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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

#131

Post by leejo »

cturner wrote: post #12
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

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…

> 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 once you start doing wacky things. Or maybe it will happen, but has not yet.

It happened twenty four years ago, they were called Autechre[1]. I'm sure someone was doing it before them. I have a theory that this came out of The Criminal Justice and Public Order Act of 1994, and electronic music actually benefited from the legislation in the long run, but I won't go into it here[2] & [3]

[1]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Autechre#Recording

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Criminal_Justice_and_Public_Or...

[3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anti_EP

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

#133

Post by xo5vik »

pault wrote: post #106
JohnStrangeII wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What we see right now is the beginning of the "intellectual property" lawsuit wave. Music producers, artists, and record labels have always known that pop music doesn't come out of thin air and is highly repetitive. For some popular chord progressions and main melodies you can literally find thousands of practically identical songs. Until recently, copyright holders have avoided lawsuits except in cases of blatant co…

What I can't figure out is how Ed Sheeran's "Shape of You" (TLC - "No Scrubs") and Portugal, The Man's "Feel it Still" (Marelettes - "Please Mr. Postman") flew under the radar. Are the big producers clearing melodies and chord progressions like samples now?

http://www.bbc.co.uk/newsbeat/article/39336424/no-scrubs-wri...

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

#134

Post by TheOtherHobbes »

coldtea wrote: post #91
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…

> 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. So, what's not to understand? Seems very well defined. Melodies and lyrics are more important than…

Exactly. Publishing in the music industry means melody and lyrics. Chord sequences aren't copyrighted unless they're outstanding and exceptional, and sometimes not even then.

Arrangements only matter if they're sold as sheet music.

Specific recordings and samples of specific arrangements are covered by a different kind of copyright ("mechanicals").

There is nothing arbitrary about this. Good melodies are incredibly hard to write, and certainly much harder than a generic chord sequence.

The industry has always had backrooms of songwriters - some famous, some not - working on new songs. Today the work is done by topliners who work exclusively on melody and lyrics.

The good ones are very in demand, even though most people have no idea who they are.

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

#135

Post by IAmGraydon »

rsfern wrote: post #125
IAmGraydon wrote: post #88

I read this article and have to admit that I instantly sided with Radiohead because I have a natural bias toward them and against Lana. I'm just not a fan of her music. Then I listened to her track. I'm very familiar with the Radiohead track. Radiohead is just plain wrong on this one. Here's the problem - your average jury/judge/lawyer does not have the required music theory knowledge to understand how asinine Radioh…

The rest of your post aside, Radiohead are still touring internationally and writing great music... their latest album was released less than two years ago

I know - I was being a bit snarky there because what they did was in bad taste, in my opinion. I'm actually a fan of their music, though they are no longer the huge commercial success that they were in the 90s.

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

#137

Post by yesenadam »

olavk wrote: post #112
jimnotgym wrote: post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Learn to play songs like "no surprises" Sorry if I gave the wrong impression here. I base my supposition about how Radiohead constructed their early hits from learning to play them. I like 'No suprises', which I learned for the vocal challenge, but I think this bears me out. IIRC the song opens with an arpeggio using a simple open-D shape behind a capo high up the neck which gives that interesting tone. The second…

So he is a musician creating original (even amazing, surprising and exotic) music by playing with and exploring ideas on a musical instrument. And you consider this as something less valuable than trying out "theoretical concepts".

Excellent point. Also, who cares if someone is 'a great guitar player' in the sense of mere technical virtuosity. Youtube is full of guitarist videos with GREATEST and !!!! in the titles, a million notes a minute, sound and fury signifying nothing.

Your comment reminded me of Hendrix - most if not all of what he did seems to fit under 'stuff found by messing around on a guitar, moving chords/bass notes around, experimenting with sounds', mostly with no 'theoretical base' whatever except for developing what sounded good, what was fun to explore. In a word, playing.

