Do You Own The Sound Of Your Instrument? (A Response To Adam Neely)
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- Опубликовано: 15 авг 2019
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For centuries, audiences have been captivated by the unique tones achieved by individual performers, but with the rise of modern technology, creating a sound that is uniquely yours is easier than ever. Synthesizers, effect pedals, and other devices offer artists previously unimaginable levels of personalized timbre control, allowing them to craft the exact tone color that perfectly fits their artistic vision. But... do they own that tone color? Does it belong to them, and more importantly, should it? This question was raised in the recent trial over Katy Perry's hit Dark Horse, and my friend and fellow RUclipsr Adam Neely quickly rejected the idea that you could own your own timbre. As for me, though? Well... I think it's a bit more complicated.
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Last: • The Moment I Became A ...
Adam's video: • Why the Katy Perry/Fla...
Script: docs.google.com/document/d/1-...
SOURCES:
(See pinned comment)
Huge thanks to our Elephant of the Month Club members:
Susan Jones
Jill Jones
Ron Jones
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Duck
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Dov Zazkis
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And thanks as well to Corvi, Henry Reich, Gene Lushtak, Eugene Bulkin, Logan Jones, Abram Thiessen, Anna Work, Oliver, Jc Bq, Adam Neely, nico, Michael Fieseler, Rick Lees, Ben LaRose, Justin Donnell, rhandhom1, Dave Mayer, Thomás, Davis Sprague, Justin Aungst, Paul Quine, Harold Gonzales, Alex, CodenaCrow, Marc Himmelberger, Chris Borland, Arnas, Sarah Spath, Nikolay Semyonov, Daniel Gilchrist, Caroline Simpson, Skylar J Eckdahl, billy roberts, Elliot Burke, Alex Atanasyan, Alex Knauth, Greg Borenstein, Tim S., David Tocknell, Elias Simon, Michael Alan Dorman, Jerry D. Brown, Nathan Petchell, Blake Boyd, Trevor, Michael McCormick, Lilith Dawn, Jonathan Beck, Dmitry Jemerov, Ian Seymour, Charles Gaskell, Luke Rihn, Rob Holton, Lauren Steely, Fabian, Elliot Jay O'Neill, Elliot Winkler, Payden Nissen, Tom Evans, Ohad Lutzky, Kurtis Commanda, James A. Thornton, Benjamin Cooper, Kevin, Brian Dinger, Max Wanderman, Stefan Strohmaier, Kelsey Freese, Shadow Kat, Adam Kent, Hape Company, Matt Giallourakis, Lee Rennie, Richard T. Anderson, Adam Wurstmann, Angela Flierman, Mark Feaver, Kevin Johnson, Brian McCue, Stephan Broek, Jake Lizzio, Marcøs, ml cohen, Sylvain Chevalier, Darzzr, Roger Grosse, Rodrigo Roman, Francois LaPlante, Jeremy Zolner, Matthew Fox, Paper Coelacanth, Britt Ratliff, Tae Wook Kim, Eddie O'Rourke, Ryan, Jon Bauman, Vincent Sanders, John July, Volker Wegert, Danny, Matthew Kallend, Patrick Callier, JH, Joshua Gleitze, David Conrad, David Hardin, Emilio Assteves, Alex Keeny, Alexey Fedotov, Charles Hill, Valentin Lupachev, Joshua La Macchia, John Paul Welsh, DSM, Harry Hume, Chris Chapin, Gary Butterfield, Niko Albertus, Luke Wever, Elizabeth von Teig, Rene Miklas, Connor Shannon, max thomas, Jamie Price, Steve Brand, Kennedy Morrison, Red Uncle, Kirk Natoza, Doug Nottingham, Scott Howarth, Barendo, Smackdab, Nicholas Wolf, Ben Phillips, Alex Larking, Todd Davidson, Scott Nystrom, Douglas Anderson, chaoticgeek, ZagOnEm, Robert Beach, Greg Hodgdon, veleum, Kevin Boyce, Greg, Lionel Dresta, Aaron Zhu Freedman, Hexa Midine, Nicholas Steicke, John Polgreen, Tuna, Mark Sibly, Killian Hackenschmidt, Peter Leventis, Eric J Amorelli, T, Lincoln Mendell, Vincent Engler, Mathew Wolak, Noam Fields-Meyer, and Luke! Your support helps make 12tone even better!
Also, thanks to Jareth Arnold for proofreading the script to make sure this all makes sense hopefully!
Some additional thoughts/corrections:
1) One thing I absolutely need to acknowledge here is that most of this is my own research and reasoning. As far as I could find, no one has ever looked specifically at the question of how the rise of fine-grade, end-user customizable timbre changed our cultural perception of the ownership of tone. (Although if you're a musicologist looking for a good thesis project, have at it and send me the results!) As such, I had to piece this together from numerous different sources that were talking about tangentially related things (like a researcher!) and it's very possible I missed or misinterpreted something. I stand by the broad strokes of the argument, but I couldn't find independent confirmation (or rejection) for many of my interpretations, so grain of salt and whatnot. I'm fairly certain the phenomenon I'm describing is real, but it warrants more study than I, a rando youtuber, could reasonably deliver.
2) Relatedly, if you _do_ know of any solid scholarship on the topic, please let me know, especially if it disagrees with me.
3) I didn't get into how this relates to vocalists, who do mostly have their own unique, self-crafted timbres and have had them basically forever. Vocalists are weird, though, and you can't really copy someone else's voice exactly. Not yet, anyway.
