5 ms·

Danger Mouse, who is half of pop group Gnarls Barkley Jesus, this guy's whole life is one big ripoff.

anigbrowl 17y ago
While I'm not into the 'mixologist = artist' thing myself, in an age of abundant content it's a valid choice. If you're writing a consumer application and there are great libraries available for much of the functionality, you'd probably use them, right? Is it so bad to do that with music, especially when ~80% of pop music is just a thinly-disguised rearrangement of the same 3 chords?
- zandorg 17y ago
  Tons of songs are just: Play a bass note, play it an octave higher, lower, higher, with a 4/4 beat. Then there's a note, play a note higher, one note higher, back to the first note. For instance, The Music Sounds Better With You by Stardust, Drop the Pressure by Mylo [Edit addition] I should also point out that in a big way, modern music is about the clarity of the production, and not necessarily the melody or lyrics.]
  - patio11 17y ago
    modern music is about the clarity of the production It is also, in a big way, a function of the tribal effect of being part of a mass-media phenomenon, something which the labels are all-but-essential for. Disney could make any of a hundred thousand girls into the next Britney Spears. (Typically folks recoil in horror at the notion that their enjoyment of music would be affected by this. What can I say... branding works and is not evil?)
    - jamesbritt 17y ago
      "Typically folks recoil in horror at the notion that their enjoyment of music would be affected by this." Any links to support the claims that branding works, and that modern music is a function of the tribal effect of being part of a mass-media phenomenon?
      - patio11 17y ago
        If you want academic work, look at anything by Merry White about Japanese children -- she covers the phenomenon of how Japanese record companies do it, and why, in detail. (Short version: the fantasy that you are just like this pop star and that they are part of your life sells records.) If you want more informal analysis, look at anything in the press about Disney Music in the last 10+ years. It is crazy how much of American pop has come out of The Mouse -- not because they have superior access to talented teenagers but because they know what to do to craft, develop, launch and manage a brand which just happens to center around an actual human being. (They're seriously ambivalent about that, actually -- if they could do it without the human they would.) http://www.time.com/time/arts/article/0,8599,1564394,00.html http://www.time.com/time/arts/article/0,8599,1564394,00.html I also love the Onion's take on it. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YZgXg_7kVI8&feature=player_embedded http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YZgXg_7kVI8&feature=playe...
        jamesbritt 17y ago
        Thanks for the links. I've gotten the impression that creating hits is a complete black art, whihc is one reason companies are so keen on blatant copies and minor variations. It was also my understanding that most acts fails, even those pushed by major media; people are fickle about what's trend-worthy.
- mynameishere 17y ago
  in an age of abundant content it's a valid choice. Whatever. I remember hearing the "grey album" and have still not recovered from the aesthetic disgust. It's just absolutely pathetic that people steal, steal, steal, and then add, as their contribution, a load of their own shit--only to be praised for it! And called "artists"! And base careers off of it! Legal matters aside, it should just be utterly banished from decent society. just a thinly-disguised rearrangement of the same 3 chords? Yeah, well, you might as well say, "Geez, music just keeps using the same 12 notes over and over, therefore it's okay to take exact recordings of other people's work, decimate it, and sell it as your own." Dishonor should not be rewarded. Neither should dishonesty.
  - anigbrowl 17y ago
