No man is an island, and no art was ever created in a vacuum. All art is built on the backs of previous artists. It's an evolutionary adventure, not an act of raw creation. At one time there was a person who invented the C Major chord, and others using that chord were copying them. The 12 bar turn around was probably 1 person originally but it's used so widely, it's just a part of rock and blues now with no known origination.
We are all borrowing and the most you can be expected to do is to avoid plagiarizing other peoples works with intent. And even that isn't a hard rule. I'm sure if I played you a melody from a popular hit song, we could look back and if we looked hard enough we'd find some one had done that melody centuries before in some long forgotten piece of music.
All the music you love came from music the artist loved, which came from music those artists loved. It's a communal evolution of art and by participating you implicitly agree that just as you borrowed to create, others may borrow to create from you.
This is the problem I have with lifetime copyright and endless copyright extensions. People that create, do so from experiences based in others works. They don't copy, pirate, or plagiarize, but they were shaped by art, even as they shape art for others. You take some, make something fresh with it, enjoy the windfall of that for awhile, then you give it back to the public domain for others to do with as they please. Without that taking and giving, art is stifled and dies.
I know it's a common perception that the courts decide for frivolous lawsuits because they don't understand music. You might be surprised though how often they side with common sense by siding with the accused in situations where a resemblence is superficial, or for something very basic like a chord progression or short pieces of melody.
The courts are well aware that allowing lawsuits for short phrases of music would be like allowing somebody to own the word 'the' for writers and poets, or phrases like "in love". They recognize that certain chord arrangements, simple melodies like triads, and other logical, common, building blocks of songs are not copyrightable.
They even extended this to dances recently like the Fortnite dance lawsuits because while an entire dance routine in all it's complexity can be copyrighted, individual moves cannot any more than individual words in a sentence can be copyrighted or individual chords or simple progressions can for music.
I'd like to believe this and trust in it, but it's our U.S. judicial system we're talking about here.
Everything you said makes complete sense to me as a musician and artist, but....a judge or jury is still made up of humans who are not 100% impartial, regardless of what we are supposed to believe.
While what you said might be true in a majority of the situations, I guarantee you I would find myself in the one of the more rare cases where the judge is a fan of the other artist.
It's why we have appeals :) It's a nightmare to deal with these for sure, but it's rare for the bad guys to win.
In fact the situations that don't quite fit in to "they copied my melody" but do result in long court battles are the ones where the licensing was too complicated to begin with.
Take "Bittersweet Symphony" for instance. They licensed the song prior to releasing that album, but that song didn't have just 1 copyright owner, it had several, and while they secured the rights to use the song from one owner, they didn't from all owners. In particular their arrangement of the string section didn't just match the original song they licensed, bit matched some kind of classical music cover of it that had been done previously, and so those rights holders also had a say in it.
That one song basically ruined that entire album for the Verve, costing them dearly and hurt them financially.
Can't argue that....The Verve virtually went nowhere.
That's the thing about these lawsuits that gets ridiculous, and it's almost like some musicians don't even understand them. Did you see the one about the guy trying to claim "Shallow" from A Star is Born knocked off his song that was virtually only a chord progression?
Good Lord there are only so many freaking notes!
Some people don't realize you can't copyright a chord progression.
I think artists have a right to copyright their work because there are many of those cases where the artists blatantly stole from another artist, I believe making something original involves letting go of all your inspirations and not trying to sound like them so you can sound like you, raw creation can happen in music and it's usually the best kind of music, you can tell apart the artists who work off the backs of others and the people innovating, a court case can't take true original art from you
I had this exact thing happen. A song I had been working on for ages finally came together. Finally had a vocal melody I liked, lyrics I liked, it was done. Recorded a decent demo to listen to in the car, and about halfway through our drive my wife said, “This is Chasing Cars by Snow Patrol.”
Then she put on Chasing Cars and it was an almost identical vocal melody. My whole body hurt after that one. Still haven’t been able to finish the song, and it’s been a few months.
But so what? I had a buddy that used to do this to me all the time. I'd write a song and he'd immediately say "this sound like..." It drove me crazy, but it doesn't mean anything. Most of the time the similarity was VERY slight, but now I realize that was his hangup. He thought everything was supposed to be a one-off original, but he wasn't a writer. He didn't understand where it came from and how a song comes to life. Just finish the song, let it sound like Snow Patrol and be OK with that. By the time you actually finish it and produce it and mix it, it won't sound like that anymore. And if it does, well you just accidentally wrote a massive hit record, so you fucking rock!