4) These were the three clearest examples I could think of of fine-grade, end-user customizable timbre, but it's certainly possible I missed some. I'd be especially interested to learn about things that predated the Hammond. Arguably the theremin slightly predates Hammond, although I don't know how customizable early theremin timbres were. Most theremins I've heard sound largely the same, so I assume customized tones weren't a huge part of that instrument culturally, but I could very easily be wrong.
5) That synth sound I played near the end was largely randomly generated, but feel free to guess how I did it! I'll give you a hint: I used Reason's built-in Subtractor synth. Beyond that, play around and if you find a setting that sounds similar, let me know!
6) I listed Roger Waters as an electric guitar player but I meant David Gilmour. I was even thinking David when I went to write the script but somewhere along the way I wrote down the wrong name. Apologies for the error. (Although in my defense, it's not like bassists like Waters weren't also experimenting with effects and tone, so I was only _sort of_ wrong.)
7) This video has a lot of sources, and it was breaking the description box so I put it here instead:
books.google.com/books?id=peRIWGU9MFsC
theatreorgans.com/grounds/docs/history.html
books.google.com/books?id=bJkVtVIKklcC
chroniclingamerica.loc.gov/lccn/sn83030214/1910-10-16/ed-1/seq-18/
ruclips.net/video/iBjp2ZDA8A0/видео.html
www.sunpower-uk.com/news/a-brief-history-of-guitar-effects-pedals-infographic/
simonbook.co.nz/blog/1142/the-first-guitar-effects-pedal
www.vintageguitar.com/18545/dearmond-tremolo-control/
www.vintagearchtop.com/dearmond_history.htm
www.roger-mayer.co.uk/octavia.htm
www.vintageguitar.com/18699/cry-baby/
www.angst.org.uk/?cat=4
digital-law-online.info/patry/patry5.html
www.si.edu/spotlight/violins/stradivarius
www.stradivarius.org/stradivarius-violins/
www.tomcrownmutes.com/learn_history.html
www.metmuseum.org/art/collection/search/729575
www.fender.com/articles/gear/the-one-that-started-it-all-a-telecaster-history
www.rickenbacker.com/history_early.asp
electronics.howstuffworks.com/gadgets/audio-music/synthesizer3.htm
www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/sul%20ponticello
mn2s.com/news/features/brief-history-yamaha-dx7/
Sooo interesting, thank you for sharing! I think it's conceivable that someone would be able to 'DeepFake' an artist's voice and it's interesting to think of that as something worth protecting legally
I knew you make this video when I heard what Adam said and how easily he brushed off the similarity of the timbre of the synths it`s funny that you made this video
Prepared piano might be an earlier example? See en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prepared_piano#John_Cage
"rando youtuber" ... dude! Locking at the trending page you must be in the top 1% when it comes to actually meaningfull quality content.
Correction 6 was vital. Keep up the good work
COME AT ME BRO
.
.
.
But seriously, love the thorough analysis and the idea that the Hammond Organ was the first user-customizable timbre - at least the first one that mattered to musicians.
BUT SERIOUSLY DON'T TELL THE LAWYERS
Notice me senpai UwU
Adam y r u so gud and cool😭?
Adjusting combinations of stops in a pipe organ is the same as configuring drawbars in a Hammond and has been around for centuries. It's additive synthesis, really.
@@mariocisemusic I feel sick that I literally read that in PITCH before I consciously even realized what it was.
Mariocise Music indeed
I’m gonna copyright the sine wave. That gives me defacto ownership over all sound.
I use a Cos wave 90° out of phase.
(I know this is a joke but sound travels in longitudinal waves and not transverse waves, the visual depiction of a sin wave is a the longitudinal wave converted to a displacement time graph.)
Maurice Martenot has prior art.
Not all sounds are made with sine waves.
You got square waves, triangle waves, sawtooth waves etc.
@@ErebosGR With the combination of an infinite number of sine waves, you can make any of those waves. (And an infinite number of any of those waves can make any other wave.)
@@ErebosGR Those waves are constructed with sine waves, using specific sets of harmonics
Using the lick is such a diabolical, yet good-natured jab at Adam.
Maybe he should copyright it? 😂
I’m not sure it’s a jab at all. It seems more like a nod.
+Drew Nolde It is a good natured jab if you interpret it as poking fun of how Adam Neely never fails to play(or reference the lick) in a video.
It can be a mix of both.
fugithegreat “You can’t own The L I C C”
@@daniellbondad6670 Er, I think you will find that there are more references in Adam Neeley videos to ...you know...not going to name it... in the comments, than in his own videos. It is sort of the equivalent of showing your club membership to reference.... T** L*** in the comments section. This is getting too meta for me....
“Couple of bars of rest” between mute changes is a concept musical theater orchestrators should look into
Not a problem...on a violin. You can flick a mute off with your wrist. Just just need to have a tiny moment to lift the bow. :)
1/2 - 1 1/2 measure mute changes seem all to common for brass. that's why I have had to master the "Hands-free, Mute-to-Instrument" Technique
get a second, muted trumpet and yeet the normal one when you need to change
@@p.g.v.3765 Hard to guarantee an extract sound equivalence between instruments, even if they are both trumpets. L9l
One time I had one 4/4 bar at quarter=144 to take a straight mute out. *of a TUBA*.
Did you get Adam Neely’s permission to use “The Lick”"
Fair use.
The lick is public domain, bro!
Don't mind them. They don't watch him.
Hmmmm. Seems I may have to explain how jokes work.
@Jacques Bloques OOOooooooo 🔥🔥
Imagine a dystopia were technology is implemented to scan for timbral similarities to establish copyright lawsuits...
what do you mean imagine? this technology already exists
is that so.
