If listening to a song, being inspired by it, changing some of the notes, and then having your own musician play it is “disguised sampling”, then literally every song ever written is “disguised sampling”, and the term becomes synonymous with “composing”.
Of course, but nobody’s doing that. Nor it would be possible.
In this particular case, a jury, who aren’t drooling morons, really, heard from experts from both sides explaining to them whether there was enough similarities or not between the two works, similarities beyond the six note riff, and that the quality of the work taken was enough to be a case of copyright infringement.
You believe that every song is somebody taking another song and changing a few notes?
:rolleyes:
No, this isn’t true or accurate.
Nor could you say that every book ever written is just someone changing some of the letters and words of pre-existing books.
Yes, of course. Show me any two songs, and I’ll show you just which notes the later one changed from the former.
After you’ve shown people this and they’ve told you that your argument is entirely unconvincing, then what will you say?
Cool. Let’s see… A Horse With No Name, by America, and C Jam Blues, by Duke Ellington.
Background vocals saying “Hey!” as vocal percussion underneath rap is just not noteworthy. It’s like saying there’s drums in both songs, and that’s another similarity that suggests copying. And rappers opening a song with a phrase like “Y’all know what it is” or similar is also just something a lot of them do. There’s no reason to think those elements in Dark Horse came specifically from Joyful Noise. I don’t even know how you can possibly think “a line with a sudden pitch drop” is something of note.
What you need to constitute evidence of copying is some reasonably unique combination of commonplace things that is copied. But you haven’t got that. If the three elements you’re pointing to were related to each other in some way, or formed some part of the structure of both songs, then you might have something. What you have besides the similar riffs, effectively, is that both songs use some of the same embellishments. Those embellishments are commonplace, not related to each other within the individual songs, and are no more evidence of copying than two songs both having a trumpet flourish, or both having doo-wap backing vocals.
Really, the only remotely compelling bit is the similar riffs. And yes, they are similar, and they play similar roles in the songs. The similarity of the riffs is far and away the strongest argument. But it’s still really, really weak, because it’s a simple riff that anyone might write simply by tapping a key on a piano a few times and then the one just to the left of it a couple times. Because that’s all the riff is.
I might also add that the argument from those other elements is so weak that the plaintiffs didn’t even raise it in court. They relied solely on the similar riffs.
The bolded part is what the court saw. You even write about it: “it’s just the similar riff and the similar ‘embellishments’ done in a similar way with similar timing… but it’s not the same, just similar.” :rolleyes:
And it was a bad decision, just like the Blurred Line decision. The degree of similarity that is forming the basis of these decisions would entail that the vast majority of songs are violating the copyright of some song or other. Non-expert juries make bad decisions when technical subject matter is in play far too frequently.
Also, I did not say anything like what you are pretending to quote me as saying here. One riff and a couple embellishments when the structure, melody, lyrics, chord progressions, etc of the songs are entirely different, is what I’m asserting. The timing is not similar except in so far as they’re both 4/4, as are a vast majority of pop songs. However, I didn’t mention the timing.
I’m sorry, but you’re being dishonest here. Sure, plenty of rap songs have vocal percussion… but not all of them. Just some. And no element needs to come specifically from Joyful Noise… just be common between the two songs.
Whether that was raised during the trial or not, I don’t know. As far as I know what was said during the trial is not public.
How am I being dishonest? What I’m saying is that vocal percussion is a common element in rap songs (and plenty of other modern pop), and this means the fact that it appears in both Joyful Noise and Dark Horse does not indicate that the latter copied the former. All it means is that it’s a common element of rap, just like trumpets are a common element of mariachi. If two mariachi songs had identical trumpet flourishes in otherwise unrelated songs, we wouldn’t take that to be one copying the other. We’d just take that to be mariachi bands doing what mariachi bands do. There are only so many trumpet flourishes that will fit in a given song, and sometimes it’s going to be the same one as in another song.
And of course it must come specifically from Joyful Noise in order to be Dark Horse to be copying Joyful Noise. What do you even mean by this? Dark Horse could have taken the common elements between it and Joyful Noise from a third source, and it would still be copying Joyful Noise? That’s just a bizarre thing to say.
Again, almost all modern music includes drums. Almost (probably all) Mariachi music includes trumpets.
Not all rap songs include vocal percussion. Plenty, sure, not all.
And? How is this supposed to show that the “Hey!” shouts in Dark Horse are evidence of a connection to Joyful Noise? I honestly have no idea what you think your point is here.
By themselves they wouldn’t. Just like a single note by itself is not evidence of infringement. The problem comes when you start piling the coincidences up.
If every song, or even just every rap song had similar ‘hey’ shouts, the coincidence would be irrelevant. It’s not the case.
Don’t you mean zero, as low as it’s possible for a chance to get?
Except it’s not a coincidence of note. It’s just both songs using common musical elements of rap.
Sure. There’s a similar riff? Nothing to it. Coincidences happen.
‘Hey!’ vocal percussion? Plenty songs do that.
“Y’all know what it is”? At least a dozen songs start the same.
“There’s no going back” with a sudden pitch drop? Pfff. I could name you several songs doing that too.
So, tell me. At what point would you start considering something a bit too coincidental?