Bryan Pringle v. William Adams Jr et al

Filing 218

DECLARATION of Frederic Riesterer in support of MOTION for Summary Judgment 159 Statement of Frederic Riesterer in Support of Motion for Summary Judgment filed by Defendants David Guetta, Frederick Riesterer, Shapiro Bernstein and Co. (Miller, Donald)

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UNITED STATES DISTRICT COURT

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CENTRAL DISTRICT OF CALIFORNIA

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SOUTHERN DIVISION

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6 BRYAN PRINGLE, an individual,
Plaintiff,

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vs.

9 WILLIAM ADAMS, JR., STACY
FERGUSON, ALLAN PINEDA and
10 JAIME GOMEZ, all individually and
collectively as the musical group The
11 Black Eyed Peas, et al.,
Defendants

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Case No. SACV 8:10-CV-01656 JST
(RZx)

STATEMENT OF FREDERIC
RIESTERER IN SUPPORT OF A
MOTION FOR SUMMARY
JUDGMENT BY THE
DEFENDANTS SHAPIRO,
BERNSTEIN & CO, INC.,
FREDERIC RIESTERER AND
DAVID GUETTA

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I, FREDERIC RIESTERER, state the following:
1.

I am a musician, author-composer and co-author, with David Guetta, of

the music of the hit song “I Gotta Feeling” that was recorded and released by the
group The Black Eyed Peas in the spring of 2009.
2.

I have personal knowledge of the facts stated hereafter and I submit this

statement in support of the motion for summary judgment filed by the Defendants
Shapiro, Bernstein & Co., Inc., David Guetta and myself, and to address certain
accusations in a statement presented by Mr. Pringle against this motion.
3.

As I testified during my June 23, 2011 deposition and in my November

9, 2011 Declaration, I independently created the guitar twang sequence that appears
in “I Gotta Feeling” by selecting a guitar preset from Plugsound, composing notes
and chords and applying reverb effects using Plugsound, some equalization and
compression effects using Logic Pro, and sound distortion effects using the

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STATEMENT OF
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1 CamelPhat software, without copying anything produced by Mr. Pringle. In fact, it
2 is my understanding that Mr. Pringle has now admitted that neither I, nor any of the
3 other Defendants could have sampled the guitar twang sequence from Pringle’s song
4 “Take a Dive“ (Dance Version).
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4.

Mr. Pringle is now putting forward certain arguments to explain why he

6 supposedly could not have copied the guitar twang sequence of the isolated guitar
7 part of “I Gotta Feeling” that the Defendants made available on Beatport.com. It is
8 my understanding that Professor Paul Geluso will respond to these arguments and
9 others that were brought up in Mr. Pringle’s most recent statement. However, I
10 submit this Declaration in order to respond to certain accusations Mr. Pringle made
11 concerning alleged “inconsistencies” in the music files I produced and concerning
12 certain statements I made previously as part of this action.
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5.

It is my understanding that Mr. Pringle suggests that the music creation

14 files I produced are not really the original files I used for the music of “I Gotta
15 Feeling” in 2008. In reality, the music creation files I produced, including the
16 “David Pop Guitar” Logic session files, were copied from my backup external hard
17 drives that I use to store my music. The original computer that I used to create the
18 music for “I Gotta Feeling” (which was initially known under the name “David Pop
19 Guitar”) was a Mac Power PC G5. This computer model was available on the
20 market between 2003 and 2006, when it was replaced by the more advanced version
21 Mac Book Pro (Intel). In April 2010, before I became aware of the potential claims
22 of Mr. Pringle, my Mac Power PC G5 being outdated, I gave the computer to a
23 friend, as I often did when I upgrade computer systems. However, as I explained
24 above, I had already saved the “David Pop Guitar” Logic session files and the
25 related music creation files on my external hard drives, which I have actually
26 produced as part of this lawsuit.
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6.

Before producing my music creation files, I opened the “David Pop

28 Guitar” Logic session file to make sure I was to producing the correct file, because I
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STATEMENT OF
FREDERIC RIESTERER

1 have other Logic session files that relate to other songs that are not part of this case.
2 When I opened the “David Pop Guitar” session file, my computer was connected to
3 a Motu 828mk3 Hybrid Firewire/USB Audio Interface I had purchased in the spring
4 of 2011. This is why there is a reference to “828mk3 Hybrid” in the
5 “documentData” file in my “David Pop Guitar” Logic session file. Indeed, the same
6 “documentData” file contains references to other external audio equipment I have
7 used over the years, such as the Roland “JV-1080”, Roland “Juno-106” and “Akai
8 S3200” synthesizers. Thus, the reference to my Motu “828mk3 Hybrid” Audio
9 Interface simply comes from the fact that the “documentData” Logic file is logging
10 the various devices that were connected to my computer over the years. This does
11 not in any way affect the music I created for “I Gotta Feeling”.
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7.