@@sevrjukov I'm not talking about samples or interpolation; I'm talking about similarities in timbre that having nothing to do with composition
Don't give them ideas, bro
@@malcelinho they're probably already working on it smh
This is great but I think it still fails to say WHY timbre shouldn't be copyrightable. The U.S. Copyright Office specifically states that you can't copyright "Ideas, procedures, methods, systems, processes, concepts, principles, or discoveries." Creating a unique timbre on a Hammond organ, an electric guitar, or a synthesizer is just a method for using a tool to create the sound you want. If those settings are protectable under ANY IP system, it would be a patent, not copyright.
because there's no way to sufficiently uniquely identify a timbre, and as result there would be no way to avoid using a copyrighted one if it was copyrightable. Which would make creating music pretty much impossible.
Imagine everyone who buys someone's signature guitar/ amp/ pedal gets sued any time they play it
Generally, you can't copyright instructions on how to do something. You can't copyright the rules to scrabble or monopoly, but you can copyright the layout of the board. You can't copyright a recipe for a dish, but you can copyright the layout of the book in which the recipe is compiled.
I think this might inform the attitude toward not being able to copyright the draw bar positions on an organ or the specific dial settings on a stomp box.
"you cant copyright instructions on how to do something"
playing devil's advocate here: you can't copyright sheet music?
Sheet music is treated like a manuscript. You have to make stylistic choices in how you represent the notes. It's fundamentally different than "when you roll two sixes you do X"
Edit: I should clarify, these are the standards in the US, but so was the standard that you can only copyright a melody.
@@Markle2k Due to the Berne Convention, copyright law is roughly similar throughout the world.
What about tabletop games like DnD? Those books are just massive compilations of instructions, but since there's no board or other physical parts, (except dice but those aren't copyrighted anyways) the instructions are the entire game...
@@natekite7532 The books themselves are copyright. If you managed to rewrite the same rules using none of the original wording, you might get away with it.
There's should be a serie where 12Tones just draws (without him talking) and we need to guess what the heck is he talking about
you could just mute these vids
@@filmNFX1 but the title gives it away :(
Just go to his channel page, open uploads, turn off computer volume, click a random video, and fullscreen it
@@delilahj2592 wow i am hooked, i'm going to play all by myself for no apparent reason
Id guess a song from dumbo every time
wouldn't it be ironic if Adam Neely copyrights you because you used an audio clip from his video
hmm
12Tone Vs Neely. Dis gon b gud
Josh Kimbrough I clicked the video thinking exactly that
I'm only on youtube waiting for a celebrity-music-theorist-youtuber battle. east coast versus west coast. who gonna die.
Vegeta vs Goku
I think that an timbre is kind of like a writing style-- definitely distinctive enough to be recognizable, but copyrightable? No.
If similar tone color can be owned then one person could own the entire genre of futurebass
I was just thinking this. The premise of the synthwave genre uses a very small selection of synth settings as well, in order to create a specific mood. Someone could just arbitrarily own that entire genre too.
Tell that to Anish Kapoor
"Please, nobody tell the lawyers"
It would be less of a problem if we didn't keep electing lawyers to the legislature.
@@DefenderTIM Legislatures are the places you make laws. You think non-lawyers would do better at it?
@@WarrenPostma Maybe if they consulted musicians it would be better (when discussing music related laws)
@@ianlins2792 Many Judges and Laywers may be idiots (agree!) but some of them actually do bring in musicologists on music related cases, and their expert witnesses and their Amicus Curiae briefs are routinely done for all kinds of things. When the process goes well, outcomes like this are avoided, and the courts DO frequently get it right. The SCO Linux trials for example, were not music related, but were technology related, and the Amicus Curiae briefs prepared by relevant experts were entered into the record and had a noticeable effect on the case outcome.
American Copyright laws however are insane in ways that are now proven in court (precedents), and no musician, no laywer, can fix it. It would take new laws from your American Congress to overturn some of these disastrous court decisions and the precedents imply that this Katy Perry bullshit is gonna happen over and over until the copyright laws are reformed again, if ever.
Fair Use doctrines need a serious update NOW. And unfortunately it's lawyers (who are in congress) that need to do that job. They made the mess and they need to clean it up. That's how your broken system sort of works.
Copyright laws around the world need a massive overhaul in general.
Fair use needs work, but fundamentally the length of copyright is insane.
It should NEVER have gone beyond the 25 years it originally had.
But the Berne Convention pretty much guarantees no one country can fix that particular abusive disaster...
That one treaty has done so much almost irrevocable damage.
That, and the inane propaganda terminology of 'intellectual property' which has created a very damaging false equivalence that conflates ownership of physical property with 'owning' intangible concepts while ignoring the very damaging side effects this actually has, nor how this fundamentally just doesn't actually make sense.
You mention how some Hammond players didn't want other to see their drawbar settings but in the world of Guitars and Synths, players aren't really shy to show their settings - The Keyboard and Guitar magazines of the past 30 years or so are full of articles where players are demonstrating their settings and today you find a lot of videos where the Guitar Greats are demonstrating how they get their tones. And I don't think they are that shy about it because the tone is also so much dependent on how they play, I could pick up Steve Vai's guitar and would most likely sound nothing like him.
Well, he mentioned that point in the video, Hammond organs didn't have dynamics nor any physical source of timbre, so the sound of the instrument is entirely dependent on the settings. And we are talking about an age when this things were quite new, it makes sense to me that people were more secretive about this things before. It's like any invention or design, when it's new, good and exclusive, it will bring attention (and money) to the people who made it, so it worth to keep it as a secret. But with time, other businesses bring new designs with similar or different improvements that would make the first innovation more mundane, so it doesn't give any benefit to keep the design secret anymore.
