I have "written" guitar riffs that I later found out were from a song I hadn't heard in 5+ years. I had honestly thought that I wrote it.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cryptomnesia
As you see, that’s just part of being human!
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
#32For 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…
Did the judge ever play guitar? I hear anyone can.
Re: Lana Del Rey, Radiohead, and the Difficulty of Making Original Music
#33I have "written" guitar riffs that I later found out were from a song I hadn't heard in 5+ years. I had honestly thought that I wrote it.
Ha, my most recent example of this is "Jane Says". In retrospect I'm not sure how I played it for a week without realizing what song I was playing.
Re: Lana Del Rey, Radiohead, and the Difficulty of Making Original Music
#34Nowadays it wouldn't be hard to build a program that generates a 500+ hour long instrumental piece which contains 80%+ of all song progression sequences. Then release it under "free for commercial use" and nobody can every sue anyone else in the future. Thank you very much
Re: Lana Del Rey, Radiohead, and the Difficulty of Making Original Music
#35Earlier quoted context omitted.
And it's the same melody. It really is. Open and shut case.
An open and shut case for the Hollies. How do Radiohead feature? If I copy a song, then lose an infringement suit to the original composer, can I really claim a subsequent infringement?
Radiohead only gave up a tiny percentage of their rights on "Creep", so yeah they can still make claims on it.
Re: Lana Del Rey, Radiohead, and the Difficulty of Making Original Music
#36It id absurd to copyright a melody IMO.
Consider flamenco. It has about 10 base styles each with a specific scale, melody (yes you are reading right!), beat, and structure. Then there are a variety of variations, that perhaps change the structure or mix in another melody.
Between the base melody parts, there are falsetas which are unique melodies. These are also shared between guitarists. Some are considered popular and are untraceable, if their first appearance is near the time of the invention of recording devices.
The lyrics are also shared between singers. In fact it is quite rare for a singer to compose any new lyrics of his own!
Furthermore flamenco does not really have “songs” like pop music has. There is simply performance, where singers, guitarists, dancers and palmeros play. Never a specific song, but just one style so that the structnure is agreed and known. No one owns a verse, a melody or a dance move.
Flamenco is a music world totally incompatible with the western notion of copyright, because it falls apart. Really the o ly thing that can be agreed on is that one particular recording of a performance can have copyright.
Re: Lana Del Rey, Radiohead, and the Difficulty of Making Original Music
#37I 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…
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 :)
Re: Lana Del Rey, Radiohead, and the Difficulty of Making Original Music
#38Earlier quoted context omitted.
I'd say “any form of creativity/expression” means you take something and don't copy it 1:1. Copying 100% of a (lyric|composition|: not okay, taking a subset of it: fine. Admittedly, it has to be a bit more sophisticated than that. For instance, getting away with just omitting the very last word would be ridiculous. > If you know anything about writing music you should know why chord progressions can’t be copyrighted.…
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 relation to the whole, the more likely the use will be considered fair.
If a song has 500 words then wouldn't you say copying 20 is fair?
Re: Lana Del Rey, Radiohead, and the Difficulty of Making Original Music
#39As 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…
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 copying, because of some form of legal MAD.
However, as sales are declining and it gets harder and harder to make a sustained living even for fairly popular artists, this will change more and more. Laws have been implemented almost solely in favor of copyright holders (=companies and usually not the artists) and in almost complete disregard for art.
There will be many more lawsuits of this kind in the future, and once the dam is broken, more large companies will jump in, too. Hobby musicians will get sued more and more, too, or at least their shares will be taken away from them.
The vast majority of all pop songs is not original in the pro-IP and anti-art sense that lawmakers have facilitated over time, so it's going to be a large bloody legal slaughtering for the remaining bread crumbs.
But maybe hobby music and private performances will benefit this in the long run. Mainstream music will become even less melodic and weirder than it already is, as these songs (e.g. in contemporary "R&B") are developed to avoid lawsuits while still kind of "sounding like a hit". It's a tricky business.
Re: Lana Del Rey, Radiohead, and the Difficulty of Making Original Music
#40For 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…
If I was a lawyer I'd strum those 4 open E chords on a guitar then play all three songs.
The Hollies - The Air That I Breathe, Radiohead - Creep, Lana Del Rey - Get Free
Then maybe I'd make some argument about anyone who made 3 left turns and a right turn to get to the court house today owes me a royalty for using my elegant route without my permission. If you want to get to the court house tomorrow you have to figure out any other permutation but mine.