how do you know the brilliant song you just wrote isn't in fact merely remembered?

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i mean, how would you go about checking?

― mark s (mark s), Sunday, 18 May 2003 21:06 (twenty-two years ago)

i don't mean the words, i mean the melody

― mark s (mark s), Sunday, 18 May 2003 21:07 (twenty-two years ago)

When Paul McCartney wrote "Yesterday"
he was SURE, at first, that he was ripping off another song.
George Harrison wasn't so lucky.
There's no "melody database," so just don't sweat it. If you
really think it's brilliant, share it with us and we'll be
your watchdogs.

― squirl plise (Squirrel_Police), Sunday, 18 May 2003 21:14 (twenty-two years ago)

is melody the same as a chord progression? is the same chord progression played with diff. numbers of notes the same song?

― vahid (vahid), Sunday, 18 May 2003 21:15 (twenty-two years ago)

Last week I brought a new song to my band that we all really liked before I realized it was a cross between the verse of "Didn't We Deserve a Look At You the Way You Really Are" by Shellac and the chorus of "Rodeo in Joliet" by the Jesus Lizard. But we've decided to keep it.

The key to writing a great new song is not avoiding influences, but hiding them in new and exciting ways.

― Famous Athlete, Sunday, 18 May 2003 21:16 (twenty-two years ago)

Famous Athlete OTM.

A chord progression is exactly as it sounds -- the sequence of chords in a musical phrase. Usually working as a riff and/or supporting a melody.

― Jody Beth Rosen (Jody Beth Rosen), Sunday, 18 May 2003 21:19 (twenty-two years ago)

i dunno, athlete, that sounds like plagiarism.

wait, then what's the melody? isn't that a sequence of chords, too?

― vahid (vahid), Sunday, 18 May 2003 21:20 (twenty-two years ago)

it's a sequence of notes.

― Jody Beth Rosen (Jody Beth Rosen), Sunday, 18 May 2003 21:22 (twenty-two years ago)

why couldn't the melody be a sequence of chords? because if melodies are just sequences of notes, we're going to run out of songs soon!

― vahid (vahid), Sunday, 18 May 2003 21:24 (twenty-two years ago)

You'll never know for sure, even if no one points out a resemblance with another song. I suspect a lot of unconscious ripping off goes on fairly regularly, in all fields. I know when I wrote for the music press there were two occasions when one writer recycled two of my better lines pretty much word for word a few months after they originally appeared, but I'm sure it wasn't intentional, and I didn't even bother pointing it out to them. I don't see the point in getting worked up about it. Obviously, in the music world, it's better if someone spots it before the copyright lawyers, but if you spend your life worrying about that, you'll never write another tune. Produce and be damned. I mean, I don't see Noel G lying awake nights.........................

― Jamie Conway (Jamie Conway), Sunday, 18 May 2003 21:24 (twenty-two years ago)

i don't mean the words, i mean the melody

― Famous Athlete, Sunday, 18 May 2003 21:27 (twenty-two years ago)

Athlete's correct, it's difficult and not nessecary to be
100% original (though kudos to those who are) if we are sure
to insert our own individuality and add a unique twist.
If in doubt, change a couple of chords/notes and you're set.

― Squirrel_Police (Squirrel_Police), Sunday, 18 May 2003 21:28 (twenty-two years ago)

just say "Mark Sinker" a lot. then you don't have to worry.

― Anthony Miccio (Anthony Miccio), Sunday, 18 May 2003 21:32 (twenty-two years ago)

i didn't write it i just whistle it a lot when i'm not thinking

it's pretty

― mark s (mark s), Sunday, 18 May 2003 21:38 (twenty-two years ago)

why couldn't the melody be a sequence of chords?

Melody = one note played by itself
Harmony = two or more notes stacked against one another

Chord progressions rely on a dominant internal melody mapped out by the relationships between particular chord voicings.

― Jody Beth Rosen (Jody Beth Rosen), Sunday, 18 May 2003 21:40 (twenty-two years ago)

What's the problem, isn't "remembering a melody" considered an act of creativity yet?

― Curt (cgould), Sunday, 18 May 2003 21:40 (twenty-two years ago)

one note played by itself!!

― mark s (mark s), Sunday, 18 May 2003 21:42 (twenty-two years ago)

fine. a linear progression of individual notes with no additional voicing.

― Jody Beth Rosen (Jody Beth Rosen), Sunday, 18 May 2003 21:46 (twenty-two years ago)

sorry i couldn't resist

― mark s (mark s), Sunday, 18 May 2003 21:49 (twenty-two years ago)

Oh, but if that E-flat would play itself. Oh yes.