Today everyone can produce a new tone on a synth or a computer, and every guitar tone you might hear is used by other 10 famous guys, so it is not like people would lose anything by sharing and teaching.
I suspect that even with an instrument of zero touch sensitivity, a pianist with killer phrasing and rythmic chops like Oscar Peterson would be completely different in sound to a regular joe, how long you hold the notes and the ratio of attack to sustain being recognisable.
Well I could pick up Steve Vai's guitar, and sound like me. i.e. NOTHING like Steve Vai!
Of course thats true, guitar brings in different picking styles and vibrato styles, on top of phrasing. I was just being pedantic in a pedantic thread , which is that to a certain extent, with great players their is still a perceived timbre (like trees falling, not like tampering!) difference on fixed timbre instruments.
As we approach peak aesthetic, each note's spectral envelope and timbre tends towards being a work of art in itself.
True. Consider how dubstep artists shape their bass in ways that can be recognized quickly by their signature sound and intention.
Spicy RUclips music theory drama
9:41 "I'd be willing to bet that none of you have ever heard a synth that sounds exactly like that."
You know, unless you've listened to any Sega Genesis soundtrack before.
Cool vid as always! Roger Waters? Do you mean David Gilmour?
I was thinking the same thing and then ... I started listening to "One of these days" in my head, certainly Gilmour would make more sense but Waters made a lot of tone shaping ("Run like hell"). And I suppose a Bass guitar is a after all close related.
Anyway, definitely Gilmour, but yeah maybe Roger deserves some recognition as well?
Exactly what I was thinking - When talking about Electric guitars why did he mention Roger Waters the Bass Player ?
Whoops! Yes, I definitely meant David Gilmour. Sorry for the mistake! (Although, as Eduardo points out, the bass isn't immune from tone-craft either, so I wasn't _entirely_ wrong...)
Don't forget that on the beginning of "One of These Days" more than half of the song included both Roger and David playing bass. There is an interesting story about the strings on David' bass, but you can clearly hear the difference with headphones because they split them left and right.
@@richardwilson8219 Waters was not a very good bass player, that's why Gilmour used to record his bass parts in many of their songs.
Waters was primarily the lyricist of the band.
Putting the intro a minute~ into the video is a good idea, I think it helps the video flow better
There's a reason why in the most plot heavy episodes in shows do this too, it improves the pace. 👍
Was the tilde *really* necessary?~
@@TealTactics I thiink it was to imply uncertainty, although that would normally be written as "~a minute", meaning about a minute.
Doesn’t the tilde appear before a word to show uncertainty?
@@TealTactics i think the tilde is used to show approximation
imagine getting a youtube copyright strike for a completely original song because you stumbled onto a tone you thought was cool and was used in unpopular copyrighted song. that makes me shake with fear.
Dystopian RUclips and UMG et al: _* grins gleefully *_
Although the keyboard of the B3 isn't touch sensitive, the right foot can change the volume very fluidly in a performance. So, there is an element of the performer changing the timbre that isn't based just on the drawbars.
Flipping the Leslie switch also changes the timbre of a Hammond organ. In fact, Hammond so hated that effect that he forbade his dealers from selling Leslie speaker cabinets.
Don't forget that Hammond players can also adjust the drawbars and other settings while playing too - you might have your "signature setting" that someone can copy, but knowing when and why to make adjustments to it isn't quite as easy. Same goes for synth players.
I don't think Adam disagrees with you, I think he was just glossing over something that didn't pertain strongly enough to the main focus of his argument. Sure, he probably could have been more clear about the whole "can you own timbre" thing, but it really seems trivial in the grand scheme of his video.
This is common when someone makes a great point only for someone to nitpick one small detail and turn it into a whole argument
Yup. It's Clickbait with little reward.
@@DKxRAMONESxSP Small details matter. Not necessarily in the scope of any particular discussion, but it's still useful to have a place to discuss actual correctness of any given point, because someone could leave with the wrong impression of a minor fact and go off and extrapolate an even bigger wrongness because they assumed that the overall correctness of what they learned applied to all the component parts without actually verifying everything themselves. It might seem trivial, but in other contexts it might not be, and being as correct as possible even in the "minor" details helps prevent misunderstandings growing to potentially harmful levels in someone who does a lot of drive-by fact collecting.
It's a logical fallacy for the person doing said nitpicking to claim that a minor incorrect fact invalidates the original argument. That many people do this does not invalidate the validity of their nitpicking, only their attempt to invalidate said argument. (Assuming, of course, that the nitpicker is actually correct.) This video does not try this, and as such should not be dismissed lightly. It allows for expanded discussion, more correct understanding, and a more nuanced means of approaching the original argument; all of which are good things.
I'm not usually scared of beef. This joke beef *viscerally terrifies me and I don't know why.*
It took me way too long to realise you mean "beef" as in "conflict". DO you mean beef instead of conflict?? I'm second guessing myself, I can't stop picturing some sort of novelty joke beef and it's worrying
@@coryman125 Yes, I meant beef as in conflict, Yes I am sorry I took an hour to respond to this, and Yes I thought of the same thing after I typed this
@@glumbortango7182 Ah no worries :D gave me a good laugh at least
Probably because 12Tone and Adam Neely are both smart, produce quality content, and genuinely seem like good guys, and the idea that they would be (seriously) arguing about something like the idea of music/tone/timbre copyright, IS kind of disconcerting (even if it wasn't really that kind of disagreement). I also had a weird feeling of anxiety when I started watching this as well.