    I upvoted you because I think you raise a valid point, but I still disagree. Personally, I know where you're coming from; I make electronic music as a hobby, but I can't bring myself to use samples because then I feel like it's not me any more. However, I don't see it as theft, any more than I see a production of a Shakespeare play as theft. Stealing is when you're dishonest about the source of your raw material and represent it as your own creation. An interesting juxtaposition of known material is a commentary in itself, regardless of whether you like it; and the guy's career is as a producer, not as a musician or composer. For that matter, both Mozart and Bach were regarded by some as mere hacks, appropriating or accepting tunes from others and applying mere technique to arrive at elaborate (but not fundamentally complex) arrangements. I'm unsure why you seem so personally offended by this, to the point of finding it indecent and dishonorable. I've been blatantly ripped off by a (book) publisher in the past, and it made me mad, but not to the extent of rejecting an entire branch of creative technique. Can you explain, without the invective?
    - mynameishere 17y ago
      I guess there's a distinction between remaking music and copying it (bit-for-bit) that people aren't seeing. Or, they see, and don't care. Now, if you make the 2000th cover of "Yesterday" and sell it, that's one thing. If you take the original 2 minute recording of "Yesterday", add yourself belching on top of it, and sell it as your "own", then you're a thief and an artistic wrecker. I think this comes down to opinion. The principle is firm, but the disgust is sometimes lacking. When this little gem was released, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zJePNFkkvFk http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zJePNFkkvFk ...the outrage was vicious and near-universal. DM is doing the exact same thing, and I would argue, to a much, much greater extent, because he isn't contributing, you know, actual music, like the above recording.
- gaius 17y ago
  If you're writing a consumer application and there are great libraries available for much of the functionality, you'd probably use them, right? If the license on them permitted it, yes. If FOSS advocates want respect for the GPL, then you've got to respect other peoples licenses too.
teej 17y ago
To be fair, Danger Mouse is a lot more than just Gnarls Barkley. He's a competent producer with credits on a dozen albums in the past 6 years. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Danger_Mouse_(DJ) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Danger_Mouse_(DJ)
aswanson 17y ago
We are all ripoff artists, myname. Every sound, thought, experience is nothing more than a rearrangement of what already is. There is nothing new under the sun.
- pj 17y ago
  This is a really lame idea and easy to disprove. Go back in time long enough and there were /no/ ideas, therefore, there had to be at least one original idea. If there had to be at least one original idea, there can be many original ideas. There are lots of new things under the sun. Edit: I apologize for the lame part. It's not really lame, that was an emotional response.
  - aswanson 17y ago
    I didn't say ideas, I was referring to the rearrangement of matter and energy. Music and sounds and just rearrangements of basic "atoms" that have been around forever. So its not all that lame.
    - pj 17y ago
      Even if you want to go that route, I would still argue that due to the vast number of combinations of atoms in 3D space, there are certainly some that have never before existed in history popping up still today. Lots of the periodic table was created by Humans, which didn't exist at some point in history: http://www.ptable.com/ http://www.ptable.com/ Sure, they could exist in a black hole or whatever, but really what matters is whether or not the material is new to consciousness and exists in memory and many new thoughts/arragements of atoms/etc are exactly that -- new to consciousness.
  - aswanson 17y ago
    No harm, no foul. What I wrote was pretty off the cuff and thus I can't vigorously defend it. For the most part, you are correct though. There are new things springing into creation all the time, for some definition of new.
- Alterlife 17y ago
dsil 17y ago
That's like saying this website is one big ripoff. Mixing and matching content from other people to create something new is totally valid.

