music, especially in the hip-hop industry. It is not uncommon for artists to take even classical music and incorporate it into the melodies of their songs. This is exactly what rapper Nasir Jones, Nas, did in 2003. He released the song “I Can,” the first single from his album, God’s Son, an inspirational song written to inspire inner-city youth. Its lyrics are positive as it encourages the youth to stay drug free and pursue their dreams. The lyrics also detail various events in African history. Jones samples “Bagatelle No. 25 in A minor,” or “Für Elise” as it’s more commonly known, by Ludwig van Beethoven. It’s one of Beethoven most recognizable pieces and one of his most popular works. “Für Elise” is referred to as a bagatelle because it carries a light, positive character that also has a mellow tone. The word bagatelle is actually defined as “a short …show more content…
unpretentious instrumental composition." A positive, uplifting song like Nas’ “I Can” fits perfectly with Beethoven’s “Bagatelle No. 25”. Ludwig van Beethoven was born sometime around December 17th, 1770 (the date of his baptism) in Bonn, Germany and died on March 26th, 1827 in Vienna, Austria. He was a native of Germany and ended up becoming an important figure for the transition between the Classical and Romantic eras in Western music; he remains one of the most influential composers of all time. Although Beethoven has possibly thousands of works, his best-known compositions include 9 symphonies, 5 concertos for piano, 32 piano sonatas, and 16 string quartets. Beethoven’s “Bagatelle No. 25” was quietly composed in 1810 when Beethoven was practically deaf. It is comprised of five parts. The first part is a sweet melody played above arpeggiated chords which is the main theme of the piece. It then switches to a major scale before switching back to the main theme of piece. The song transitions to a long, and wild movement before finishing on the main theme. This type of composition where a piece contains more than three parts first appeared in music sometime around 1400 with the beginning of the Renaissance. “Für Elise” was written at the transition of the Classical period and the Romantic period of music so it contains concepts that are attributed to both eras. It is a very homophonic style piece with symmetry and form plus it contains contrast of mood between movements. All of these are elements that were developed during the Classical period. The piece also has strophic form which means repeats the same music for each stanza or verse. Nasir bin Olu Dara Jones or Nas as he’s better known, was born on September 14th, 1973 in the Crown Heights neighborhood of Brooklyn, New York. He grew up in neighboring Queens, New York in the neighborhood of Queensbridge. Nas is often named as one of the top rappers in the industry today. MTV ranked him at number 5 on their list of The Greatest MCs of All Time. In 2012, The Source ranked him No. 2 on their list of the Top 50 Lyricists of All Time; in 2013, Nas was ranked fourth on MTV's "Hottest MCs in the Game" list; and in 2014, About.com ranked him No. 1 on their list of the 50 Greatest MC's of All Time. He has six number 1 albums on the Billboard 200, tying him with Eminem and Kanye West for 2nd all-time among rappers. Nas’s “I Can” track was written at the request of his mother, who asked that he write something inspirational for children. The song has been just as easily recognizable during the Twenty-First Century as the Nineteenth Century bagatelle that it samples. Nas is a very talented musician and has a great understanding of concepts that were common before the Twentieth Century and is very good at applying those concepts to his own music. The concept of strophic form which appears in Beethoven’s “Bagatelle No. 25” is also used in “I Can.” The lines, “I know I can, Be what I wanna be, If I work hard at it, I'll be where I wanna be,” and “I know I can, I know I can, Be what I wanna be, be what I wanna be, If I work hard at it, I'll be where I wanna be, I'll be where I wanna be,” repeat throughout the song just like the sweet melody played and arpeggiated chords are repeated throughout Beethoven’s piece. The “call and response” chorus of “I Can” resembles the musical structure of the bagatelle which is A B A C A, where 'A' is the first theme. Nas might have decided to sample Beethoven’s “Bagatelle No. 25” because of its light, uplifting tone and the positive, mellow character of bagatelles in general. After choosing to sample the song, the rapper probably decided to structure the lyrics to be very similar to the way Beethoven composed his piece. The differences between the two songs are actually quite obvious.
