Daft Punks's "Discovery" : Classic or Dud

"Too Long" definitely not too long, maybe my favorite track on the album

Who’s playing the guitar solos on Discovery btw? Or are those sampled too?

I don’t know if I suck at looking for credits but I haven’t seem evidence of the solos being sampled but there’s no guitar credits either.

Mostly Guy-Man:

de Homem-Christo estimates that half of the sampled material on Discovery was actually played live originally. “I play more guitar usually,” he says, “and Thomas plays more keyboards and bass.” But they both play all three instruments. “There's no ego involved. We don't argue about who's playing what. You can get the sound of a guitar with a keyboard, or the opposite. We don't really care about who's doing what as long as it's well-done. At the same time, when you use samples, you don't have this problem. When you use a sampler, nobody plays on it, so the problem of the ego of the musician is not really there. For everything that we do, no matter how you get to the results, the important thing is the result.”

Discovery includes only four outside samples — not much for a contemporary dance record. “Around this, we play all the instruments, which are mainly vintage keyboards and guitars, so it's a mixture of a few samples and us playing around it. We don't always use the original sounds of the keyboards or the guitars, because we put on so many effects or distortions so that sometimes you think it's a guitar but maybe it's not.”

The French twosome also like to alter their original source material to create something new, whether it's a synth or a guitar. “We don't use too much of the original sound of the instruments; it's really more about how we put effects on it after that,” he explains. “It's not like we're making a track and saying, ‘Oh yes, I need a Flying V on this one.’ We take a guitar we have {usually a Fender Stratocaster} and then try to make it sound different with the effects.”

also

“On ‘Digital Love,’ you get this Supertramp vibe on the bridge,” remarks de Homem-Christo. “We didn't sample Supertramp, but we had the original Wurlitzer piano they used, so we thought it would be more fun to have the original instrument and mess around with it."

why don't you play the gaaaaaaaaame

only four outside samples

Uhh

lol yeah I haven't heard the record in a decade and I can already think of about seven

There’s only 4 credited samples on Discovery: Barry Manilow, Edwin Birdsong, George Duke and The Imperials.

From wikipedia:

A significant amount of sampling is present on the album. Rather than creating new music using only the samples, Daft Punk worked with them by writing and performing additional parts. The Discovery liner notes specify permitted use of samples for four tracks on the album: Part of George Duke's "I Love You More" is featured in "Digital Love"; Edwin Birdsong's "Cola Bottle Baby" was sampled for "Harder, Better, Faster, Stronger"; The Imperials' song "Can You Imagine" is used for "Crescendolls"; Barry Manilow's "Who's Been Sleeping in My Bed" is credited for "Superheroes". It is believed that "One More Time" contains a sample of Eddie Johns' song "More Spell on You", which was reported to be officially cleared despite it being uncredited in the Discovery liner notes.

Several websites list many other samples present on the album, but Bangalter has stated that half of the samples he had seen listed are not true. He also stated the sampling they do is legitimately done, not something they try to hide. Bangalter elaborated that the newly recorded elements were implemented in a way that was equivalent to "creating fake samples ... where people think there are samples from disco records or funk records." Guy-Manuel de Homem-Christo estimated that half of the sampled material on Discovery was played live and re-recorded by the duo, and emphasized that the resulting quality of the music was more important than the ego of who played which instruments.

theres a part that sounds like get down saturday night by oliver cheatham but its not sampled

I guess that means that besides those 4 samples, they deny the rest? I guess they’re avoiding a lawsuit, because even if they were recreating live a sample it still needs credit no?

The One More Time sample is 100% Eddie Johns and it has been proved in numerous youtube recreations.

I guess that means that besides those 4 samples, they deny the rest? I guess they’re avoiding a lawsuit, because even if they were recreating live a sample it still needs credit no?

― ✖✖✖ (Moka), Tuesday, February 23, 2021 10:24 PM (four minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

only if its a melody, not a texture or a particular wirlitzer or a rhythmic feel

Yeah I didn't mean the soundalike stuff like the Supertramp Wurlitzer, but actual samples audio. Like, there's no way the "High Life" sample was recreated. "Face to Face" also has some less obvious samples

“high life” is sped up tavares

One More Time's sample is a fifth that was cleared, but the deal apparently didn't require credit.

Bangalter suggested in 2007 that Sister Sledge, ELO and Cerrone on this list were not correct. It's possible that they were thinking in terms of a chunk of melody large enough to count for composition, or that inspired the track, rather than half a second of percussion.

i'm guessing they did just recreate most of the samples they did use and a lot of those "samples" are just tiny fragments so they could either get away with the recreation (because they aren't melodic content as deej said) or managed to negotiate deals where they didn't need to formally credit the samples or give writing credits like they did for the four they did credit. probably a mix of both. some of them are so obvious i figure they surely would have gotten sued by now if they hadn't done things properly

i know jens lekman managed to get away with the same sort of thing for night falls over kortedala, he talked in interviews about recreating most of the small samples he wanted to use to avoid having to pay for them and people have dug up a lot more than are credited, though they're generally small textural things. the biggest ones that form the backbones of songs etc. were all credited there

That’s true... I don’t know much about laws regarding samples but iirc if it’s tranformed in a way it doesn’t sound similar to the original or the sample is too short to be substantial you don’t even need clearance - the argument being that you’re not really doing any financial harm to the original artist.