Personal note: Someone played me Radiohead a few years ago for a while, I'd never heard them before. I remember thinking - I can see why this would sound amazing/mindblowing to someone who'd never heard anything but mainstream/charts/popular/etc rock. Like someone who'd only seen Hollywood movies discovering the whole world of movie-making for the first time. (I'm into jazz, classical, funk, reggae, indian classical etc etc)

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

#138

Post by tejohnso »

onion2k wrote: post #117
tejohnso wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How do you know that a worthwhile check has anything to do with Radiohead's motives? What other artists are you implying belong to this group?

They sue artists who are successful and ignore smaller artists. Clearly it's about the money, otherwise they'd protect their songs against every infringement even if it costs them to do so rather than only protecting songs when there's the possibility of a pay out. These law suits are not about art.

I don't think it's clear at all. They could be ignoring smaller artists because:

  - They haven't heard of those smaller artists
  - They want to give the struggling small timers a break
  - They don't think it's worth their time because nobody is going to hear those small timers' songs anyway
  - They don't want to appear as though they are bullying vulnerable smaller artists
I think any of those options are more believable than the idea that a band worth tens of millions of dollars is suing just to pull in publishing royalties on a song that wasn't even one of the singles from an album that didn't even reach gold certification.

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

#139

Post by crazygringo »

TheOtherHobbes wrote: post #134
coldtea wrote: post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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. So, what's not to understand? Seems very well defined. Melodies and lyrics are more important than…

Exactly. Publishing in the music industry means melody and lyrics. Chord sequences aren't copyrighted unless they're outstanding and exceptional, and sometimes not even then. Arrangements only matter if they're sold as sheet music. Specific recordings and samples of specific arrangements are covered by a different kind of copyright ("mechanicals"). There is nothing arbitrary about this. Good melodies are incredibly h…

> There is nothing arbitrary about this. Good melodies are incredibly hard to write, and certainly much harder than a generic chord sequence.

Hmmm... that doesn't correspond with my experience at all.

Melodies are quite simple, conceptually -- there are only 12 notes.

Whereas for chords, I couldn't personally begin to count them, but according to the first source which popped up in Google, for four-note chords, there are 495. [1] And they're incredibly complex, with whole arguments (and probably dissertations) on how to properly categorize and name them and how they function.

In my experience composing, almost melodies feel like the easier part. Because it's only when you combine them with expressive and unique harmonies (chords) that they take on a distinctive personality and meaning of their own. Personally, I feel like the real creativity is in the harmonies, but the real point is that neither is meaningful without the other.

Example: hum "The Girl from Ipanema" to yourself without harmonies -- it's the most boring, repetitive thing ever. Then add harmonies -- suddenly it becomes a lot more reasonable that it's the second most recorded pop song in history (according to Wikipedia).

(Also, why compare "good melodies" with a "generic chord sequence"? Better to compare good with good.)

[1] https://www.premierguitar.com/articles/19696-digging-deeper-...

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

#140

Post by acobster »

> Sebastian Tomczak, an electronic musician from Australia, uploaded a ten-hour white-noise video to YouTube, and was promptly walloped with five infringement claims. YouTube’s automated Content ID system scans all uploaded videos against a database of copyrighted material; any overlapping content is flagged. When a supposed infringement is detected, the copyright owner can either have the video removed, or allow it to remain, and automatically garnish any advertising revenue that it might generate.

This kind of IP shenanigans is going to continue for as long as the burden of proof is on the party doing the "infringing." YouTube and platforms like it are built with this inherent bias toward copyright holders, despite the absurd frequency of false positives. On one hand, I can see how this might protect, say, indie film studios who don't have the resources to chase after everyone who posts their movies on YouTube illegally. At the same time, when a system's incentives result in bullshit like Fair Use protections being completely ignored[0], it's time for a new system.

Mammoth, centralized systems like YouTube are, unfortunately, still Really Hard to maintain without the backing of a proportionately mammoth company with lots of resources. You can be sure that that company's interest will often align with those of others with deep pockets. So in my mind, as with many of the big problems on today's internet, the technical aspect of this challenge really stems from centralization itself.

[0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nryFmUjtwEY

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