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Lana Del Rey, Radiohead, and the Difficulty of Making Original Music

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Re: Lana Del Rey, Radiohead, and the Difficulty of Making Original Music

#61

Post by hashkb »

ebbv wrote: post #6
cJ0th wrote: post #4

As a hobby music producer I just can't wrap my head around the logic behind copyright infringement. It's so arbitrary. It's illegal to steal a melody but sophisticated chord progressions are fine. It's illegal to copy the text of even the simplest verse but reverse engineering some complex synthesizer sounds is fine. Although I personally strive for it, I don't think originality is a point worth discussing. Music is…

That sounds reasonable but how do you define “any form of creativity/expression” legally? That’s the problem. If you know anything about writing music you should know why chord progressions can’t be copyrighted. There’s only 12 notes, there’s not that many unique chord progressions to be found in the Standard I/IV/V pop music format. Melodies and lyrics, on the other hand, there’s a nearly infinite supply. The proble…

You said "there's not many chord progressions to be found inside [a chord progression]".

Pop music is free to get more complicated, using reharmonization, voice leading, instrumentation and every other trick in the "real music" book and stop 1/4/5ing us so hard. We (the audience) just love repetitive bullshit too much. It's our fault.

Jazz, although built on a (less) restrictive harmonic foundation, tends to not have this problem, because the musicians and the audience are more talented.

Re: Lana Del Rey, Radiohead, and the Difficulty of Making Original Music

#62

Post by jdietrich »

d13 wrote: post #37
cturner wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Western tonality has some rules. Composers can operate outside of that if they want. With computers, a single composer could make up a new set of rules for every piece. You can turn a drum beat into a note by accelerating the wave form, invent your own scales. It is interesting that even electronic artists tend to operate within the constraints of the western tradition. It is probably a struggle to find an audience o…

Electronic artists are limited by the rules programmed into their software, and very few people realize how severely limiting those rules are - they make 99% of the decisions for you. The fundamentals are never questioned, but it's only by questioning those fundamentals that true can innovation happen. If you want a mainstream audience, fine, if not, throw your laptop out the window :)

>Electronic artists are limited by the rules programmed into their software, and very few people realize how severely limiting those rules are - they make 99% of the decisions for you.

That isn't remotely true. Yes, you can choose to quantize to a 4/4 grid, but that isn't mandatory. You can choose to operate in equal temperament, but it's relatively straightforward to work microtonally in most DAWs, particularly Reaper. Hugely popular instruments like Xfer Serum, ZynAddSubFX and UVI Falcon have full support for microtuning.

IMHO, it's far easier to make properly weird music in software than with traditional instruments. You have a vastly greater range of timbral choices, you have total control over intonation and you can program complex polyrhythms that would be far beyond the abilities of most professional musicians. If you really want to go balls-out on the weird, just learn Pure Data - there's literally nothing that it can't do.

Re: Lana Del Rey, Radiohead, and the Difficulty of Making Original Music

#63

Post by jimnotgym »

petre wrote: post #57
sova wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Did the judge ever play guitar? I hear anyone can.

The judge doesn't need to play guitar. S/he could just summon in court an independent party that can play guitar and ask questions relevant to the case.

I think the OP was making a joke. Radiohead had a contemporary song to Creep called 'Anyone can play guitar'

Re: Lana Del Rey, Radiohead, and the Difficulty of Making Original Music

#64

Post by hashkb »

cJ0th wrote: post #38
QAPereo wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So let’s say I don’t copy 100%... but I asymptotically approach it. At what decimal do I infringe, or as long as I never reach unity am I cool?

Judges are humans not computers. The downside is, some sentences are incredibly unfair. The upside is, it works pretty well most of the time. Just look at the Fair Use doctrine. It seems to work reasonably well for literature. Why can't it apply to music? In particular this: > The third factor assesses the amount and substantiality of the copyrighted work that has been used. In general, the less that is used in relat…

Depends which 20. "I knew she was gonna meet her connection" maybe... "you can't always get what you want, but if you try sometimes you might find you get what you need" def not ok.

Re: Lana Del Rey, Radiohead, and the Difficulty of Making Original Music

#65

Post by hashkb »

kijin wrote: post #18
ebbv wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That sounds reasonable but how do you define “any form of creativity/expression” legally? That’s the problem. If you know anything about writing music you should know why chord progressions can’t be copyrighted. There’s only 12 notes, there’s not that many unique chord progressions to be found in the Standard I/IV/V pop music format. Melodies and lyrics, on the other hand, there’s a nearly infinite supply. The proble…

The market can decide whether or not it wants all those stale remakes, whether with or without legal protection.

That's the problem. The market likes repetitive crap. Artists need to be forced by the courts to be creative. Apparently.

