Respectfully lifting a riff from a hit

Sampling (see Wikipedia) typically commandeers a famous riff from a song and incorporates it into a new song. At least in some cases money is paid to the original songwriter. However it can get sketchy. When a riff was sampled from Every Breath You Take by The Police for a hip hop song, Sting the one member of the band who had 100% writing credit for the song was paid money but the guitarist Andy Summers who came up with the distinct riff did not receive anything and referred to the song as "the major rip-off of all time."

The other night on David Letterman a band Broken Bells performed a Beatles song/medley using a video of Ringo playing the drums.

As a concept within the context of contemporary music and practices I think this is well done. I don't know whether they committed any money to gain permission to do this however the band honors The Beatles, particularly Ringo Starr, with this performance while displaying their own talent and creativity. The dynamic is interesting. It isn't just a couple of musicians covering a Beatles song.

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Interesting clip, nice and clean...I'll admit I had to turn it off half way through.
The originals are so sweet , these guys were somewhat anemic sounding after the initial novelty
wore off. They obviously put some work into arranging the music and syncing the audio and video.

Here's a couple of bits I enjoy that employ snippets of others creativity :

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I like the originals alot too.

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The James bond LP Soundtracks are good stuff with a huge sound ( must be the older studios with all that old iron and tape)

This by far my most favorite...and all with real world tape splices :
[youtube]rONasb9H24Y[/youtube]

Amon Tobin is another guy who has worked real hard assembling samples....and a killer light show to go with it.

elwood

I didn't watch the video all the way through either for the same "anemic sounding after the initial novelty wore off" reason.

Digging into this subject a little further I realize I cannot wrap my head around much of it. Someone on another forum posted some work by one of these compilation DJ's who may have passed away recently. Although this person received great praise it sounded like a mess to me.