@@AngelValis 👏 Yes. That. Exactly that. You've put it into words. Thank you.
Our music leader at church got a Hammond, seeing him play it was amazing, pushing and pulling on the knobs while playing , it sounded epic.
Didn’t organists craft their timbre through stops combination since far earlier than the Hammond? The idea of picking harmonics is well described in registration treatises since... well since the term has been taught (17th century), and organists have been cautious of their registration combinations and settings ever since...
True, but a normal sized organ has far less setting than a normal hammond, since the stops can only be on or off.
yes, but i'm sure you have never seen a pipe organ at a gig. you're right but it's not really for the musicians, it's for the church they're built in
@@EpicStuffMan1000 I actually have seen an organ at a concert (for something by Tartini if I remember correctly). Altough very rare, there are movable pipe organs. Nowadays they use compressors, back in the day a person was paid to use the bellows to blow air (this was the case for church organs as well actually). Moreover, there are also instruments like harmoniums and accordions that are basically down-scaled organs meant for travelling.
Now that I think of that, harmoniums and accordions also have stops and thus customizable timbre, to get back to the main discussion.
@@Facoch42 interesting. Didn't know that, thanks!
Organ registration settings can be saved, in pistons, and recalled at any time by pressing a button.
Copyright is ONLY melody and lyrics period. When will the courts, juries, so-called musicologists get that right. People might want copyright to cover more but it doesn't. Another STUPID lawsuit is now being threatening Lady Gaga over a three note melody consisting of chord tones. So if she loses will the estates of Bach and all the early composers sue everyone for using chord tones??? These lawsuits are ridiculous and need to be stopped if not on only melody and lyrics. And in past even melody had to be a handful of bars copies not a bar or two. Grrrrrrrrrr!!!!
I see that you follow Rick Beato' s videos
"When will" : never. The "When will" mentality never changed a damn thing in the World.
This is just maximalist af.
Lyrics - sure, but how is melody more unique/important than harmony or rhythm? They are essentially the three equal building blocks of western music, so you cannot really distinguish those. Especially when the modern music has so much citations, samples, licks, etc.
@@rorschach620 Well, rhythm and harmony don't define songs, the combination of the two defines entire genres, but genres are not created by one person in one night. Trying to claim the ownership or the creation of a genre, a specific rhythm or an specific harmony is futile, there will always be some predecessor or antecedent, after all, we are talking about the very foundations of music.
A melody is a very specific combination of pitch and rhythm that can be easily recognizable. Sometimes it can coincide with another song by accident, and that's when the rest of the elements of music come into play to judge if it's an acceptable similarity, or if it is plagiarism.
@@CarlosGonzalez-mp9re i can partially agree on rhythm (tho, rhythm of the melody is still considered rhythm), with some exceptions where specific groove defines the song and is the most recognizable part (like in some hip-hop songs where there is essentially no melody or in some 19/8 crazy math jazz/rock stuff).
On the contrary, the harmony is usually as, if not more, recognizable as the melody, even if you don't realise it. It's enough to play the chords for "Wonderwall" for literally anyone to instantly recognize it, however playing the melody without the rhythm or lyrics (as we define them as something different) would most likely be of no use (since there are literally three notes in the beginning of the verse).
I love the video and the analysis. Just wanted to say (as an attorney in the US) that 99.9% of the time, it's not the lawyers who are up to crazy shenanigans (there is still a .1%, to be sure, and those circumstances tend to draw a lot of attention). Most of the time, we're just doing our jobs. A job which is to carry out an idea some other asshat came up with. It's just that we're the face you see, not the asshat.
I love your videos in general but this one was awesome on a bit different of a subject. I'm interested to see what topics you'll explore next!
I deliberately focused on the intro sequence and it's just made to be where you put it. The topic is clear from the first moment and we have like 4 seconds to think about it on our own and also it is a part of the vids for a long time. Good. Now I'll proceed to watch the rest of the vid :D
Wow, so much research must have gone into this. Super interesting!
Roger Waters also played the guitar sometimes, so i'll allow it
In civil cases it’s “plaintiff” and “defendant” not prosecution. Love your videos!
Surprised you left out the lawsuit against Hammond by the pipe organ manufacturers that didn't want the Hammond called an organ. Listening tests determined Hammond could sound just like a pipe organ and Hammond retained the organ title. Imagining you and Neely getting into a fight after a night of drinking. Hilarious!
I really wanted to mention that but I couldn't fit it in anywhere without breaking the flow and the video was already getting super long so it wound up on the cutting room floor. Still an amazing story, though!
Another angle on this would be what lawyers call "public policy" considerations. Take patents, for example. The motivation for providing this protection had more to do with rewarding openness over secrecy than with creating and extending property rights. The "policy" that matters is not the desirability of making people "owners" of new things, but rather ensuring that technologies didn't die out with the owners of the secrets behind them. For sharing your secret, it's worth rewarding you with a limited monopoly, in exchange.
Viewed that way, the question would be whether there's any need to encourage the keepers of the secrets of timbre to share these, and pass them on to future generations. And considering that the secrecy, here, just encourages further creative exploration; and that musical tastes are so ephemeral, arguably there's not much to be gained by making trade-offs to encourage openness. Secrecy is almost preferable?
Obviously there's more at stake, here, but this is just an alternative view to consider.
Antonio Stradivarius? You surely must mean Antonio Stella Bottom Tile, from Craig Mona?
Bravo! I'm glad I'm not the only person who kept thinking that during this video.