Re: Lana Del Rey, Radiohead, and the Difficulty of Making Original Music

#66

Post by Joeboy »

jimnotgym wrote: post #7

For anyone who doesn't play the guitar, 'Creep' and the Hollies track is is derived from come feature a rather obvious chord progression. Physically it is the result of sliding an open E chord down the neck to produce higher notes then, la piece de resistance, taking a finger off. Radiohead added a killer feature of turning the gain up on the amplifier for the chorus, genius. It's the kind of thing teenagers everywhe…

With a few jazzy exceptions, you can play any pop/rock song by sliding an open E chord up and down the neck and sometimes taking a finger off. All you're saying there is that the song is constructed of major and minor chords, which I'd guess a comfortable 95% of pop/rock songs are (guitar-based or otherwise).

Edit: Also you can write any computer program by simply pressing the buttons on a computer keyboard in the right order.

Re: Lana Del Rey, Radiohead, and the Difficulty of Making Original Music

#67

Post by hashkb »

jimnotgym wrote: post #7

For anyone who doesn't play the guitar, 'Creep' and the Hollies track is is derived from come feature a rather obvious chord progression. Physically it is the result of sliding an open E chord down the neck to produce higher notes then, la piece de resistance, taking a finger off. Radiohead added a killer feature of turning the gain up on the amplifier for the chorus, genius. It's the kind of thing teenagers everywhe…

What's really awesome is that when you become "good" at guitar you realize the mind melting shredding you hear is also super obvious. Your fingers just do it because you're on a guitar. All lawsuits involving guitar should be settled on stage. Every other instrument knows guitarists are cheaters.

Re: Lana Del Rey, Radiohead, and the Difficulty of Making Original Music

#68

Post by tr0ut »

mping wrote: post #8
tr0ut wrote: post #5

I think this is just the nature of music. It requires a rather rigid system which does not offer enough diversity to be completely unique. All musical genres need to at least share the same root elements for association. https://youtu.be/Co9mW_9hH2g

This is not true. It may be true for modern pop, but I can give lots of examples where originality abounds: Classical music, Jazz and its derivatives, prog rock. I never understood why people listen to radio music and don't even know what is out there, it's like seeing the same dull basic painting over and over again.

No it is true. I said all music genres share a common ground. We can take all genres of music and boil them down to a structure. What makes Jazz different than Heavy Metal? Or better, what makes Bebop different than Big Band or Fusion? They all share the "Jazz" element that we recognize as being uniquely Jazz. Its the Rhythms, notes, chord progression, modals, timbre and harmonies. You get the idea.

Re: Lana Del Rey, Radiohead, and the Difficulty of Making Original Music

#69

Post by cJ0th »

delinka wrote: post #53
cJ0th wrote: post #4

As a hobby music producer I just can't wrap my head around the logic behind copyright infringement. It's so arbitrary. It's illegal to steal a melody but sophisticated chord progressions are fine. It's illegal to copy the text of even the simplest verse but reverse engineering some complex synthesizer sounds is fine. Although I personally strive for it, I don't think originality is a point worth discussing. Music is…

"...releasing a cover without permission...is not ok." I have to disagree with this. And it's already allowed with Compulsory Licensing. The writer of the song gets their cut as specified in the law. As to the rest of your comment, I don't think you mean "broad protection." Broad protection is exactly what allows 'silly' lawsuits. Something that's "too similar" gets into trouble because the protection for the origina…

Sorry, I was a bit unclear as English is not my mother tongue. I thus expressed my thoughts not correctly/clumsy.

"cover without permission": I meant to say stealing everything from a song (text+music) 100% while claiming it is your own.

"broad protection": apparently not the correct word. I meant to say, the law should be less strict.

> Now, making a transformative work based on others is where I feel things get interesting and there should be lots of flexibility and leeway for the transforming artist.

yeah, I agree.

Re: Lana Del Rey, Radiohead, and the Difficulty of Making Original Music

#70

Post by cJ0th »

hashkb wrote: post #64
cJ0th wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Judges are humans not computers. The downside is, some sentences are incredibly unfair. The upside is, it works pretty well most of the time. Just look at the Fair Use doctrine. It seems to work reasonably well for literature. Why can't it apply to music? In particular this: > The third factor assesses the amount and substantiality of the copyrighted work that has been used. In general, the less that is used in relat…

Depends which 20. "I knew she was gonna meet her connection" maybe... "you can't always get what you want, but if you try sometimes you might find you get what you need" def not ok.

And why is it no okay? (Apart from that it is 21 words not 20 but I did not mean to imply it has to be exactly 20. There is room for human common sense and yes, it is not perfect and sometimes unjust.)
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