if a song you are writing sort of sounds like another song...

[Flash Harry]

12 notes, 4 beats (usually but not always) so how different can it be?

My sweet lord/he's so fine springs to mind

[phantasm777]

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!

[beleg]

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.

[na_th_an]

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.

[Vaisvil]

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.

[dragonshade]

Though 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?

[Vaisvil]

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

[Vaisvil]

and more

http://www.music-law.com/copyrightinfringe.html

[bruno]

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! 
Dohh!
B

[Mach]

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! 
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