Without too much in details, I’m a home performance dj/producer. I’m working on an album based around Shaw Brothers film, original story, but I’ve been going through my huge catalog of Kung-Fu flicks to sample vocals for use – to put the storyline together and sound more authentic than me just narrating. I’ve hit a couple snags though, one is creatively – I just don’t like my plot anymore, so I’m scratching it and rewriting, but the big one is I don’t want to get killed by legal.

I purposely don’t sample, even for hip-hop beats because the combination of hiding the sample verse clearing it sound like more headache than just being 100% original, but this is a gray area where I can’t side step it and ‘sound good’. I’ve played a female voice before and it was HORRIBLE haha. But not only do I not know the steps to clearing movie samples (especially for non-Shaw Bros content where it can be hard to find the source), but frankly for where I am, I don’t want to pay anyone, nor have the base for it to be worth it.

But

I have an EDM based album I’m working on also, based on (no story elements just in name and theme) an 80s movie series, and I’m running into the SAME ISSUE. Do I just sample? Do I try and recreate the sounds with lots of voice and filter work? Higher voice actors off Craigslist? I know the right thing to do, but for an artist on my level, it seems a bit much.