“Für Elise” uses the concept of “poco moto,” which means that the piece invokes the sensation of moving by changing the tempo in different movements. Meanwhile, “I Can,” because it uses only one portion of “Für Elise,” does not change tempo during the duration of the song. Obviously, Nas’ song is a vocal performance and while Beethoven’s is strictly instrumental. Because of the fact that these two songs were written 200 years apart from each other, Nas is able to utilize an instrument that Beethoven doesn’t have to his advantage. That instrument is the Roland TR-808 Rhythm Composer also known simply as the 808. The 808, even though it doesn’t sound like an actual drum kit, is what gives most hip-hop songs the rhythm and beat that makes it’s listeners want to bob their head and actually enjoy the song. Beethoven’s piece was written originally for the piano and did not have any percussion elements. You appreciate the smooth melodies and soothing tone of a Beethoven
piece. Beethoven’s “Für Elise” seemed like the perfect song for Nas to sample for his inspirational masterpiece. The light, positive character of the Nineteenth Century piece plays as a perfect background for a song that is intended to uplift the youth and tell them that they can be anything that they want to be. Nas’ decision to use Beethoven’s “Bagatelle No. 25” ended up being a smart and profitable one. The catchy, uplifting chorus cause the song to be played at graduations across the country even to this day and propelled Nas’ album God’s Son to double-platinum. The two songs ended up being a perfect fit.
In the excerpt from Tomson Highway’s Kiss of the Fur Queen, a hunter, Abraham Okimasis, pushes through an intense race with his dogs in the snow. Literary devices, such as imagery and details, reveal the internal and external struggles of Okimasis’ life during the race. His fight to the finish gradually creates suspense as he continues to scramble with the idea losing, while he also battles with nature, self, and beast.
COURSEWORK FOR CONTRACT LAW (MUSIC*) *On what basis does the inclusion of samples of a recording made by *Pink Floyd constitute an infringement of copyright? In civil law regarding copyright, there are two types of infringement; primary and secondary. Primary is concerned with the unauthorised use of copyrighted works and secondary would involve the dealing or making commercial use of such infringing copies. In the music industry, an infringement of copyright often consists of an existing piece of music being used by an artist without permission from the person or company who own the rights to the original music or recorded sound. This is exactly what has happened with Alexei Duff. He has used two samples from two Pink Floyd tracks and did not get permission from the appropriate copyright owners. If found guilty in court, this would be regarded as primary infringement. There is a lot of confusion about sampling in the music industry. Several think that if only a small fraction of a piece of music is sampled, whether it is a few notes or a few seconds, then it does not need to be cleared for use however this is not the case. The 1988 Copyright Act says that for an infringement of copyright to have taken place, the sample used must be of a substantial part. This means that it is the quality rather than the quantity of the sample used which determines if an infringement of copyright has occurred. In the case of Alexie Duff, one of his tracks uses a ten second sample extracted from the song “Dark side of the moon” and the sample is looped throughout the track entire. This means that the sample substantially contributes to the overall piece of music created by the artist and as the sample has not been cleared, an infringement of ...
Arnold Schoenberg "broke down the traditional tonal system and invented a new way of organizing music" with the concepts of "twelve-tone music," "Emancipation of the dissonance" and "equal rights of pitches." He persisted his sense of tonality through his life. Pierrot Lunaire consists of musical settings of 21 poems about the character and set for voice, flute, clarinet, cello, violin, and piano. He took "atonality to never before heard places." Igor Stravinsky was a primary tonal composer with an anti-romantic attitude who sought to extend musical ambiguity as far as possible, while remaining within the tonal system. He was an objectivist who treated everything in composition including emotion as object. His work The Rite of Spring has highly
The movie “Save The Last Dance” directed by Thomas Carter, is a story about a white female named Sara, who moved to south Chicago to live with her dad after her mom had died in a tragic car accident during Sara’s audition for Julliard, school of dance. Sara doesn’t get accepted into Julliard and starts school in south Chicago which is located on the rougher side of town. At this new school, Sara meets Chenille and Chenille’s brother Derek, who are both African-American. Chenille and Derek take Sara to a club which is completely out of her element because this club centers their dancing around hip hop and Sara only has experience in ballet and contemporary dance. Derek agrees to give Sara lessons on how to dance hip-hop. While teaching her
The purpose of this study is determine why and how African American music that’s is so deeply rooted into the community is being culturally appropriated. This is a topic that has been the on the foreground of race for years. Activists and celebrities like Adrienne Keene, DeRay McKesson, Azealia Banks, and Jesse Williams helped bring the issue into the national attention. Most of the world or better yet the appropriators have very little knowledge of what the word actually means. In order to understand the problem we must first understand the word Culture and Appropriation. Culture being defined as the beliefs, ideas, traditions, speech, and material objects associated with a particular group of people. Appropriation the action of taking something
Hip hop has so many subgenres that preach different messages to the listeners. Artists are inspired to sing according to what they experienced when growing up, or what they thought should be done to address a particular issue.
