Oh my god this is a big issue for me. The first time I noticed the importance of it was when Chris McCormack took one of our tracks for his label Embryo about 3-4 years ago. We'd sampled a Regis track - we thought that changing the start point of the sample was enough and built the track around it. We didn't realise it sounded identical, to an outsider (we'd been working on the track for 2 weeks and started to see thing in it that weren't!!!!)... Unfortunately, we realised the error of our ways when Chris phoned us up and said that he'd just had an irate Regis on the phone saying we'd completely ripped off his track. 'How the hell did he get to hear it???', I said. 'We'll he's only the head of our distributor Integrale', Chris replied. Oooooooops.....



We made another track for Chris (I think it actually turned out better) and to this day I don't think Regis would have nice things to say about us, but hey, you live and learn. Now I'm sooooo careful. I think once you've had an experience like that you KNOW never to keep any loops in a track that people could say you put in blatently from someone elses of the same style that you're making.



To be honest, we've used quite a few vocal samples from accapelas of records and films on quite a few tracks, and I don't think for acid techno and trance there's anything wrong with that because underground labels don't care about copyright issues in underground techno or trance and it can make your track stand out if used cleverly (we don't do it for real techno though cause I reckon nicked vocal samples can easily make the tracks sound cheap).





Mind you, we did a trance sounding track for bonzai about 3 years ago and the sample couldn't get cleared. So we had to do the whole track again and Chrissi had to SING!!!! hahahaha.... that was fun but it took ages to get the mix sounding the same. :=]



My advice is if you're worried about a sample do two mixes of the track. And hey, NEVER sample a Regis record... hahahahahhahaha....
















Edited by: markeg3000 at: 10/25/02 1246 am