It is my understanding that Mr. Pringle also suggests that a reference to

13 “Disk 1 Tb Litige (def) OK: David Pop Guitar: Audio Files” in my “documentData”
14 Logic file is proof that I altered these Logic files for the purposes addressed in this
15 lawsuit. This is totally untrue. Although the French word “litige” is sometimes used
16 as an equivalent of “litigation”, it is also used to convey the term “disagreement”.
17 While we were creating the music for “I Gotta Feeling”, David Guetta and I were
18 sometimes in disagreement about the sound to be used for that part of the song. To
19 remember that we had to discuss these disagreements before completing the song, I
20 saved the file with the word “litige” and later added “OK” when the disagreement
21 was resolved.
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8.

I also understand that Mr. Pringle is relying on the fact that my music

23 creation files include several creation and alteration dates, including before I started
24 working on the music of “I Gotta Feeling” in 2008 and after “I Gotta Feeling” was
25 released in the spring of 2009. These various file dates can, however, simply be
26 explained by the fact that I stored several music samples that I had created as part of
27 prior musical projects, which is frequent when creating electronic music, and by the
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STATEMENT OF
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1 fact that I later opened and used some of the musical samples for other projects after
2 “I Gotta Feeling” was released.
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9.

Furthermore, none of the files Mr. Pringle mentions match the guitar

4 twang sequence that is the object in this case, but rather, these files are drum sounds
5 and effects settings, such as “Clave Percussion Loop 01.caf”, “loop kick.aif”,
6 “0.6s_Snare Hall.SDIR”, “_VEE Electro Loop 003.wav”, “_VEH3 Clas 001.wav”.
7 The only exception is the file called “Guitar Lead 1.aif”, which is the guitar twang
8 sequence of “I Gotta Feeling” and therefore contains the October 17, 2008 creation
9 date, which is the date at which I started working on the music of “I Gotta Feeling”.
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10.

Lastly, it is my understanding that Mr. Pringle refers to alleged

11 discrepancies between my November 2011 Declaration in support of the
12 Defendant’s motion for summary judgment and a declaration I submitted at the
13 opening of the case in 2010. However, I already explained during my deposition in
14 June 2011 that I misunderstood part of the 2010 declaration, because there was not
15 enough time to translate it into French (my mother tongue) as it had to be filed with
16 the court within less than twenty-four hours in order to respond to an emergency
17 motion filed by Mr. Pringle.
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Specifically, although my 2010 Declaration indicated I took the entire

19 guitar twang sequence from the Plugsound musical library, it was due to the fact I
20 misinterpreted the term “guitar twang sequence” which I thought meant “guitar
21 twang sound”. (Riesterer Deposition 184) (“For me, we are not talking about
22 gimmicks [another word for ‘sequence’], but rather about sounds that I used to
23 create my gimmick, that is how I understood it [in my 2010 statement].”) I also
24 explained, in my June 2011 deposition, as well as in my November 2011
25 Declaration, that although I had used a Plugsound guitar sound, I composed each of
26 the notes and each of the chords of the “I Gotta Feeling” guitar twang sequence
27 (Riesterer Deposition 166), (“Q. And then, did you take the Plugsound sounds and
28 did you play each note, each chord? A. Yes. Q. So I understand, are you saying that
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STATEMENT OF
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1 you composed the sequence of notes using individual sounds from the plug[sound]
2 box? ... A. Yes.”); (November 9, 2011 Riesterer statement, ¶ 7) (“After having
3 selected the ‘Strat with SM57 Stereo Spread’ preset [from Plugsound], I composed
4 each note and each chord of the [“I Gotta Feeling”] guitar twang sequence by
5 playing them on my keyboard”.).1
12.

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I was therefore surprised to learn that Mr. Pringle continued

7 nevertheless to suggest that I extracted the entire guitar twang sequence of “I Gotta
8 Feeling” from Plugsound and that the guitar twang sequence of “I Gotta Feeling” is
9 the same as that guitar sequence of “Love is Gone”. As I indicated above, both these
10 affirmations are false.
I certify, under penalty of perjury, in accordance with the laws of the United

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12 States of America, that the preceding is true and correct.
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Executed this 5 day of January 2012, in Paris, France.

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[signature]____

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FREDERIC RIESTERER

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I also explained in my November 9, 2011 statement that the Plugsound guitar
26 preset I had used to create “I Gotta Feeling” was slightly different from the guitar
27 preset I used to create “Love is Gone”, and that I had used different notes and
musical chords, as well as different sound processing effects in “I Gotta Feeling”
28 compared to “Love is Gone” (November 9, 2011 Riesterer statement, ¶¶ 7 n.2, 9).
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STATEMENT OF
FREDERIC RIESTERER