As I understand it (though I may be wrong) in music sampling cases, it doesn’t matter if the “sample” is using an actual clip from a recording or if were recreated from scratch using a new media (e.g. direct midi sequence), if a song sampling another song is recognizable it is still infringing.
Oh, the day when an artist could sample other artists without attribution and royalties is long gone. The music labels are very hard on this these days.
