do you let it bother you, or do you just continue to write through it?
This happens to me quite a lot, but it's quite easy (with a few tweaks) to distance yourself from the song it sounds like. Just a little shift in the vocal melody normally does the trick. I'd never scrap a good song or idea because of it.
When it comes to guitar riffs, it's hard to be totally original. And the blues is one giant, revolving copying machine, lol.
I let it bother me even if I don't know which song it reminds me of ::)
If I do know, I try to rewrite or steer it in another direction
I spent 3 hours, 4 PM's and asked around work about a song that I'm working on. Finally somebody said it sounds like Collective Soul - December. Sure enough its close ( theirs is much better than mine).
I'm an utter novice to creating my own music, Everything I do has been done countless times before. I've let this inhibit me to the point of failure many times. I keep convincing myself that I'll continually get better at becoming a musician and eventually completely original music will come forth.
The problem with the previous line of thinking is simple. I'll never get better sitting on the sidelines, never creating my own music. I wont find my own style, I wont progress in any facet of being a song writer if I don't create, and continue through completion. So if it sounds like something else, yep, tweak it. Learn new variations of the chords or whatever it takes.
I've got loads of ideas, but I'm having difficulty tying in chorus/verse/bridge structure in order to make a song full.
Quote from: Tony W on January 17, 2011, 08:53:40 AMI spent 3 hours, 4 PM's and asked around work about a song that I'm working on. Finally somebody said it sounds like Collective Soul - December. Sure enough its close ( theirs is much better than mine).
I'm an utter novice to creating my own music, Everything I do has been done countless times before. I've let this inhibit me to the point of failure many times. I keep convincing myself that I'll continually get better at becoming a musician and eventually completely original music will come forth.
The problem with the previous line of thinking is simple. I'll never get better sitting on the sidelines, never creating my own music. I wont find my own style, I wont progress in any facet of being a song writer if I don't create, and continue through completion. So if it sounds like something else, yep, tweak it. Learn new variations of the chords or whatever it takes.
I've got loads of ideas, but I'm having difficulty tying in chorus/verse/bridge structure in order to make a song full.
Many great songwriters started as copyists. Look at the Beatles - they did heaps of covers before finding their own voice. Same as the Stones. It's all part of learning the craft. It's the same for pretty much any art form. If you look at early Picasso works (the Picasso museum in Barcelona is full of them...), he did all kinds of copies of established artists and styles in his search for originality.
There's nothing wrong with taken someone else's song as a template and adapting it into something new and fresh....
To imitate is to create.
That's right.
Shakespeare pretty much ripped off all his ideas.
Then of course there's the problem of trying to do cover and realizing it sounds nothing like the original. I stopped worrying about it to much when I found one of my originals was a copy of me trying to to be original?!?
Leigh
15-16 years ago, I decided to stay home one Saturday and write a song. Hadn't written anything for a few years, but I had an idea. So I started playing a slow chord progression, wrote a few verses (looking back, they were pretty bad) about a girl who was on the road, down to her last few bucks.
Man, I kept thinking, these chord changes sound familiar. So I sped them up, sped them up some more, and realized they were the same an "Any Way You Want It" by Journey. Great song, by the way. (Journey's, not mine.)
But, you know, I bet I've returned to that chord progression in bunches of songs since. It's just hard to avoid. So I'll play in a different key, syncopate them, etc. But in folk, rock, and blues (what I usually write), you can't avoid them.
If you "borrow" from, say, "Blue Moon of Kentucky," you're not alone. But if you "borrow" from "Roundabout" by Yes ... now, that's different.
Quote from: Greeny on January 04, 2011, 06:51:01 AMThis happens to me quite a lot, but it's quite easy (with a few tweaks) to distance yourself from the song it sounds like. Just a little shift in the vocal melody normally does the trick. I'd never scrap a good song or idea because of it.
When it comes to guitar riffs, it's hard to be totally original. And the blues is one giant, revolving copying machine, lol.
Pretty much sums it up for me. Chords have no copyright.... right. Melody can shape the song even with the same chords as many other songs and make a significant change. Everything has been done before so I don't let it worry me at all if a song sounds like something else. As has been pointed out most originals are part of someone else's original and so it goes on, round and round in circles frorm one era to the next. Keep at it...
12 notes, 4 beats (usually but not always) so how different can it be?
My sweet lord/he's so fine springs to mind
i would say, screw it! thats gonna happen even if you werent trying. someone is always going to say it sounds like something. a few months ago a friend and i collaborated on a slow soft 60's type pop song. someone mentioned my vocals sounded like brian ferry. i dont like roxy music nor the singer, so i defenately had no influence from him nor them. at this point in music history, many songs will sound like another, its going to happen. however if you are lucky enough for it to get some commercial airplay, if its too similar, you might get sued! :(
Embrace it. Last time this happened to me, I added a solo and in the middle of the solo switched my sound alike into a cover, then switched back.
It happens all the time. But don't feel down. Your creation is yours. It has a piece of you, and that makes it unique.
Once upon a time, long, long ago in a galaxy far away classical composers often quoted each other and it was took to be a compliment instead of a violation of copyright and a criminal offense.
Though take heart chord progressions are not copyrightable - neither are titles.
Quote from: Vaisvil on August 07, 2012, 07:05:48 PMThough take heart chord progressions are not copyrightable - neither are titles.