While I'm not into the 'mixologist = artist' thing myself, in an age of abundant content it's a valid choice. If you're writing a consumer application and there are great libraries available for much of the functionality, you'd probably use them, right? Is it so bad to do that with music, especially when ~80% of pop music is just a thinly-disguised rearrangement of the same 3 chords?

zandorg 17y ago
Tons of songs are just: Play a bass note, play it an octave higher, lower, higher, with a 4/4 beat. Then there's a note, play a note higher, one note higher, back to the first note. For instance, The Music Sounds Better With You by Stardust, Drop the Pressure by Mylo [Edit addition] I should also point out that in a big way, modern music is about the clarity of the production, and not necessarily the melody or lyrics.]
- patio11 17y ago
  modern music is about the clarity of the production It is also, in a big way, a function of the tribal effect of being part of a mass-media phenomenon, something which the labels are all-but-essential for. Disney could make any of a hundred thousand girls into the next Britney Spears. (Typically folks recoil in horror at the notion that their enjoyment of music would be affected by this. What can I say... branding works and is not evil?)
  - jamesbritt 17y ago
    "Typically folks recoil in horror at the notion that their enjoyment of music would be affected by this." Any links to support the claims that branding works, and that modern music is a function of the tribal effect of being part of a mass-media phenomenon?
    - patio11 17y ago
      If you want academic work, look at anything by Merry White about Japanese children -- she covers the phenomenon of how Japanese record companies do it, and why, in detail. (Short version: the fantasy that you are just like this pop star and that they are part of your life sells records.) If you want more informal analysis, look at anything in the press about Disney Music in the last 10+ years. It is crazy how much of American pop has come out of The Mouse -- not because they have superior access to talented teenagers but because they know what to do to craft, develop, launch and manage a brand which just happens to center around an actual human being. (They're seriously ambivalent about that, actually -- if they could do it without the human they would.) http://www.time.com/time/arts/article/0,8599,1564394,00.html http://www.time.com/time/arts/article/0,8599,1564394,00.html I also love the Onion's take on it. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YZgXg_7kVI8&feature=player_embedded http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YZgXg_7kVI8&feature=playe...
      - jamesbritt 17y ago
        Thanks for the links. I've gotten the impression that creating hits is a complete black art, whihc is one reason companies are so keen on blatant copies and minor variations. It was also my understanding that most acts fails, even those pushed by major media; people are fickle about what's trend-worthy.
mynameishere 17y ago
in an age of abundant content it's a valid choice. Whatever. I remember hearing the "grey album" and have still not recovered from the aesthetic disgust. It's just absolutely pathetic that people steal, steal, steal, and then add, as their contribution, a load of their own shit--only to be praised for it! And called "artists"! And base careers off of it! Legal matters aside, it should just be utterly banished from decent society. just a thinly-disguised rearrangement of the same 3 chords? Yeah, well, you might as well say, "Geez, music just keeps using the same 12 notes over and over, therefore it's okay to take exact recordings of other people's work, decimate it, and sell it as your own." Dishonor should not be rewarded. Neither should dishonesty.
- anigbrowl 17y ago
  I upvoted you because I think you raise a valid point, but I still disagree. Personally, I know where you're coming from; I make electronic music as a hobby, but I can't bring myself to use samples because then I feel like it's not me any more. However, I don't see it as theft, any more than I see a production of a Shakespeare play as theft. Stealing is when you're dishonest about the source of your raw material and represent it as your own creation. An interesting juxtaposition of known material is a commentary in itself, regardless of whether you like it; and the guy's career is as a producer, not as a musician or composer. For that matter, both Mozart and Bach were regarded by some as mere hacks, appropriating or accepting tunes from others and applying mere technique to arrive at elaborate (but not fundamentally complex) arrangements. I'm unsure why you seem so personally offended by this, to the point of finding it indecent and dishonorable. I've been blatantly ripped off by a (book) publisher in the past, and it made me mad, but not to the extent of rejecting an entire branch of creative technique. Can you explain, without the invective?
  - mynameishere 17y ago
    I guess there's a distinction between remaking music and copying it (bit-for-bit) that people aren't seeing. Or, they see, and don't care. Now, if you make the 2000th cover of "Yesterday" and sell it, that's one thing. If you take the original 2 minute recording of "Yesterday", add yourself belching on top of it, and sell it as your "own", then you're a thief and an artistic wrecker. I think this comes down to opinion. The principle is firm, but the disgust is sometimes lacking. When this little gem was released, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zJePNFkkvFk http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zJePNFkkvFk ...the outrage was vicious and near-universal. DM is doing the exact same thing, and I would argue, to a much, much greater extent, because he isn't contributing, you know, actual music, like the above recording.
gaius 17y ago
If you're writing a consumer application and there are great libraries available for much of the functionality, you'd probably use them, right? If the license on them permitted it, yes. If FOSS advocates want respect for the GPL, then you've got to respect other peoples licenses too.

teej 17y ago

To be fair, Danger Mouse is a lot more than just Gnarls Barkley. He's a competent producer with credits on a dozen albums in the past 6 years. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Danger_Mouse_(DJ) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Danger_Mouse_(DJ)

aswanson 17y ago

We are all ripoff artists, myname. Every sound, thought, experience is nothing more than a rearrangement of what already is. There is nothing new under the sun.

pj 17y ago
This is a really lame idea and easy to disprove. Go back in time long enough and there were /no/ ideas, therefore, there had to be at least one original idea. If there had to be at least one original idea, there can be many original ideas. There are lots of new things under the sun. Edit: I apologize for the lame part. It's not really lame, that was an emotional response.
- aswanson 17y ago
  I didn't say ideas, I was referring to the rearrangement of matter and energy. Music and sounds and just rearrangements of basic "atoms" that have been around forever. So its not all that lame.
  - pj 17y ago
    Even if you want to go that route, I would still argue that due to the vast number of combinations of atoms in 3D space, there are certainly some that have never before existed in history popping up still today. Lots of the periodic table was created by Humans, which didn't exist at some point in history: http://www.ptable.com/ http://www.ptable.com/ Sure, they could exist in a black hole or whatever, but really what matters is whether or not the material is new to consciousness and exists in memory and many new thoughts/arragements of atoms/etc are exactly that -- new to consciousness.
- aswanson 17y ago
  No harm, no foul. What I wrote was pretty off the cuff and thus I can't vigorously defend it. For the most part, you are correct though. There are new things springing into creation all the time, for some definition of new.
Alterlife 17y ago

dsil 17y ago

That's like saying this website is one big ripoff. Mixing and matching content from other people to create something new is totally valid.