AH, that is where the clever IANAL disclaimer comes in very handy.
But I can talk to they guy in my band that deals with that paper pushing stuff and see what he has to say.
I can make a couple guesses, but what is a “chord-melody” song?
how about Iron Man, by Sabbath, where Tommy Iommi plays chords that exactly follow the melody that Ozzy sings…?
I am a musician and a songwriter.
The songs are in the same key, have the same chord progression, same tempo and same melody line. Of all those elements only the similar melody lines are especially noteworthy. Essentially, Satriani is accusing Coldplay of having stolen a hook. The similarity is striking, especialy in conjunction with the same chords and tempo, but not necessarily indicative of intentional theft. For one thing, the same chord progressions will lend themselves to the same melodic ideas and honestly independent compositional duplications occur all the time. For another thing (and this is a risk for all songwriters, as I’m sure our other resident musicians can attest), melodic ideas often get borrowed unintentionally or subconsciously. I think most songriters can tell you about incidences where they’ve spent time hammering out a melody only to have someone else tell them, “dude, you’re playing that piano theme from the Incredible Hulk.” D’oh.
My guess in this case is either coincidence or subconscious theft (there’s actually a legal term for that, but I can’t remember what it is). Intentional theft is not out of the question. It happens. Some songwriters – even well-established ones – will steal shit, but proving intention is difficult for basically one melody line. I also think this melody is characteristic of Coldplay’s other writing, so I’m going with coincidence.
It is striking, though.
That was one of my guesses. If that’s it, the melody is still a melody; it just happens to be based on the chords (which a lot of melodies are, anyway, though usually not only from the chord notes or top chord notes.)
I hear you, **Dio **- and appreciate the comments of other posters / musicians who have supported the “it’s a coincidence” or the “music is essentially a product of its influences - how can any hook not sound like other hooks?” types of arguments. Again - in a general, musical sense, I agree. However, the next-order question is: regardless of whether we spectators think it was intentional or coincidence, how will this play out legally? My point is that, based on what I have seen up close with friends and distantly seen happen to folks like The Rolling Stones, George Harrison, etc., I would be very surprised if Coldplay doesn’t settle and / or Satriani doesn’t end up getting solid $$ one way or another out of this. It could happen, but given the amount of similarities, I am inclined to doubt it. Again, IANALawyer, YMMV, and all that…
One should not be able to copyright four bars.
Is this a good place to mention that I’ve always thought that The Way by Fastball sounds an awful lot like Delilah by Tom Jones?
In brief, read:
http://www.angelfire.com/fl4/moneychords/chordmelody.html
Essentially, it’s an approach that uses chords as melody lines. They usually have to be played quickly, and with a great deal of precision. Jazz players use chord melody a lot, but it’s not restricted to them.
Post snipped and tangent.
Just out of curiosity, why did you pick the piano theme from the Incredible Hulk? The reason I ask is that I think I’ve posted here before about how I re-wrote the Incredible Hulk theme and thought I had the beginnings of a great tune until my friend pointed out that what I was playing was, in fact, the Incredible Hulk theme. I had no clue when I wrote it that I had (inadvertently) ripped off the Hulk.
Just wondering if you know someone else who has done this.
Slee
I just pulled it out of thin air. Now that mention it it, I think I do remember your story. I must have been thinking of it subconsciously. It’s a perfect RL eample of what I was talking about, anyway. I once accidentally came up with a heavy riff that turned out to be the Imperial March (the Vader Motif) from Star Wars. I also accidentally ripped off the chorus riff from Zeppelin’s Ten Years Gone once. It happens to everybody.
I saw what you did there…you “plagiarized” sleestak’s anecdote! 
Speaking of plaigarism, is it just me or does Coldplay sound just like U2? When I first heard one of their songs in the grocery store (“Speed of Sound” I think, I thought it was a new U2 album.
From what I understand, that’s just playing chords and melody simultaneously. There’s two different concepts going on there at the same time: melody on top, harmony below (or you can even put the melody in the middle, if you want). From what I see, it’s nothing different from what piano players do all the time (esp. when playing block style). I don’t see why the melody wouldn’t be copyrightable.
That chord progression is pretty popular, but some artists might get upset at the mention that they are always the same.
There’s a fair bit of talk so far in this thread about intention. As far as I understand some of the higher profile plagiarism cases that have been won in the music biz, proof of intent isn’t relevant. George Harrison was not intending to rip off “He’s So Fine” when he wrote “My Sweet Lord.” Ray Parker Jr. wasn’t intending to plagiarize “I Want A New Drug” when he did the “Ghostbusters” theme. As I recall the hearing story as told by Keith Richards, the Stones decided to give kd lang a songwriting credit for “Anybody Seen My Baby” before any legal proceedings had even been discussed, simply because Richards’ daughter thought she heard a similarity and they figured it was better to just pre-emptively give that credit without ever dealing with any potential litigation.
Given the history, and the general similarities here, I’d say Satriani has a case and Coldplay would do well to settle out of court, regardless of whether the chord progression is not unheard of elsewhere.
I wrote “Hey Man Nice Shot” by Filter the same way, but to be fair, mine was way heavier and more kick ass than Filter’s version. I also wrote it about a week before I heard that song the first time, but it’s not a great riff so there’s not much pissing and moaning about someone stealing your lazy work. 
True. Everybody seems satisfied that he heard the song and forgot about it except on a subconscious level.
That, I thought, was not as clear.
U2 is capable of rocking much harder than Coldplay ever has. If U2 (who used to be a big fave of mine but little of their stuff since Achtung Baby has intrigued me) has mellowed out sufficiently lately then perhaps there are some similarities.
Don’t know how authoritative Wikipedia is in this case, but here it says
If this is correct, then if the court thinks there is sufficient similarity to support a presumption of copying, then it will be up to Coldplay to prove that the similarity is a coincidence. Pretty hard thing to prove, so I’d bet that’s why bands tend to settle cases like this.
I question whether there’s sufficient similarity, since as someone noted above, the similarity consists in the use of a common chord progression plus the first three notes of a melody containing about a dozen notes or so. That’s not really that significant of a similarity.
-FrL-