One thing you notice when you read enough books or watch enough movies is that there are many similarities in stories, even if they are of different genres of fiction. I’ve never seen it as a bad thing, considering how human civilization has been going on for thousands of years. Stories are bound to be similar, and it really only matters how well you tell that story, even if you have to take inspiration from other works.

I suppose all of this is quite similar to how sampling works. Professor O’Malley put up a lot of examples of songs that had similar beats and tunes, pointing out how many of them came from a familiar source. Even if we are unaware of what song the sample is from, we probably heard the sample from another song that used it. The most prominent example of this was the drum from a 1970’s “Funky Drummer” song. We heard a few songs that used a sample of the drums like Public Enemy’s “Fight the Power”, or even how the PowerPuff Girls theme song used a sped up version of it, much to my surprise.

The part of this class that I found most interesting was how it tied into copyright. I was curious to see how sampling managed to avoid lawsuits considering how it affects other forms of art, but I was pleasantly surprised when we learned about the history of sampling and lawsuits. Sampling was started sometime in the 1980’s when records would be played at the same time to have a part of a song used for a new song. This was primarily used by people who lacked money, even in the late 1980’s when digital samplers became affordable. We also learned quite a bit about a lawsuit involving a sample based on the work of Andy Summers, and how it mostly benefited Sting even though Andy Summers was the one who played that specific part that the sample used.

Professor O’Malley said that “The Heritage of the Past belongs to us.” I agree with that. I think that we should be able to use the past so that we can see old entertainment in a new light. Music has been around for centuries, and it would be naïve to think that there would be no overlap. It all just depends on the overall package, not a specific part of it.