41–50 of 128 posts
This reminds me of Under Pressure and Ice Ice Baby, the latter also having to pay up.
In that case, the baseline was directly ripped off, it wasn’t just “sounded similar”, it was an actual sample.
Good video breakdown: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0ytoUuO-qvg
I wonder at what point similarities with past works becomes inevitable. There's only a finite amount of original music out there, especially if you're talking about the length of an average riff or motif, leave out a lot of the more extreme attempts of contemporary art music, and stick to what sounds pleasing in popular music genres. And the output of number of musical compositions seems only to be increasing. An int…
Good video breakdown: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0ytoUuO-qvg
> [...] in Dark Horse it's just the background texture for one of the verses. It has the same musical function as a chord progression or a drum groove: it serves to highlight the melody but it's not the song itself. Up until this point it seemed like only melodies could be copyrighted in the composition of song, however the recent court decisions surrounding Robin Thicke's Blurred Lines and Marvin Gaye's Got To Give You Up has thrown all of this into question.
> This is why the lawsuit demanded a trial by jury: because they wanted to confuse non-musician non expert jurors with fancy music theory jargon.
He also specifically calls out the expert witness, saying:
> You're doing it in a fairly intellectually dishonest manner because I sincerely doubt you would make the arguments that you made in court at [an] academic conference for example, or you wouldn't write them down in a scholarly article, because your academic peers would absolutely eviscerate you for saying some of those things -- and yet in front of a jury of your peers you said them.
On the plus side, looking forward to the coming total legal meltdown of country music
Good video breakdown: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0ytoUuO-qvg
The "prior art" from 1984 he mentions is radically different in the note pattern used which alone defeats that entire line of argument. Similarly, reaching back to classical music to talk about modern synth beats is a red herring. All he succeeded in doing here was showing that there wasn't actually prior art.
He does a bit on how the pagan aspects of the lyrics and video are irrelevant, but proving harm is crucial to a legal case. If the music is indeed copyrighted, then he could easily be harmed by the associations that would negatively affect his own song (and most in the US would recognize pagan themes as decidedly at odds with Christian ones).
The final blow is recognition and feel. A huge number of people would recognize Dark Horse exclusively by the playing of that short set of notes much as they could instantly recognize Billie Jean by its opening rift (or any number of other songs). This alone indicates that the notes in question are more than superficial.
Likewise, would the song have been successful without their support? It's doubtful as they try to add a crucial layer of sound over the otherwise very drab and forgettable (if not outright distasteful) melody.
If the notes are derivative and add substantially to the new work, then there is a case here.
EDIT: I say this as someone who doesn't like the current copyright system (either its interpretation or length)
16 notes in the same sequence? that's too big of a coincidence
I wonder at what point similarities with past works becomes inevitable. There's only a finite amount of original music out there, especially if you're talking about the length of an average riff or motif, leave out a lot of the more extreme attempts of contemporary art music, and stick to what sounds pleasing in popular music genres. And the output of number of musical compositions seems only to be increasing. An int…
So many of the compositions along that tract are made up of three to five notes in a limited variety of voicings and arrangements.
I - III - V - IV
Try Johnny Be Goode. Chuck Berry has his reputation but he could have pulled a move like this a large number of times by now [and somehow hasn't! (don't quote me on that, though)
I (4 Bars) - III (2 Bars) - I (2Bars) - V (2 Bars) - I (4 Bars)
Or something like that. But there's 90% of the song, repeated over.
Good video breakdown: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0ytoUuO-qvg
The whole channel really. If you ever felt like taking something apart to see how it works, in some of his videos he does that with songs. I didn't know people had access to stems of popular songs. And then there's music theory. It's like neuroscience. You push some piano keys (or what have you) and certain feelings appear. It's like programming but your whole work is presented to the user and there are no security issues. Really fun stuff.