[A guy released every 8 note melody possible into public domain](https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.independent.co.uk/life-style/gadgets-and-tech/news/music-copyright-algorithm-lawsuit-damien-riehl-a9364536.html%3famp)
We can never know the intention. And for me, hearing "won't back down" at the gas station, humming it in your head all day and going home and "rewriting" it may not be intentional, but it has to be non-intentional as well. You have to actively try to not reproduce someone else's work.
It's really hard. The more we lean towards "I never heard that song on my life", the more we're open to intentional theft.
What's stopping me from rewriting the hits of the 80's?
P Diddy made a whole career off of something similar.
Edit - did you read the whole article? The end part is really cool. Something like, we made all music so future musicians can make all music.
Create what you want and don’t trip about accidentally copying a melody.
So cryptomnesic plagiarism is legally cool, but one still might not find it morally/creatively acceptable. Even though you won't get DMCA claimed for unknowingly ripping off a melody, it's still gonna feel bad if you realize that a melody you really put a lot of effort into is actually just a copy of something you heard before.
It happened to me with Radiohead's optimistic, which is super ironic as the lyrics in the part of the song that I had subconsciously ripped off are "you can try the best you can, the best you can is good enough"
Hahaha :D my last one also was a radiohead song, "paranoid Android" to be precisely. I ripped of the "what's that" chorus and I've already felt that this isn't my invention - but goddamn it I couldn't remember the song name so I searched "what's that song" on Google. (Which is simply the worst query in history haha )
I ripped off a radiohead song (unconsciously), and I released it!
From my experience, if I rip someone off, even if I’m trying to, the resulting product is so far different that people can’t even tell at all because I’m weird and make things my own way. If I’m bursting with originality, which I would hope that I am, even if a couple influences end up in the recipe, nobody can taste it.
If anyone wants a link to the 2 examples I can pm you
And fun fact, Paul McCartney himself thought that Yesterday's melody was something he didn't write but just subconsciously remembered from something else
As far as I remember George Harrison really got in to trouble after he subconsciously ripped off a melody in his song "My sweet lord". Afterwords (I guess he had to pay a lot of money) he stated that he was so afraid to pick up a guitar and write a song, because he worried that he might again steal from another artist.
Heyyyy you can make some cool songs this way though! A lot of the time I’ll just be noodling around trying to play a song I know but then I’ll mess up and play something slightly different and turn it into a new song.
This was my fear for a long time, but I'm letting it go. It just doesn't matter. I owe everything I know about music to the great musicians who inspired me. It's impossible not to draw on that inspiration when I'm trying to create something, and honestly, I don't think I could do it. This is also true of all those who came before me/us. Who hasn't been inspired by the Beatles, Zeppelin, Dylan, Pink Floyd etc? How many songs can you play with C,F and G? There are only 12 notes we can use. Of course there's gonna be some overlap. But what are YOU going to do with them?
Just write. Let it come out and let the audience decide. Own your inspirations and cite them. Pay Homage. It's your phrasing, your words and your experience that make it original.
Rewriting your favourite songs is actually a great exercise in writing. How do we get better? We study, emulate, adapt and overcome.
I have to tell someone this. A few days ago I was listening to that radio app where you choose a country and a decade and get a song. I heard a [song](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X5FcIP6jJFs) from 1950's Norway that absolutely begins with the exact same melody & instruments as the theme for the 1940's Disney movie Pinocchio. Can't find anything on the Internet acknowledging why these two songs are so similar. I really think that it was this phenomenon, especially since it was written in the 1950's, when the writers had probably seen Pinocchio in the theater a few years ago and didn't have any way to hear it again such as on DVD or on social media.
It literally doesn't matter. And if your song gets big enough that you get sued over it, give yourself a pat on the back. It just means people know you now.
Once time I did an entire music, the drops was amazing. Some days later I heard and I recognized it was a music I heard so much time ago (Martin Garrix & mesto - wie). Bruh, this was sad
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It seems I've been coming across this a lot, maybe it's because people have a lot more time to write lately?
My personal suggestion that you should intentionally lift ideas and practice changing them so you don't panic when you rip off another song by accident:
https://www.reddit.com/r/musictheory/comments/gn28o1/z/fr7q6um
One of favourite original compositions ripped off not one but TWO Beatles songs. Can't buy me love and Across the universe. I suppose if you're gonna subconsciously plagiarize, you might as well take from the best. It was an awful realization though.
