That’s the central idea in Spider Robinson’s “Melancholy Elephants”, that there are only so many pleasing combination of notes.
1 Like
2 Likes
Yes, I like how just because Skrillex may not have directly sampled the song in question, but rather may have heard it and decided to record his own version (complete with Get Out of Jail Free video), means that the similarity isn’t actionable. The courts have ruled that sampling requires consent, and this end-run around jurisprudence is childish, if not surprising in the least.
There are only a certain number of ways to arrange notes, especially when you get down to a riff of four notes.
For one thing, you’re going to get collisions like this just from random chance.
For another: I remember, years ago, I had a few notes stuck in my head that I just couldn’t remember where I got them. It turned out they were from the song Lux Aeterna from the film Requiem for a Dream.
I can imagine if part of my life was composing music, I might have thought that I had come up with that sequence of notes, if I couldn’t identify another source.
You’re attributing malicious intent to this “sampling,” even though you can’t prove that they were inspired by this piece of music, and, if they were, that the inspiration was something conscious.
1 Like
Anyone familiar with american IP law is welcome to school me here, but I don’t think “inspired by” is a legal standard.
There’s nothing particularly magical about this sequence of notes, and as you say, these four notes could be randomly chosen, sure.
But I think the chances of a producer whose entire career is based on sampling and remixing to have coincidentally chosen these exact notes, performed by a nearly identical female voice in the same style, the same speed, and the same manner, used in exactly the same way (looped repeatedly as the song’s primary hook), only a few months after the original song received significant airplay and critical acclaim, to be statistically impossible.
Malicious? No, just a producer with a really good ear who knows a great hook when he hears one.
2 Likes
Sure – when inspiration is determined to cross over into plagiarism. It’s a pretty thin line. There’s a lot of case law here, though.
George Harrison was sued and lost because “My Sweet Lord” was deemed a subconscious plagairism of The Chiffons’ “He’s So Fine.” Robin Thicke was sued and lost over similarities between “Blurred Lines” and Marvin Gaye’s “Got To Give It Up.” Radiohead was sued and lost because “Creep” shared a similar chord progression to the Hollies’ “The Air That I Breathe.” I’m sure I can find many more that went all the way through the courts (and weren’t settled) if I start really looking.
These cases come up all the time and are typically settled out of court: Avril Lavigne for “Girlfriend”, Rod Stewart for “Do Ya Think I’m Sexy”, Ray Parker Jr. for “Ghostbusters”, Coldplay for “Viva la Vida.” The list goes on and on.
Exactly this. When George Harrison was found guilty of plagiarism for My Sweet Lord, the court’s opinion was that he didn’t intend to copy He’s So Fine, but instead after hearing it in the past, he had cataloged it mentally as having a pleasing melody and “subconsciously” (their words, not mine) arranged a song similarly. However, subconscious or not it still met the standard for plagiarism.
2 Likes
I can understand how hard it is for any artist to come up with something new and distinctive and the anger that person would have if some big shot copied it and made a lot of money off of it.
At the same time I think I would be flattered that it was worth copying and feel self satisfaction that a wider audience was exposed to it and others found value in it.
Ideally, the big shot should recognize the artists contribution and give some financial compensation for it without having the artist resort to legal maneuvers. Unfortunately, it seems the bigger the big shot, the less likely he/she recognizes the lesser being who got him/her to where they are.
2 Likes
This topic was automatically closed after 5 days. New replies are no longer allowed.
