resembling another song

[TaurusT]

Any of you had this situation? You compose a song, get really excited about it, then someone else says "hey! that sounds exactly like xxxxx, are you ripping off?!". You then have a look at xxxxx song, and holy jesus, how is this possible, it sounds almost exactly like your own melodies! Even the chords are the same. Suddenly your cool song isn't so cool anymore, you feel like a bad joke, but you refuse to start changing things, because you know when you composed it it came from inside.

 

However, getting it released and distributed on CD might give some problems.. no? How do you see this? And are there any legal dangers?

 

 

[Bridog6996]

Um, yeah, that has happened to me before. Not so much with melodies, but with the chord changes. One time I was writing a tune and suddenly realized that I was using the exact changes to Beatrice by Sam Rivers. I kept going, though. Harmony can't be copyrighted, so it's not plagiarism. Another time I wrote a tune that used the first four chords of Dogs by Pink Floyd, but with the chords lasting a measure apiece instead of four (and it was in 7/8 time). Again, I didn't realize I was doing it at the time. I guess sometimes the sound you want to hear is a sound that somebody else already heard.

[TaurusT]

Mcbump

[key-bored]

It happens to everyone i think. I just go back and change bits of the song...like tempo and the pattern of the chords etc.

 

Thing is, no-one owns a chord riff, so usually its just a matter of changing a few tiny things.

[Gismo Recording]

If it's just the chords, then no big deal. If the melody is too similar then I have to change something.

[Phil W]

suddenly realized that I was using the exact changes to Beatrice by Sam Rivers

 

What a stunningly beautiful song that is. I saw Sam do a very nice version of that in London last year.

 

I wonder how often we write melodies and don't realise that subconsciously they have come fom elsewhere.

 

[Tony Bennett]

Ive only just started writing, Ive got a few cool tunes done, but I notice this happens quite frequently. Its hard to write pop/rock tune and not stumble all over The Beatles, The Stones, Brian Wilson etc. Damn Them! I typically just try and find an odd note to throw in, go with a chord inversion, change up the timing.

[Joe P]

Taurus,

This happened to me trying to pen a jazzy instrumental. My main idea is too close to Coltrane's "Impressions" to keep. Nothing else about it is like "Impressions", but that main idea has to go.

Regards,

Joe

[cd8]

The other day I was throwing away papers and found one with some chord changes I had wrote maybe a year ago... I didn't recognise them, so I sat down at the piano and played it...I inmediately started to think of a melody and recorded it. I think the chord changes are probably from a song by somebody else, yet even playing them I can't remember where they are from! Is this ripping off?

[NoahZark]

I composed a piece on piano several years ago that I swore was my own creation. Then, while listening to U2's The Unforgettable Fire, I realized that I had subconsciously simply copied a melody and chord progression from a minor track on that album, which I'd never paid much attention to on previous listens.

 

To answer the OP's last question, yes, there are absolutely legal dangers associated with publishing a song that is too similar to another already-published work. For one of the most famous examples, read up on the copyright litigation that arose as a result of the similarities between George Harrison's "My Sweet Lord" and Ronald Mack's "He's So Fine" (made famous by the Chiffons). In that case, the court determined that even though Harrison did not intentionally copy the music from He's So Fine when writing My Sweet Lord, it was nonetheless still copyright infringement due to the strong similarities between the two songs.

 

In short, if your work is too similar to another work (and therein lies most of the heavy lifting in these types of cases), and if it's been shown that you had "access" to the prior copyrighted work, you could have trouble. So, be careful and perhaps admit to yourself (as I had to with my U2 example above) that what you thought was your own work was really just a recreated memory of someone else's.

 

My two cents,

Noah

[Phil W]

Taurus,

This happened to me trying to pen a jazzy instrumental. My main idea is too close to Coltrane's "Impressions" to keep. Nothing else about it is like "Impressions", but that main idea has to go.

Regards,

Joe

 

But then the melody of Impressions is very similar to 'Pavane' by Morton Gould.

 

http://www.marklevine.com/images/pavane.jpg

 

http://www.marklevine.com/images/impressions.jpg

 

( http://www.marklevine.com/saywhat2.html )

 

 

 

And . . .

 

"Davis's infatuation with Jamal may have even been the catalyst for jazz's modal revolution. On October 25, 1955, Jamal recorded an arrangement of Morton Gould's "Pavanne" (available on the 1989 CBS/Portrait reissue Poinciana). In the middle of the arrangement is a brief interlude in which Jamal plays a D minor 7 vamp, then modulates the vamp up to E-flat minor 7. The vamp bears a striking similarity to Davis's "So What," which uses that same progression. Jamal's "Pavanne" predates "So What" by three and a half years.

 

Plus, as Jamal vamps, Crawford plays a melody that is note for note the same as John Coltrane's on "Impressions." Crawford's melody predates "Impressions" by six years."

 

(Jamal quoting the classical piece too probably and imfluencing Trane.)

 

http://halgalper.com/18_interviews/ahmadinterview.htm

 

 

[dementedchord]

yeah it can be a bit disheartening to find youv'e rewritten something else... but we all do hommage to our influences right??? as a weird aside i had an even stranger felling one time while on the road we used to play stump the band with the guitarist... this guy seemed to know everthing ever written... any how he starts to do this beatle tune and i'm singing along... he stops and asks where i got that part??? i start to argue that it's on the record... he and a couple others are "no way man" and a couple days later i hear it on the radio.... damned if what i was singing is'nt there... ends up it was "my part" i'ld been singing it since a child...