That used to be years ago though, I’ve seen artists nowadays giving credit for even a second of sampling so I guess the rules could have changed in the past 20 years since Discovery was released.

The denying of samples is 1000% bullshit and they are trying to cover their asses. Dozens of youtubers with ++ abelton skills have recreated much of the album from the original samples.

wgaf

Dozens of youtubers with ++ abelton skills have recreated much of the album from the original samples

link some good ones?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I85DUucY_ek

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mofmkEmcsxE

etc.

the first one is only the one, known, apparently cleared sample from one song and sounds like dogshit* rather than a dazzling recreation

(*no shade on the ableton kid, who notes in the description that it is just the main beat and that it sounds bad and he used the wrong settings. this tweet is cool though)

second one is very well built but, if anything, seems like a stronger indication that they did replay and then sample the parts themselves :)

Man, Veridis Quo is so good. I love this whole album

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ecv1AbcHvbM

here's a shitty full album recreation someone put on youtube and at least some of the youtube comments didn't realise that's what it was lol. kinda fascinating as a project though

I'd relistened to Discovery a month ago for the first time in full in nearly 20 years and jesus does it hold up well. Non stop bangers.

The only "sample" on Discovery that wasn't actually a sample that I can think of, was when multiple sources back in the day cited that Voyager sampled Oliver Cheatham's "Get Down Saturday Night". That one I'm pretty sure was merely influenced by it.

Supertramp example is another one cited just upthread

my local shop had a copy of this for $19.99 and now they're listed on Discogs for $170 fuck offfffffff

I still have the CD I bought in 2001 <3

Here’s a better recreation for One More Time:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9sdtOpE_3aQ

Here’s a recreation of Face to Face using Evil Woman:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0iWl8n9wxlA

Also using Alan Parsons and Kenny Loggins in there.

Those are new to me I had no idea those were sampled in there too, but it sounds legit when you hear the result

High Life sample is also Tavares and it does sound sampled not replayed:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T5uMctGxJwI

They’re pretty ingenious samples I’ll give them that.

I have no idea how people even found them if not confirmed by DP themselves.

Face To Face video is great, ta

I love that they got Todd edwards to do straight ahead vocals over the dreamiest Todd edwards pastiche

High Life sample is also Tavares and it does sound sampled not replayed:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T5uMctGxJwI

― ✖✖✖ (Moka), Wednesday, February 24, 2021 11:15 AM (one hour ago) bookmarkflaglink

If they weren’t cleared they weren’t samples. They would have been sued into oblivion ages ago if someone else’s master recordings were included

Maybe they did some in the dark clearances but I’d suggest they recreated specific moments

As someone who owns a recording of Guy-Manuel and Thomas playing straight-forward rock instruments with extremely sub- to average talent, I'm rather amazed at these "oh if they said so then they must have replayed these complicated funk and disco licks that they purposely obscured heavily via cut-up then pitched/phased and reassembled" takes.

They were 18 years old when Darlin' was around, if that's what you're alluding to/humblebragging about. They could have learned more skills than that afterwards, surely.

just look at what time and success has done for maron's guitar playing

*have done. i went back and added time to acknowledge it has taken some time.

^^ human after all

As someone who owns a recording of Guy-Manuel and Thomas playing straight-forward rock instruments with extremely sub- to average talent, I'm rather amazed at these "oh if they said so then they must have replayed these complicated funk and disco licks that they purposely obscured heavily via cut-up then pitched/phased and reassembled" takes.

― Jersey Al (Albert R. Broccoli)

This is my take too. I don’t doubt there are recreations in here but judging by some of the videos above I think those are just samples that are so heavily chopped and edited that they got away with it.

what d-40 is saying is that they recreated the samples and chopped them up but I mean who cares imo

The process of finding the samples, cutting them up, then recreating them perfectly so they can be cut up again just to skip out on some sampling royalties would have been one hell of a task.

I'm sure the majority of these are samples and most of them got cleared. Perhaps some licensers stipulated they needed crediting while others didn't.

When did sample lawyering really come into play? It's not like Paul's Boutique comes with a big long list of tracks the Dust Brothers sampled. But I seem to remember the 2ManyDJs album (which I think came out a year after Discovery) causing a bit of a stir in that sphere of music law, with a whole lot of things being very difficult if not impossible to clear.