People are not usually informed about what they can and cannot do with an Artists music, even Artists themselves. Fair use is usually determined by the purpose and nature of product along with the parts of the song they are using in comparison to the work itself (Drummond). There are three types of fair use: nominative, comparative advertising, and parody. Nominative fair use is the ability to use a trademark to compare or help describe another product. Comparative Advertising states that the product or service being compare is the same or at least similar to the other product or service. Lastly Parodies are funny exaggerations of entertainment that has already been established. This fair use type seems to be the most controversial (Celedonia and Doyle)
Rap artists are still faced with numerous lawsuits despite taking care to avoid infringement. Jay-Z’s ‘Big Pimpin’ was “accused of using the flute melody from Baligh Hamdi’s 1957 Egyptian love ballad, ‘Khosara Khosara’” (Smith, 2015, para. 2). However, Jay-Z claimed to have successfully gone through all the proper procedures and licensing to be able to use the sample (Campbell, 2015, para. 6). Hamdi’s nephew, Osama Ahmed Fahmy, argued that Jay-Z should have “asked the family’s permission too, and that they purposefully avoided doing so because they knew it would [not] be granted due to Big Pimpin’s ‘vulgar’ and ‘risqué’ lyrics” (Smith, 2015, para. 5). The judge had ruled that the lyrics are irrelevant to the case and that by specifically using
The style of cool Jazz and typical Baroque music have many similar musical traits. The two songs that are going to be looked at here are “So What” by Miles Davis and Bach’s “Brandenburg concerto No. 5.”
Many of the people involved with creating rap music were trained in maintaining new technologies for people with money to afford them. These new technologies were put to use in hip hop culture as primary tools for the creation of rap music that included original black culture, “This advanced technology has not been straightforwardly adopted; it has been significantly revised in ways that are in keeping with long-standing black cultural priorities, particularly regarding approaches to sound organization” (Rose, 63). Digital samplers played a key role in the development of rap music, but they often gained legal attention. DJ’s would often mix and match different pieces of music together to create a rhythm, but this often violated copyright laws and posed questioning to the legal boundaries of using musical property and phrases. These samplers helped formulate beats of songs that were hybrids from multiple sources of music. The rhythms and sounds that were created from this new sampling technology were consistent with the historic narratives of Afro-diasporic
Native Americans have an interesting backstory and culture. No matter what the Caucasians did to them, they never lost their unique culture. There were many different organisms and objects that are included in that culture. A great amount of them centered around nature and the Earth. Three major influences on the Native American culture would be the plants, animals, and the spirits they worshipped.
One crucial aspect to have a full analysis in my paper is to understand how the sound and use of sampling, has changed over the years. In her book “Sampling the 1970s in Hip-hop” Joanna Demers writes about how sampling has been a way to preserve black identity in hip-hop. By using samples from past African American music, producers can make a lineage between hip-hop and its predecessors. This book details sampling before things such as strict copyright law became commonplace, so there will be a unique perspective to the music industry then. By using this book my paper can better understand where we were, and how the music changed to get to today.
Often in hip-hop/rap and R&B, there's this cute thing called sampling that happens, where portions of a song by someone else are mixed in. When this is done, the song and its original writers typically have to be cited for legality's sake (e.g., "This song contains replayed elements from 'You Tried It' by Tamar Braxton"). Those few of us who still buy physical copies
It begins with a free form Jazz piece with sparse instrumentation, mainly supported by a saxophone. Along side the light musical accompaniment is very prominent sound effect which helps the view connect the first act of this piece the jail house. As the very dark lighting scene is lit there are a few jail house round lights which are a soft orange which I believe tie into the theme of fire and passion which I'll dive into more as we walk through the performance. The sound of prison ankle chains is played as the lights focus on the five people walking towards the microphone, the first of which being of course Kendrick Lamar. One thing I found incredibly interesting as a sound person was the fact that a wireless microphone was placed on a microphone stand which is obviously quite redundant. I quickly realised this could very well be for artist purposes as Kendrick wraps his cuffed has over the mic stand which could be symbolic of the enslavement of the music industry to the artist. A discussion he has openly had with the community before. Kendrick hesitantly begins to rap the song “Blacker The Berry” It is important to note the musical accompaniment is not the original music that supports this work but a complete rework to build tension and anticipation for what is about to happen. The band begins to link up and there a strong stabs by the guitars,
To represent the wild, I chose a sheet of music because both depend on basic patterns to create the complexity present in both the wild and music. For instance, in music, a major scale always follows a pattern of “whole-whole-half-whole-whole-whole-half” in terms of distance from one note to the next. Even though a variety of major scales exist and have distinct differences in sound, each major scale follows the same pattern, from the basic C major scale to the more challenging F-sharp major scale. The same applies in the wild between the varying types of organisms. Despite the fact that they may not look, act, or live in the same habitat, all follows the same life cycle. All organisms are born and will die, no matter if they are a dandelion,