That Ashens vid never fails to leave me in stitches
Ji plug pu melon nai. The classic composer
this is such an unlikely joke to hear... and I'm proud to get it !
Man, I love this. I love this community. I love being alive with other musicians with the ability to create content of this nature. I love the ability to discuss and debate with class, intelligence, and knowledge. What a time to be alive. I am so grateful and cannot WAIT to begin my student teaching. **eats a gummy bear**
This video is pure bliss. It's so awesome to have someone that has that level of music knowledge and at the same time the gift to teach and spread that knowledge and isn't some zealot worshiping dated conceptions because their teachers shoved them up their asses. Thank you so much
Or you plug the Hammond into a marshall and sound badass
I honestly adore your channel. I learn so much.
You can't own a digital instrument sound (ie an 808 on every hiphop/rap track and bass drop). You DO own the MASTER sound recording, which by definition is: works that result from the fixation of a series of musical, spoken, or other sounds but not including sounds accompanying a motion picture or other audiovisual work. Just my 2 cents.
i hear the same Logic X preset synth sounds on so many songs from big artists to small, i find it super endearing :,)
Fantastic video! I'm actually entering my 3rd year of law school and have been focusing primarily on intellectual property. I totally agree on not being able to copyright a tone, but I wonder if it could be protected by right of publicity. Bette Midler was able to successfully sue for misapproptiation of her voice when Ford Motor Co. used a sound alike for a commercial.
Quick question what do you do with all your doodles?
Just curious.
Yeah the Sound design in modern heavy bass music like dnb or dubstep is like 90% of producer identity. Even though sounds that are used are fairly similair to each other (metallic and heavily frquency modulated basses) if you are fan of genre you probably can easily recognize different artist just by the timbre of their sounds. And all of the great ones have their distinct and unique sound.
Great video i love this channel so much
Booker T. Jones Tiny Desk Concert is a great spot to see a Hammond organ very intimately. Guy can play the hell out of it and goes over why it's so interesting too.
This reminds me of a comment from my eye doctor some years ago. A doc wanted to patent/licence the angle at which a scalpel was held for cataract surgery as no closing stitch would be required for cuts at a specific angle. Also, I am a bagpiper from way back and there are only so many melodic sequences of 9 notes that one can play
Omg i just realized you used a titration draw, with phenolphtalein? For reference control! Men i admire you!
As a prog nerd, for examples of distinct and "signature" synth tones my mind immediately goes to the duelling solos on Ayreon's track "Progressive Waves" from the 2013 album The Theory of Everything. Arjen is pretty famous for building his ensembles with famous guests, both on vocals and on specific instrumental solos. And on that specific track, there are two keyboardists with very distinct tones playing solos so distinctly "them" I bet fans of the genre who haven't seen the album notes for that release would still know who they were after a couple bars of each. ...Go on, take this as a pop quiz if you don't already know the answer, just give it a listen, it's like a three minute instrumental track. Spotify gives it away though. The answers? They are...
Keith Emerson (Emerson, Lake, and Palmer) and Jordan Rudess (Dream Theater)! If you got it right, congrats!
I really appreciate how 12tone does not deliberately talk slow. This is probably the only channel that i have the patience to listen to without speeding up the playback.
Really interesting & insightful.
First,
good video! I love your work!
Damn!!! Great episode!!
3:58 I mean kind of but it’s purpose is not to lower the volume, with a mute in ur supposed to used more air to compensate for the lowered volume. And I’m terms of aggressiveness I would argue that a straight mute (standard for classical music) makes the sound significantly more aggressive not less and that’s usually its purpose in music, it often is used to create aggressive responses to motifs played by other instruments
Interesting that Dave Gilmour* and Brian May were on that short list, I find it very interesting to ask non-musicians which guitar players they think are good and have noticed these 2 guys are generally mentioned above all, there’s definitely something to be learned from these very musical guitar players.
It might be of interest to note the mellotron (from the perspective of the first sampler). The player had little control over the timbre (for example the pre recorded string sound) but could choose the notes. I remember reading that orchestra musicians were up in arms that they would be replaced (and in some ways they have, with large sample libraries...but on the flip side anyone has access to create believable (not perfect) orchestra sounds at far less cost). That may be too big a can of worms for a 12 minute video!
10:33 I love that you dropped the Contra for NES cheat code.
Good response love your work
my first thought would be that owning timbre would be like owning a particular pigment for paints, which is a thing that makes sense legally but in many peoples view is not exactly great (ie there's only one person legally allowed to paint in vantablack)
Vantablack is protected by patent, not copyright. In other words, the function/technology that makes it look the way it does it protected, not the actual "pigment" or shade of the black (which is just very, very black and very, very unprotectable under intellectual property law). I'll also add that it's not true that only one person can paint in Vantablack-instead, only one entity owns the exclusive right to produce Vantablack, so they control access to it. So, it's a different issue from protection of timbre itself, though one could in theory get a patent for some technology that was the only way to make some sound-in that case, the sound wouldn't be protected but the process/apparatus to create the sound might be.
Can't wait for a musicologist to claim that [insert pop artist] stole the sound of a [insert synth waveform] from [insert lesser known pop artist].
12 tone. Do you actually draw all of that stuff every time you make a video? I am going to say yes because.....well. I watched a lot of em anyway. Subbed. I can't make sense of the drawings sometimes. I recognize some figures often, but I don't know what they mean. Lol! You're an important musical scientist in this world.
5:32 well not in the usual sense, a quirk of that era Hammond organ is that each wheel has a separate actuator. So all the wheels for a key have actuators at slightly different heights and that's abusable to activate just some of the tones on a part of that manual from note to note.
