Using Stems & samples

[ThatPartyGuy]

Would it be "cheating" to use paid or free samples in your track?

Also found some stems of decent bounce tracks and thought about using the bassline or kick.

[Narukami]

Well, as long as the stems/samples are royalty free then you shouldn't have to worry much. Really it's the legal issue where you should be worried about most. Other than that, go crazy.

Tbh, some people are way too worked up about this. They'd rather design or record their own sounds instead of using presets or samples that are available. I mean, it's not a bad thing that they'd do it manually, there's a lot of things you can learn from doing it yourself but if there's a sound, sample, stem, template, preset, etc that sounds good, why not just use it? Saves you lots of time and there's the added benefit that it was created by professionals, so it sounds good out of the box.

[Mitch]

I prefer to chop up and manipulate a sample/preset if you're going to use it. Otherwise it's just going to sound the same as the 5 thousand others that have used that.

To answer your question, as long as it's from a royalty free pack, you're ok legally.

[OxyKon]

usually it's a tricky road when using samples, some people have based their entire music careers off of them, just take a look at DJ Shadow, everything he uses in his tracks are samples.

Like Mitch was saying if it's from royalty free packs you'll be fine, a lot of samples out there you can't use unless you're going to pay back the original artist what they're entitled too, but most won't even take notice unless you start making money off of those tracks with the samples.

[ThatPartyGuy]

ah cheers guies. already had a go at making my own. just want to get straight to it and not loose the sound i got in my head XD.

but i'll defs look into the royalty free aspect