Good to know. I had been wondering as the title I chose for a recent song has been used before. The chord progressions I would think not copyrightable also, as there are only so many, but what exactly is copyrightable? The melody? The written lyrics? The vocal melody? What exactly?
I mean I know you can copyright a "song".. having rights to it and all derivative works, but what exactly does that mean?
Gosh dragonshade I don't think the US or EU courts know for sure.
One no-no is if what you do takes away from revenue from the original you are dead meat.
http://www.fairwagelawyers.com/most-famous-music-copyright-infringment.html (http://www.fairwagelawyers.com/most-famous-music-copyright-infringment.html)
and more
http://www.music-law.com/copyrightinfringe.html (http://www.music-law.com/copyrightinfringe.html)
Very hard to be original. Finite number of notes and finite numbers of combinations, and only a sall % of them sound good or great!
I don't mind sounding like someone else, its repeating yourself which I hate - particularly when you've just finished something and realise that you are simply repeating a song that you did a year ago! :o
Dohh!
B
Quote from: bruno on January 15, 2013, 03:37:14 PMI don't mind sounding like someone else, its repeating yourself which I hate - particularly when you've just finished something and realise that you are simply repeating a song that you did a year ago! :o
Dohh!
B
Exactly. I have found myself copying myself over and over again. You can use the same 3 chords and get different melodies from those chords, but sometimes when our own rhythmic pulses come out and you're trying to create an organized sound having structural form or just satisfied that your playing your instrument a pattern tends to develop. "I have played this before...blah blah"...In other words, The creation of musical patterns may be primarily a playful activity with no particular purpose other than the enjoyment of the activity of creation itself.
There are many composers' with a "signature sound" that are maintaining an essential sameness to musical material while providing, at the same time, the variations that make things different. Usually(not always)they have some type of formed organization as to how music is constructed. That's where I hit a rut, I never do things the same. I'm too lazy to make a course chart of how I do things musically, it's mostly spontaneous and if I don't get it started, well, I forget LOL. So, for me, I try and play as many different genres of music that I can so I don't get stuck in that pattern OR even take a song (cover) and try it differently than the original. Just my 2 cents.
Mach
I did it recently, in the middle part of "The synths of our fathers" (https://songcrafters.org/forum/index.php?topic=21441.0)I deliberately used a well known chord progression and tried very hard to create a new original melody. I went through all the songs I remembered that had all or parts of that chord progression and couldn't find anyone that was too close. Yes I did use Pachelbel's Canon, couldn't wait for a fest ::) ....
And I was quite happy ...... until my brother pointed out that the melody bears close resemblance to "Streets of London" ...... I can of course not claim that I never heard that before, so I guess I'll just sit in the corner for an hour and hide my embarrassed face. ..... Well next time I'll try harder. I WILL use that chord sequence again !!
I don't bother so much, but changing a couple of notes and a chord in the sequence (in an easy way, using the minor or major relative) WILL do the trick.
And if you are afraid of not being original, try weird (unusual) stuff. Me and my band do QUITE a lot of ternary rythims, 3/4 and 6/8 can result in some quite interesting phrasings. Also, trying to change a 4/4 song you've created over a chord sequence and melody which sounds simmiliar to another song to 6/8 usually works WONDERS. You can twist the melody just making every odd or even note twice as long (in general), as in creating some kind of swing, and it will make your song different and interesting.
Also trying more elaborate patterns such cas 5/4, 10/8 or 7/8 is something everybody should try. Specially 5/4 is quite interesting and the extra step works wonders.
Yup, all the time... you just tweak here, tweak there... add a little, slide a little... feel a little too much, over the horizon. Right? Splash down and fib lol
ok, let me add somthing to this interesting topic LOL. For my own songs, for each one I can point out at least 2 or 3 songs that have something in common, be it a melodic phrase, or the chord prog, or the song 'idea', or, terribly, a whole section LOL the things get worse as I listen to more and more good music. I can remember one time a friend of mine telling me: hey man, that's a song from billy joel, it's been already written (wow, it was really so-and the song was nothing less than 'piano man', one of the best known)! What's the point? I don't mind, just try to change the song to make it a little different. I mean, why the hell "me and bobby mcghee" singed by Janis Joplin cant be considered a totally different song from "me and bobby mcghee" as composed by kristofferson (and guess what I love the best)?
Change the chords to jazz chords and make it sound like a Steely Dan song..............
i've got a song going on in my head, but i'm worried i've been listening to too much of the twilight sad and it's really an earworm of one of their songs.
as usual after a long sleepover shift, i came home and lay in a hot bath for a while and songs come to me, like this one today.
i even had a lyric scribbled down, before i was dry from my bath.
i just hope the tune in my head is not theirs and also something that i am able to play. lol.
I don't worry about it. I just write it. If it turns out that it'd been done before then I figure out if I should worry or not. If so then I try to figure out if it is worth the effort to change it. I know at least one song I was writing turned out to have a melody straight out of a conway twitty song. My wife pointed it out to me. I just recorded a rough demo and forgot about it. 600 songs later and I don't even know which song it is.
For me the rhythm is the best way to differentiate songs. There are literally thousands of rock songs using the same basic three chords (with some small changes) but you put a different rhythm behind it or a different rhythm in the guitar (or any lead instrument part) and it suddenly becomes less recognizable. And conversely, all my songs start to sound the same when I don't differentiate the rhythm. Same old strum pattern turns into lots of mush, even if there is a different chord progression.