If we're focusing on recordings I feel like equipment used in recording, mixing and mastering should also be a key point about timbre and how complex it would be to copyright it. While we can talk about EQ, compression, mid-side stuff when you also get into delays and verbs that are well known it kind of muddies the water on who owns what part of the sound. Then there are verb plugins (altiverb and space come to mind) that get Impulse Responses for various spaces to recreate the sounds of those rooms, ranging from European to Bob Marley's Bathroom... No one can really yell dibs on a sound like that, can they?
I don't want to be there when lawyers realize they could use a spectrogram to analyze timbres and fft analysis and see the dollars signs
The Cure owns every chorus pedal and JC amp in the world.
In a philosophical sense.
10:33 was that a reference to Clefairy Says from Pokemon Stadium?
I loved that when you were drawing for the word "control" at 5:13 you chose what looks like a Nintendo 64 controller, which is pretty much THE controller and should be commonly known as the only correct hieroglyph for the word.
Music Rudiments Sounds counterpoint: GameCube
Roger whaaat? Pink Floyd's guitar timber was Gilmour's doing, Organ timber Farfisa/Wright's and synth's timber as well as overall production Roger(and a little bit of Wright).
12 tone vs Rick Beato "I don't want a fight, please, no, i want peace and tranquility"
12tone vs Adam Neely "Come at me Bro!"
I saw one of Stradivarius' guitars at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, it was a once-in-a-lifetime experience as there are very few extant stratavarian guitars left. There are five, only one is still playable.
One way I can think of a sound being owned is presets on a digital synthesizer. People get flagged for that quite a bit. That may have been touched on in this video, but alas, my phone’s dying.
So to be a bit pendantic it’s hard to draw a distinction between ownership of timbre and copyright as in the U.S. there are 4 categories of intellectual property - patents trademarks copyright and trade secrets. Besides some weird trade secret situation, if you talk about owning something like timbre you’re necessarily talking about copyright as patents and trademarks don’t apply. So to say timbre is “ownable” but not copyrightable is really a contradiction, at least under US law, unless you’re talking about some extralegel concept of ownership.
I think he was. "Philosophical"
I think it’s interesting to explore the ownership of timbre, especially with modern music being more and more based in sound design. That said, part of me feels like you don’t own the timbre, you just own the settings. What I mean by this is that an outside actor doesn’t have the right to look over your shoulder and see your synth settings and snatch them, but they do have the right to listen to your timbre intently and try and replicate it as best as they can. I mean, how many guitar players have done this? The other question is with using a synth preset. Who would “own” that? The maker of the synth? The maker of the preset? If I tweak the cutoff knob a little do I now own it?
How is the way in which the Hammond organ made individualisation of the instrument's sound possible by allowing the musician to combine presets of different sounds to create a new sound so fundamentally different from how registers in church organs did the same thing that it leads to the conclusion that Hammond organs were the first instance of customisable timbre?
The largest monster here isn't the offspring rather the issues with copyright law.
I loved using “the lick” in a video about fighting Adam Neeley.
So the first Synclavier chord at the top of Beat It is one fo the most recognizable tones (timbres) ever was a demo preset of the Synclavier. Who owns it - Jackson, Synclavier or nobody?
I seem to recall reading Wendy Carlos, from the liner notes for *Switched-On Bach 2000*, saying, "Any parameter which can be controlled must be controlled." I don't have my copy of SOB2K any more and cannot seem to find the quote online right now. Still, it's directly linked to this video. She was speaking in the context of digital synthesizers versus the analog Moogs she used to play.
EDIT: Wait, I found my copy! It's from the first edition of the CD, on page three. Correction, she said, "Every parameter you can control, you *must* control. Well, you try your best." This was in reference to how she had immediate feedback with a Moog synth and could adjust her tone on the fly, whereas, with computerized systems, she had to deal with a lot more complexity, not just for the tone, but for the entire composition process.
I love Mr Neely’s analysis of music. The argument he puts forward has merit.
However; on purely technical analysis as to what constitutes, “tone”; I share your analysis that essentially one cannot own tone. It is comprised of too many things for its ownership to make any sense.
When you consider playing technique as a variable to tone; the concept of ownership doesn’t scale.
A thousand Pianist’s playing the same Piano.
Is the tone produced their tone, or does its ownership belong to the creator of the instrument.
I’m stunned by the level of your analysis 12tone.
Excellent work.
Great research; engaging presentation; expertise apparent.
I’ll be promoting your channel in the future for free.
Long story, I’ll give details at a later date.
Thank you 12tone, for helping to maintain “the Grey” of my matter.
Regards
Prometheus Bones.
Something perhaps related; in graphic design, typefaces are not copyrightable in the jurisdictions that I'm familiar with because, despite much minor variation in the glyphs, there isn't enough subjective creativity to distinguish one typeface from the many similar variants. The font files themselves can be copyrighted though. Typefaces can be trademarked though - a famous almost example is Romain Du Roi "The King's Roman" which others could not use on threat of death.
My conjecture (not a lawyer): How this might apply to music is that custom instrument settings might not be copyrightable but the sounds produced might be if very different to lay ears. This doesn't affect songs using that custom instrument setup being copyrighted. An instrument sound might be trademarkable.
as a Trumpet player, I can formally say that there's actually many different mutes with many different sounds, and that most players I know, including myself, had to play some pieces with the shortest time to put in a mute being a pickup rest and the longest time to put in a mute being a half rest, we don't need multiple bars lol
The problem the legal system presents to music, is when it gets as far as a court. All musical facts, publishing copyright and mechanical copyright can be ignored because the overarching law of copyright in its broader sense (not just music) comes down to "substantial similarity". So if a 'layperson" world consider them similar then it's arguable in a court of law.