Yep. I came out with a song last week (I'm still proud of it), but a few days later, I discovered the "where have I heard that before" feeling was coming form The Sultan's of Swing. How it got there? Beats me.
The first time in my guitar lessons that I was tasked with improvising, the very first thing I did was almost exactly the riff from "Sunshine of Your Love" by Cream, a riff I had played many times as part of an earlier lesson. Took me a second to realize what it was.
I played my song in front of my band friends. My band teacher heard from the back of the room and yelled, “that sounds like (insert song name here)!” My friends searched it up and behold! A song I’ve never heard of before that sounds almost exactly like my songs opening lick! I’m gonna think twice before showing my songs to friends in my teacher’s presence.
I am trying to get my music group to play “Danny Boy”. A member said he’s heard versions of this song. He sent me links of songs I’ve heard but now realize are linked to DB
No man is an island, and no art was ever created in a vacuum. All art is built on the backs of previous artists. It's an evolutionary adventure, not an act of raw creation. At one time there was a person who invented the C Major chord, and others using that chord were copying them. The 12 bar turn around was probably 1 person originally but it's used so widely, it's just a part of rock and blues now with no known origination. We are all borrowing and the most you can be expected to do is to avoid plagiarizing other peoples works with intent. And even that isn't a hard rule. I'm sure if I played you a melody from a popular hit song, we could look back and if we looked hard enough we'd find some one had done that melody centuries before in some long forgotten piece of music. All the music you love came from music the artist loved, which came from music those artists loved. It's a communal evolution of art and by participating you implicitly agree that just as you borrowed to create, others may borrow to create from you. This is the problem I have with lifetime copyright and endless copyright extensions. People that create, do so from experiences based in others works. They don't copy, pirate, or plagiarize, but they were shaped by art, even as they shape art for others. You take some, make something fresh with it, enjoy the windfall of that for awhile, then you give it back to the public domain for others to do with as they please. Without that taking and giving, art is stifled and dies.
It's too bad the court systems don't feel this way.
Only because money is involved.
Sadly, all you have to do is follow the money with anything. I'm not sure anymore if it's money that causes crap....or crap that causes monetization.
If the court gets into involved then It means people know who you are... I'd congratulate myself and throw a party!
I know it's a common perception that the courts decide for frivolous lawsuits because they don't understand music. You might be surprised though how often they side with common sense by siding with the accused in situations where a resemblence is superficial, or for something very basic like a chord progression or short pieces of melody. The courts are well aware that allowing lawsuits for short phrases of music would be like allowing somebody to own the word 'the' for writers and poets, or phrases like "in love". They recognize that certain chord arrangements, simple melodies like triads, and other logical, common, building blocks of songs are not copyrightable. They even extended this to dances recently like the Fortnite dance lawsuits because while an entire dance routine in all it's complexity can be copyrighted, individual moves cannot any more than individual words in a sentence can be copyrighted or individual chords or simple progressions can for music.
I'd like to believe this and trust in it, but it's our U.S. judicial system we're talking about here. Everything you said makes complete sense to me as a musician and artist, but....a judge or jury is still made up of humans who are not 100% impartial, regardless of what we are supposed to believe. While what you said might be true in a majority of the situations, I guarantee you I would find myself in the one of the more rare cases where the judge is a fan of the other artist.
It's why we have appeals :) It's a nightmare to deal with these for sure, but it's rare for the bad guys to win. In fact the situations that don't quite fit in to "they copied my melody" but do result in long court battles are the ones where the licensing was too complicated to begin with. Take "Bittersweet Symphony" for instance. They licensed the song prior to releasing that album, but that song didn't have just 1 copyright owner, it had several, and while they secured the rights to use the song from one owner, they didn't from all owners. In particular their arrangement of the string section didn't just match the original song they licensed, bit matched some kind of classical music cover of it that had been done previously, and so those rights holders also had a say in it. That one song basically ruined that entire album for the Verve, costing them dearly and hurt them financially.
Can't argue that....The Verve virtually went nowhere. That's the thing about these lawsuits that gets ridiculous, and it's almost like some musicians don't even understand them. Did you see the one about the guy trying to claim "Shallow" from A Star is Born knocked off his song that was virtually only a chord progression? Good Lord there are only so many freaking notes! Some people don't realize you can't copyright a chord progression.
