How to make the sounds from Madonna 'Vogue' with DRC
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In the world of pop music, a little bit of controversy can generate a lot of publicity. No stranger to flirting with the provocative, Madonna has certainly leveraged her fair share of attention grabbing behavior across her metamorphic career. An artist who has reinvented herself so many times that the process has become almost cyclical, parallel to current cultural trends. Aside from a series of questionable outfit choices, Madonna has also been at the centre of a whole different type of controversy, common for many big name artists with equally big record companies behind them, the legal kind of controversy.
We all know that samples without proper clearance are bad, and by using them you run the risk of legal action from money-grabbing copyright holders, but Madonna’s 1990 smash hit ‘Vogue’ proved to be an interesting case, a court case in fact, when Madonna and record producer Shep Pettibone were sued in 2012, over the horn sounds that appear in the track. A staggering 22 years after Vogue was released, VMG Salsoul, copyright owners of the track ‘Ooh I Love it (Love Break)’ by ‘The Salsoul Orchestra’ claimed ownership of the horns sample featured on Vogue. (Thanks to the wonders of modern copyright ID software!)
In a significant victory for Madge, the judge ruled that Vogue’s inclusion of the tiny 0.23 second clip to be ‘trivial’ in terms of infringing anyone’s rights, and that the average audience would not be able to recognise an appropriation of the original work.
We’re not taking any chances with today’s DRC Sound Design Tutorial though, steering clear of the horns altogether, Lucas shows you all the moves to recreate the strings, bass and keys from the track for yourself.
Click here to download the Ableton project file
All you need is your own imagination,
Team Imaginando