Samples

Recently, every song I listen to ends up being a sample of another. 

I remember hearing this unreleased song (should've been my first clue - artists loveeee to write songs in violation of copyright and accidentally 'leak' them), and showing it to my mother to get her opinion. She started singing along, to my shock. 

It was a Billy Joel sample. Makes sense, I guess - I feel like everything in music links back to either Billy Joel or James Brown. Or Britney Spears. 

The other day I had a dream where I heard a song which doesn't exist in the real world. In the dream, I thought to myself  'Wow - this sounds just like 'Sobs Quietly' by Mom Jeans...'

And it did! My brain had taken the lyrics and run them through whatever paraphrasing system my mind uses. Lyrics like "things haven't worked out the way that I planned" became "events haven't transpired as I had hoped", or something stupid just like that.

That means the production value of my dreams must be high enough to not only play a song exactly as it sounds in real life, but also to edit it to a degree to which it could be construed as a ripoff. It's quite an impressively useless talent I have, clearly, of accurately plagarising songs. 

It sucks when that happens on accident, though. 

Reminds me of this story about this farmer guy in Amish country. He and his wife, after spending most the day plowing their fields, milking the cows and staring at a wall, would round it off with a romantic night of mathematics. Each day, they investigated Trigonometry - at a time where Trigonometry was mostly nonexistent. 

(I always wonder if I was born back in the old days, would I be able to invent all those stupid mental ideas that sound obvious to us now, but Plato gets oh so much credit for? I reckon I could've made democracy. Unless it didn't benefit me, in which case I might have kept the idea to myself.)

Back to the farmer - after years of work (with triangles? Not really sure how that works. Did he just draw a ton and think "wow... very shapelike...") - he finally discovered that one side squared, plus another side squared, added up the the square of the final side. 

Huzzah! He was thrilled at his invention and ran out to town to tell the masses of his incredible discovery. 

Slight problem, though. He'd spent so long in Amish country without a... (actually, at this time I suppose everyone was Amish... not many TVs to go around when Pythagoras was around, so let's say books?) that the farmer hadn't heard that his mathematical truth had already been discovered.

How much would that suck? All you do is churn butter and harvest parsnips, day in and day out, hoping one day for your chance of escape using just your brilliant mind. But then, some other dude had already figured it out - and even though it was just as hard for you to discover it, it isn't worth anything because it's already known. 

That's a sad story. Life really is hard for Amish geniuses.

How is this relevant to music? I'm not really sure either. Let me scroll up. 

Oh right. How much would it suck to think of an incredible new song, publish it online awaiting applause and accolades, only to realise your song sounds accidentally identical to another?

I'd be furious. But I guess it becomes more and more inevitable as time proceeds: maybe samples are the way forward. 

Eventually, after enough time, every combination of keys and progressions will have been used. There will come a day when every single topic has been written about to death, and we've essentially reached the boundaries of what the human mind is capable of reflecting on. 

But we'll keep finding funny ways to mash things together, like the artists do now with samples. Creativity doesn't always mean making something new - in fact, most of the time it's the complete opposite. It's about taking something pre-established, and adapting it to a new purpose. 

So no, samples aren't always about laziness, or accidental copying. They can be an intentional choice, a seconding of a musical idea, with adaptations to more accurately reflect the songwriter's goals. And (with correct credit), I think they can be a pretty good way to get musicians to collaborate, even across space and time.

That said, if you ever hear me play a song and think "hey, I've definitely heard this before...": don't tell me. Or my friends. And least of all, the copyright lawyers.