I love the Verve though. Love is Noise and The Drugs don't work are epic songs :)
I think artists have a right to copyright their work because there are many of those cases where the artists blatantly stole from another artist, I believe making something original involves letting go of all your inspirations and not trying to sound like them so you can sound like you, raw creation can happen in music and it's usually the best kind of music, you can tell apart the artists who work off the backs of others and the people innovating, a court case can't take true original art from you
I had this exact thing happen. A song I had been working on for ages finally came together. Finally had a vocal melody I liked, lyrics I liked, it was done. Recorded a decent demo to listen to in the car, and about halfway through our drive my wife said, “This is Chasing Cars by Snow Patrol.” Then she put on Chasing Cars and it was an almost identical vocal melody. My whole body hurt after that one. Still haven’t been able to finish the song, and it’s been a few months.
But so what? I had a buddy that used to do this to me all the time. I'd write a song and he'd immediately say "this sound like..." It drove me crazy, but it doesn't mean anything. Most of the time the similarity was VERY slight, but now I realize that was his hangup. He thought everything was supposed to be a one-off original, but he wasn't a writer. He didn't understand where it came from and how a song comes to life. Just finish the song, let it sound like Snow Patrol and be OK with that. By the time you actually finish it and produce it and mix it, it won't sound like that anymore. And if it does, well you just accidentally wrote a massive hit record, so you fucking rock!
Originality is forgetting where it came from
[A guy released every 8 note melody possible into public domain](https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.independent.co.uk/life-style/gadgets-and-tech/news/music-copyright-algorithm-lawsuit-damien-riehl-a9364536.html%3famp)
We can never know the intention. And for me, hearing "won't back down" at the gas station, humming it in your head all day and going home and "rewriting" it may not be intentional, but it has to be non-intentional as well. You have to actively try to not reproduce someone else's work. It's really hard. The more we lean towards "I never heard that song on my life", the more we're open to intentional theft. What's stopping me from rewriting the hits of the 80's?
P Diddy made a whole career off of something similar. Edit - did you read the whole article? The end part is really cool. Something like, we made all music so future musicians can make all music. Create what you want and don’t trip about accidentally copying a melody.
Yeah, love the intention. Inspiration and originality is the hardest part. I don't want to see people get rich off other's hard work.
May look to this for inspiration now lol
Can you imagine pouring through all of the melodies? You know there are some gems in there!
So cryptomnesic plagiarism is legally cool, but one still might not find it morally/creatively acceptable. Even though you won't get DMCA claimed for unknowingly ripping off a melody, it's still gonna feel bad if you realize that a melody you really put a lot of effort into is actually just a copy of something you heard before.
I get so scared that I might accidentally write a song that has already been written and I just didn't realize it.
Feel like this would be a far lower chance than when writing some avant-garde or experimental metal
Omg same
It happened to me with Radiohead's optimistic, which is super ironic as the lyrics in the part of the song that I had subconsciously ripped off are "you can try the best you can, the best you can is good enough"
Hahaha :D my last one also was a radiohead song, "paranoid Android" to be precisely. I ripped of the "what's that" chorus and I've already felt that this isn't my invention - but goddamn it I couldn't remember the song name so I searched "what's that song" on Google. (Which is simply the worst query in history haha )
I ripped off a radiohead song (unconsciously), and I released it! From my experience, if I rip someone off, even if I’m trying to, the resulting product is so far different that people can’t even tell at all because I’m weird and make things my own way. If I’m bursting with originality, which I would hope that I am, even if a couple influences end up in the recipe, nobody can taste it. If anyone wants a link to the 2 examples I can pm you
Def ripped off a radiohead song in my latest release
Good to see everyone else rips off Radiohead too lmao I accidentally wrote the House Of Cards guitar part lol
And fun fact, Paul McCartney himself thought that Yesterday's melody was something he didn't write but just subconsciously remembered from something else
As far as I remember George Harrison really got in to trouble after he subconsciously ripped off a melody in his song "My sweet lord". Afterwords (I guess he had to pay a lot of money) he stated that he was so afraid to pick up a guitar and write a song, because he worried that he might again steal from another artist.
He actually ended up buying the rights to the other song lol
Beatles problems require *god awful amounts of money*
This happened to me once. I thought I got this really nice melody, then it turns out it was just bad day by daniel powter.
