Music sampling in Gylias

Sampling — the reuse and manipulation of sound recordings in new recordings — is widespread and highly influential in Gylian music. The practice is a cornerstone of Gylias' remix culture and certain musical genres, and is regulated by the Law on Cultural Protection of 1992.

History

1960s

Significant predecessors to sampling include musique concrète, futurist music, and the experiments of the Studio of Musical Phonology of Radio Alba. The latter two arrived in Gylias through Megelan.

Sampling first developed in the 1960s. Gylmuse created a series of tape replay keyboards, including the Chamberlin (1961), Mellotron (1963), Optigan (1971), and Birotron (1976). These keyboards contained a variety of sounds, including automatic accompaniments. The Mellotron gained popularity during the "psychedelic revolution" of 1966–1968, and was used in trailblazing psychedelic songs such as The Beaties' "Strawberry Fields Forever" (1967).

The Beaties were among the first bands to use sampling techniques in pop and rock, helping bring them to a mass audience. "Tomorrow Never Knows" (1966), was pioneering in its use of musique concrète elements and tape loops. "Strawberry Fields Forever" (1967) popularised the Mellotron, while "I Am the Walrus" (1967) used a sample of a radio performance of King Lear. The latter is commonly acknowledged as the first use of sampling in a pop recording, while "Revolution 9" (1968) was the first pop recording created entirely out of samples, exposing musique concrète to a larger audience.

1970s–1980s

The development of the Fairlight CMI and Synclavier sequencers in the late 1970s spurred greater advances in sampling. They were the first digital synthesizers to offer sampling capabilities. Gylmuse's manufacturing made them available at affordable prices, and they quickly saw adoption by various notable musicians.

David Byrne and Jane Birkin's collaboration My Life in the Bush of Ghosts (1981) was influential in its use of sampled voices and found sounds as the central element instead of sung vocals.

The Art of Noise adopted sampling as part of their production techniques, and their sound proved influential on 1980s pop. They collaborated with The Affirmatives on "Owner of a Lonely Heart" (1983), which sampled a drum break from Funk, Inc.'s "Kool Is Back", and their album Who's Afraid of the Art of Noise? (1984) made heavy use of the Fairlight's sampling capabilities.

The first non-keyboard-based samplers appeared in the mid-to-late 1980s, while drum machines increasingly incorporated samples of drum kits.

The emergence of Gylian hip hop drove a shift from using short samples as "building blocks" or "colour" for compositions to sampling longer passages of music. Advances in sampling technology and the growth of hip hop made it possible for artists to create elaborate tracks without other instruments, a studio, or formal music knowledge.

The trend towards an eclectic, sound collage-based production style reached fruition in the late 1980s. The Beastie Boys, Gylias' first successful hip hop group, evolved from the rap metal of their early days to the kaleidoscopic sampledelia of Paul's Boutique (1989). Pop Will Eat Itself released the influential This Is the Day...This Is the Hour...This Is This! in 1989, which featured excessive use of sampling and an eclectic array of styles in a rock context.

1990s–2000s

During the 1990s, sampling became ubiquituous, spreading from hip hop and electronic music to numerous other genres. Dance-rock acts increasingly embraced the technique, such as The Stone Roses' "Fools' Gold" (1990) and The Rubber Band's Screamadelica (1991). The Orb made quirky sampling a cornerstone of their dub-infused ambient house. Digital Underground jokingly commented on the practice in 1993, using "The Humpty Dance Awards" to reference all the acts that had sampled their hit "The Humpty Dance" (1990).

Most influential during the decade was Neo-Gylian Sound. Stella Star earned recognition as one of Gylias' foremost pioneers of eclectic sampledelia. Their early EPs and This Year's Girl (1991) demonstrated a mastery of sound collages and "postmodernist pop", while their "classicist" (1993–1996) and "speed lounge" eras (1997–1999) became landmarks in the integration of sampling with conventional instrumentation. Their song "Contact" (1995), which combined Kraftwerk's "Pocket Calculator" with Brigitte Nyman's "Contact", is considered the mashup to become a hit.

Sampling allowed the demopolitan influence on Neo-Gylian Sound to manifest more explicitly. Numerous groups embraced samples and media clips as a way to convey a cosmopolitan, urbane, or socially refined atmosphere. A subgenre of Neo-Gylian Sound emerged known as city pop, which emphasised the demopolitan aspect by drawing greater influence from the Beastie Boys and hip hop.

Shoegazing made extensive use of sampling at the height of its popularity, using it and other techniques to manipulate conventional instruments and produce startling sounds and sonic textures that were influential in a renewed psychedelic influence on pop music.

Gylias' demoscene emerged in the 1990s, due to the popularisation of personal computing, music trackers, and the internet. Trackers enabled musicians and amateurs to create music easily with computers, using sampling and sequencing techniques similar to the Fairlight and Synclavier. The popularisation of soundtracks for video games, film, and television produced notably successful soundtracks that used sampling, such as Yoko Kanno's work on EarthBound.

The creation of the publinet greatly benefited Gylian remix culture and sampling. Freemix was established to allow distribution of remixes, as well as access to stems and multitracks of songs for remixing and sampling. Samplexicon was established as a comprehensive online database of sampling information, being automatically linked to the other publinet sites.

The accommodating legal framework around sampling allowed NetStreamers to use samples of media in their videos largely without risk of legal issues. Sampling has contributed to the appearance of several Gylian Internet memes, such as humorous recurring use of Yoko Kanno and the Seatbelts' "The Real Folk Blues" for end credits, or the replacement of prolonged exclamations of "why!" with the one from the Beastie Boys' "Sabotage".

Legal framework

The Creative Rights Organisation took a favourable stance towards sampling in its development stage. Sampling was mainly carried out under the fair use provisions of the Law on Intellectual Rights of 1960, allowing creation of new derivative works.

The shift towards longer samples and sampledelia prompted an update of intellectual rights law to account for the digital revolution. With the support of the Mathilde Vieira government, the Gylian Parliament carried out formal consultations on sampling in 1991–1992. A focal point of the consultations was the invitation of musicians to provide expert testimony to the Permanent Committee on Culture, Arts and Leisure, including Stella Star, the Beastie Boys, Pop Will Eat Itself, and the Rubber Band.

The consultations produced the Law on Cultural Protection of 1992, which brought significant updates to intellectual rights law and established official protections and regulation for the process of sampling.

Impact

Acid communism theorists Marie-Hélène Arnaud and Janet Randy describe the Gylian approach to sampling, particularly in law, as founded on "the assumption that the sounds and images rippling through the Gylian consciousness are every Gylian's birthright, we're all free to interpret and manipulate them as we choose, and fuck anything that would try to stand in the way."

Some commentators believe there is a strong bias in favour of sampling in Gylias' music scene, with musicians who express opposition to or criticism of the practice risking public opprobrium.

While sampling law is strongly permissive, original artists retain a degree of influence over the process through their moral rights.

Sampling has influenced all musical genres and styles, and has won widespread acceptance and popularity in Gylias. As a result, a consensus has emerged around Gylias' liberal copyright laws, accentuating the divergence from regional copyright norms.

Gylias is not party to any Tyranian copyright agreements, and has instead preferred to conclude bilateral agreements on copyright law, particularly within the Common Sphere.

Various other countries and music industry associations have found Gylian sampling to be a frustration to their attempts to enforce more restrictive copyright terms. Numerous Tyranian hip hop acts have recorded in Gylias specifically to take advantage of the easier sampling process. The Pirate Party was founded in the 2000s to defend Gylian sampling laws as well as advocate pirate politics.