― Curt1s St3ph3ns, Sunday, 18 May 2003 21:49 (twenty-two years ago)

i fucking KNEW someone wd call me on that

― Jody Beth Rosen (Jody Beth Rosen), Sunday, 18 May 2003 21:49 (twenty-two years ago)

i once saw someone on "name that tune" do it after just one note!

― mark s (mark s), Sunday, 18 May 2003 21:52 (twenty-two years ago)

I could do Barenaked Ladies' "One Week" in two.

― Anthony Miccio (Anthony Miccio), Sunday, 18 May 2003 21:54 (twenty-two years ago)

mark, why don't you just type out the notes (as letters, like G#) in order on google and see if it comes up on someone's tablature page?

― vahid (vahid), Sunday, 18 May 2003 22:37 (twenty-two years ago)

You'd have to transpose them for all 12 notes in the octave. Not that there's anything wrong with that.

― Curt1s St3ph3ns, Sunday, 18 May 2003 22:38 (twenty-two years ago)

That wouldn't work Vahid.

― Squirrel_Police (Squirrel_Police), Sunday, 18 May 2003 22:39 (twenty-two years ago)

as far as name that tune goes there's an old trick based on the first two notes of 12 different famous jazz and showtunes which is helpful for people like me trying to learn perfect [or just better] pitch. you know the songs, then you remember that, say, maria from west side story is an augmented fourth. then whenever you want an augmented fourth you just really quickly hum the first two notes of maria.

different people have different lists of songs.

― mig, Sunday, 18 May 2003 22:42 (twenty-two years ago)

what??? why not, squirrel p? just now i busted some killer:

B B C C D B B C C D B B C C D B B C C

but then google tells me it's some blues traveler tune called "drop some NYC"

― vahid (vahid), Sunday, 18 May 2003 22:45 (twenty-two years ago)

when I suspect that something I'm working on is eerily familiar or simply too good/obvious to be something noone else has already done, I just try and throw a few twists into it, weird rhythmic accents or time signature, or put it in a completely different genre/context, so that even if someone can call me on copping the tune, i'm still doing something creative with it.

― Al (sitcom), Sunday, 18 May 2003 23:49 (twenty-two years ago)

I wouldn't worry about it too much. It's been going on forever (or, you know, as long as people have been whistling, singing and humming). Just because some folks in the last few centuries actually got around to writing down the notes and copyrighting them hardly means they were the first ones to use those melodic sequences. I noticed a while ago, for example, that St. Etienne's "Like a Motorway" is melodically very like the traditional ballad "Silver Dagger," which goes back at least many hundreds of years. I thought it was cool that the tune was being revisited and kept alive (probably unconsciously).

― JesseFox (JesseFox), Monday, 19 May 2003 02:13 (twenty-two years ago)

It's remembered. Fuck it. One time I had this beat in my head, it was really funky - then I went home and realized it was the foundation for all disco, rock and pop music all over the world. Kinda like the time I figured out that you could cover 90% of the world's music by playing on either the black keys only or the white keys only.

― Millar (Millar), Monday, 19 May 2003 02:31 (twenty-two years ago)

Black keys only?

― Squirrel_Police (Squirrel_Police), Monday, 19 May 2003 03:00 (twenty-two years ago)

whoda thunkit, right?

― Millar (Millar), Monday, 19 May 2003 03:02 (twenty-two years ago)

black keys only = Severed Heads "Dead Eyes Opened"

― electric sound of jim (electricsound), Monday, 19 May 2003 03:03 (twenty-two years ago)

john gardner to thread.

― jack cole (jackcole), Monday, 19 May 2003 03:33 (twenty-two years ago)

ok i wz just whistling it at work and my boss joined in and said "i know that tune!" and sang the next line = i didn't "write" it :(

it is from some dumm film probbly

― mark s (mark s), Friday, 30 May 2003 14:48 (twenty-two years ago)

Not exactly the same thing, but I once thought that I had made up a joke, and then I found the same joke (with slight differences in setting, characters, but essentially the same) in a joke book. I guess it's possible that I thought of it independently - I don't remember ever hearing it before.

― o. nate (onate), Friday, 30 May 2003 15:29 (twenty-two years ago)

Just throw in some fucked-up "wrong" note every once in awhile. It'll make it more interesting anyway.

"Under Pressure" goes dum-dum-dum-da-da-DA-dum
"Ice.." goes dum-dum-dum-da-DA-DA-dum

― dave225 (Dave225), Friday, 30 May 2003 16:52 (twenty-two years ago)

http://sdam.com/pseudocool/images/cryptom.gif

― Cozen (Cozen), Friday, 30 May 2003 17:09 (twenty-two years ago)

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