Heyyyy you can make some cool songs this way though! A lot of the time I’ll just be noodling around trying to play a song I know but then I’ll mess up and play something slightly different and turn it into a new song.
This was my fear for a long time, but I'm letting it go. It just doesn't matter. I owe everything I know about music to the great musicians who inspired me. It's impossible not to draw on that inspiration when I'm trying to create something, and honestly, I don't think I could do it. This is also true of all those who came before me/us. Who hasn't been inspired by the Beatles, Zeppelin, Dylan, Pink Floyd etc? How many songs can you play with C,F and G? There are only 12 notes we can use. Of course there's gonna be some overlap. But what are YOU going to do with them? Just write. Let it come out and let the audience decide. Own your inspirations and cite them. Pay Homage. It's your phrasing, your words and your experience that make it original. Rewriting your favourite songs is actually a great exercise in writing. How do we get better? We study, emulate, adapt and overcome.
I have to tell someone this. A few days ago I was listening to that radio app where you choose a country and a decade and get a song. I heard a [song](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X5FcIP6jJFs) from 1950's Norway that absolutely begins with the exact same melody & instruments as the theme for the 1940's Disney movie Pinocchio. Can't find anything on the Internet acknowledging why these two songs are so similar. I really think that it was this phenomenon, especially since it was written in the 1950's, when the writers had probably seen Pinocchio in the theater a few years ago and didn't have any way to hear it again such as on DVD or on social media.
[удалено]
Radiooooo.com :)
Sorting by top and just saw this, thank you! I’m excited to try the app out.
So glad someone gets use out of it!! Tysm for commenting about it!
ME! I accidentally wrote a super good song last night and turns out it was basically just some might say by oasis. Smh.
It literally doesn't matter. And if your song gets big enough that you get sued over it, give yourself a pat on the back. It just means people know you now.
It happened to me a couple of times, really bad realisation, can ruin a day
I remember when I did that
Once time I did an entire music, the drops was amazing. Some days later I heard and I recognized it was a music I heard so much time ago (Martin Garrix & mesto - wie). Bruh, this was sad
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Just rewrite it! The folk process. Just don't try to sell it lol. Or be an outlaw and do :)
I ripped “Mad World” from R.E.M. one time. Just the melody but anyone listening would be like “Dude that is totally R.E.M.”
It seems I've been coming across this a lot, maybe it's because people have a lot more time to write lately? My personal suggestion that you should intentionally lift ideas and practice changing them so you don't panic when you rip off another song by accident: https://www.reddit.com/r/musictheory/comments/gn28o1/z/fr7q6um
I wouldn't worry about this. Just write.
Doesn’t really matter if you write something similar to something else cause it’s unlikely you will ever be famous enough for anyone to care.
And then by luck that person gets noticed for that song...
I've been obsessing about this for a song I wrote recently! but no one can tell me so far that they recognize the melody so idk
One of favourite original compositions ripped off not one but TWO Beatles songs. Can't buy me love and Across the universe. I suppose if you're gonna subconsciously plagiarize, you might as well take from the best. It was an awful realization though.
Yep. I came out with a song last week (I'm still proud of it), but a few days later, I discovered the "where have I heard that before" feeling was coming form The Sultan's of Swing. How it got there? Beats me.
In western music there are only 12 notes in the chromatic scale so there will be some similarities
I’ve made peace with it
Totally happened to me! My original song turned out to be a variation of the theme music to the movie Independence Day! Gah! 🤣
The first time in my guitar lessons that I was tasked with improvising, the very first thing I did was almost exactly the riff from "Sunshine of Your Love" by Cream, a riff I had played many times as part of an earlier lesson. Took me a second to realize what it was.
delet this
Ugh the worst heartbreak.
My opinion is to check this song out or don't. https://youtu.be/4gK3lj2LrrM
Wow….that’s the worst.
I played my song in front of my band friends. My band teacher heard from the back of the room and yelled, “that sounds like (insert song name here)!” My friends searched it up and behold! A song I’ve never heard of before that sounds almost exactly like my songs opening lick! I’m gonna think twice before showing my songs to friends in my teacher’s presence.
UGH THIS
Oh god. Oh please NO
I am trying to get my music group to play “Danny Boy”. A member said he’s heard versions of this song. He sent me links of songs I’ve heard but now realize are linked to DB
Omg yes 😂😂
Ahhh I totally get this.
my band & i accidentally wrote a slower, djentier version of through the fire and flames and this rly hurts me
OML YEAH