Performers Rights quandry

Yokenthwate

been here a while....
Hi guys, I have an academic question for you regarding Performers Rights. We know that if you perform on a record you will be remunerated. But let me give you an example of something which seems to be a little unclear for me.

Let's say I have recorded a drummer, but while his performance was ok, I am unhappy with the tone of the drums or the way he hits the drums, whatever. So I use his performance to re-trigger samples of my choosing. If I completely replace all the drum sounds from his recording so that what he has played is no longer on the finished artifact, is the drummer able to claim royalties for the performance?

Next let us now say that instead of re-triggering samples, I instead extract groove information from his performance, and then apply this information to a beat I have sequenced. If I have programmed a beat to be the same as what the drummer originally played I would in effect have the same result as if I used the same samples for the re-triggering process. Can the drummer claim royalties for this performance?

And what if, in both cases of using the re-triggering method or extracting groove information, I apply totally different samples, does this make a difference?

The example of the drummer seemed to me the easiest way to explain this question. What if, for any reason I did it to a different instrument so for example if I had a vocal (lets say no lyrics just the voice) and applied the same method of extracting the groove, and midi note information and applied it to a synth. What I want from doing this is maybe not the sound of the voice but just the participatory discrepancies of the vocalist to which I then apply to a completely different sound. To me the situation is similar as the drummer, I am taking the essence of the performance and re contextualizing it. But does the vocalist have any right to this - the performance information comes from them, but the actual sound of their voice is not on the final artifact.

I tried to speak to PPL regarding this and all the guy I spoke to told me was that re-triggering samples gives a more of a direct contribution to the record, even if the actual performance was not on the final record (although this was of his opinion and wasn't sure what the official line of this was).

Any thoughts on this (especially if you are an expert on the legalities of this :) )

Thanks!
 
yes - because he played the original material you used as triggers he has contributed to the making of the final recording
 
Yes, which one, using the triggered samples?

My main focus here is on rights of the performer when groove information has been extracted.

Cheers
 
if you use his original performance as a trigger for other samples he is still playing those samples
 
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