MAC Week 1-3: Classmate Comment 2

Bernadette Borders:

After watching the video Good Copy/Bad Copy, I was surprised that the two second, three note motif from Get Off Your Ass and Jam by Funkadelic written by George Clinton was a copyright infringement.  N.W.A. sampled the two second guitar motive and used it in their song One hundred miles and Running.  The three-note motif was used at a slower tempo throughout the song and was hardly audible. 

Great composers such as John Williams used motifs from other artists.  John Williams used motifs from Gustav Holst for the Star Wars movie.  Williams used Holst Mars from the Planets.  The time signature for Mars was in a 5/4 meter. The pattern you hear in Mars is Triplet-2-3-4&-5.  You can hear the triplet pattern through a whole section of the Star Wars music but John Williams used an even meter with the triplets.  In another movie by John William, Superman-The Planet Krypton, he used a motif by Richard Strauss.  In addition he used the motif from Strauss Sprach Zarathustra in the movie 2001 A Space Odyssey.  Williams used the same fifth and octave motif known also as the nature motif in his music. Williams alters it by starting on V-I-V-I and Strauss starts at I-V-I.

My question to myself is John Williams sampling from other composers an infringement of the copyright laws?  Is there enough time span for it to be a part of the public domain?  It made me think of other songs such as Super Freak by Rick James.  MC Hammer used the same song but different lyrics in his music called U Can’t Touch This.  Another is a remix by Vanilla Ice, Play that Funky Music. The original is by Wild Cherry. 

I liked both versions of the music, but copyright does not allow music to be altered without the permission of the copyright holder.

I am getting a better understanding of the importance of copyright laws after the videos.  I believe there should be some flexibility so other artist can remix the music to expand on their creativity but at the same time artists need to respect the wishes of the original creator of the music. 

Joseph Hudson:

Wow, never even thought of heard the similarities in John Williams music. Very nice catch! Also, the MC Hammer and Vanilla Ice catches were very clever as well.

Very nicely done!