In other words we're about 6 months from genres being copyrighted at this rate.
The conclusion that you came to is essentially how I feel about visual artists trying to copyright art styles.
Timbre shouldn’t have much bearing in cases of music copyright. After all, identical music with identical timbre should end up being identical recordings.
Even with customizable timbres, unless you reproduce both settings and effects identically, it would still come out sounding slightly different.
Exactly. It's not just the instruments themselves but how it is recorded, and mixed is how the sound is heard in the song.
6:34 Roger Waters? Surely thou meant David Gilmour!
Just some thoughts on tone as it pertains to most non-keyboard instruments - yes the manufacture of the instrument has some sway and of course instructing players to use different techniques will result in different tone, but really, the tone does come from the player and is controlled by subtle differences in embouchure, bowing technique, etc. The way you present it makes it seem like a Stradivarius being played arco is a single tone for a composer/arranger to choose from.
I find it interesting that you never brought up the topic of sampling, since that's a case where someone can legally own a "timbre" in a sense. You can't, for example, take a sample from an album and alter the pitch to create new music without clearance from the owner of the original album. Although there are instruments like the Mellotron which were based on samples, and many artists would use the same "3 violins" sample, for example.
Crossovers nobody asked for yet everyone needed
So someone programming the synth should not get credit, rather the modules they choose to programme?
Programmers often dont anyway, but that's aside the point
I have to side with Team Adam on this one. I can't put my finger on exactly where, but I think it's something in your basic logical structure that I find unsatisfying. I generally agree with most of your statements, I just don't see how they lead to a conclusion that refutes Adam's statement.
Although, I don't think a "conclusion" is what actually matters (to me anyway). The debate, discussion, presentation and pondering of various concepts is where the real value lies. Disagreement is healthy and enriching when handled this way.
tl;dr - Disagree with your conclusion, loved your vid.
I don't understand your comment. They don't disagree. 12tone wanted to make a video elaborating on Adam's "you can't own the sound of an instrument", and so he did. His conclusion is that in some way an artist should get credit for crafting a sound on an instrument where the possibilities are endless (which Adam probably also agrees with), but overall they agree that you can't own the sound of piano or another instrument
@@stefanfyhn4668 I didn't see 12tone's video as an "elaboration", although maybe my use of "refute" was a bit strong. And 12tone's own description of his video (see the last few sentences) presents this as at least a partial counter-argument to Adam's position.
At least, that was my interpretation.
"fight me Adam" was the best bait line to get me here.
music theory has a huge amount of structure dedicated to rhythm and pitch, but has almost nothing for timbre. it would be nice to have some concrete terminology for describing the spectral content of a sound
IANAL, but this sounds like the classic case for trade secrets type protections (the classic example of which is the cokecola formula). it has value mainly in being secret, and publishing in some form them to get protection would probably be counterproductive, and this would basically protect them from direct theft but not from reinvention
When talking about recorded sound, there are at least 2 ways to look at it. One is the sound as it is recorded/mixed, meaning the guitar tone, the synth patch, the snare timbre. The other is the recorded sound itself. One I don't think is copyrightable (usually), the other is most assuredly protected by copyright.
Example, you hear a fantastic snare sound on a recording. You love the sound of the drum, the EQ, the verb etc. You set about re-creating that sound. You record your own snare, in your own space, add your own EQ, compression, verb etc and are able to get the exact sound, or at least so close no one could tell the difference. This should never be copyrightable.
But, if you sample that snare and use that, that is a timbre that is copyrightable. Strictly speaking it isn't so much the sound itself that is being copyrighted, but the fixation of that sound in the recording. In that sense, however, the owner of that recording DOES own that sound.
Another example of this would be if someone uses the same synth patch to record a part vs sampling the patch off a copyrighted recording and uses that to record something new.
It is the difference between the P (in a circle) and C (in a circle) copyright. The former is the copyright of the recording, the latter is general copyright. But both are copyrights that are owned.
I would say with fair certainty that saxophone mouthpiece makers were experimenting with and advertising different mouthpieces for different tone qualities prior to the Hammond, but I love the concept of the argument.
The ondes martenot was invented in 1928. What Wikipedia calls “later models [existing in 1987]” could “simultaneously generate sine, peak-limited triangle, square, pulse, and full-wave rectified sine waves, in addition to pink noise, all controlled by switches in the drawer”, which might have been a response to the drawbar organ, or may have got there first.
"... nobody tell the lawyers..." This is good life advice.
I don't know about the arguement when it comes to guitarists. Sure, they might be associated with a certain tone, but, on studio albums at least, which are in my opinion the most iconic, the producer plays a huge role in the sound of the guitars on the final recording. Especially back in the 60's and 70's. I'd say it was at least a joint effort of sorts, and producers often have their own distinct tone, they bring to recordings.
I for instance once listened to an album by the danish band Gasolin that was produced by Roy Thomas Baker who previously worked with Queen. And, the tone of the guitar sounded quite similar to Brian May, not 100 %, of course, but pretty close.
Of course famous guitarists are the ones on the album covers and on stage, so by iconic association they kinda get the full credit. But yeah, they often had help, some times from a producer, or some times even from techs and engineers mixing the sound for the audience in attendance.
Watching that left hand (i'm a righty) at work is fascinating.
Not that it matters in any way, but like instruments, trumpet mute quality depends on the company/ brand and most trumpet players refuse to play on certain mutes because they don’t feel right.