Blatant rip-offs are perhaps embarrassing (unless one is shameless), but it should be noted that (almost) all melodies are already in the public domain
seriously:
http://allthemusic.info/faqs/
Don’t want to derail my own topic much but uh, I don’t think so. The same logic can be applied to argue that all combinations of words (for example, in structured poems) are in the public domain.
~Max
True, and also listening to the SOOL number reminded me of the Beatles.
Compare, at 0:18, when buddy goes:
And if you could see me
sure sounds like John and Paul, here at 0:50, going:
Everybody’s green
Also, the opening vocals of Niel Sedaka’s “Laughter in the Rain” sound like a total rip-off of the opening vocals of “Waterloo Sunset” at 0:16.
What a bizarre website. If I understand correctly, they claim to automatically generate every possible melody, then place each melody they create in the public domain. Their math seems off to me.
Great find 
! I didn’t make the connection myself, but now I can’t unhear it.
What do you mean?
They explain exactly what they have and have not done, in fact you can download the files yourself.
Now, I have no idea if they have ever testified in an actual forensic copyright dispute, but from what I understand the point of the project is that all the generated melodies have been saved to disk in a “fixed”, material form as per the Berne Convention. It’s all pretty straightforward and they are not trying to trick anyone.
I understand what they’ve done. I just don’t see how they could have created all possible melodies. In one section they claim there are very few possible melodies compared to the number of existent songs:
“* So the combinatorial math plays out like this:
- IF song has 2-chord, 6-change chorus
THEN 2^6
= 64 chord combinations - IF song has 5-chord, 9-change verse
THEN 5^9
= 1,953,125 chord combinations (less than 2 million)
Reminder: Soundcloud currently has 200 million songs.“
But earlier they say:
“Our ATM Project melodies are “substantially similar” to every other melody. Especially since our dataset currently comprises and (and is the process of generating) these variations/combinations:
- Major octave: 8 pitches, length 12
- Minor octave: 8 pitches, length 12
- Chromatic octave 13 pitches, length 10
- Major/minor 1.6 octaves: 13 pitches, length 10”
Case one alone yields over 68 billion possible melodies.
OK, this may be entirely in my head, but when I saw the movie La La Land a few years ago, I was immediately struck by how this song:
Reminded me a lot of this one:
An I the only one who heard the, um, connection?
You quoted a comment about chords; perhaps you meant this:
So they are claiming there are very few short “motifs”, I assume since songs sharing similar motifs has been explicitly mentioned in big lawsuits. Ditto for chord progressions.
Fairly recent one: Fight Song / Rachel Platten and I’ve got a Girl Crush / Little Big Town. Practically the same chorus and different tempos. You can easily interchange the lyrics. Annoys me to no end.
The Seal song predates Nickleback by 8 years, so if anyone copied anyone, it was NB doing the copying.
That is what I meant, though I see how it could be confused. Nickelback are the alleged thieves.
That’s a sample.
Jackass uses a sample from Them’s version of It’s All Over Now Baby Blue but is a new melody and song. That ICP thing is so ripped off, of Beck, but also the guitar sounds like it was sampled from Them too.
Thanks! That occurred to me as a possibility.
I’m listening to R.E.M’s “Fables Of The Reconstruction”, and thought about that “Driver 8” couldn’t exist with Blue Oyster Cult’s “(Don’t Fear) The Reaper”. It’s not a blatant rip-off like some other examples in this thread, but it’s a least heavily inspired. I like both songs very much. Do I have to provide links, especially to "(Don’t Fear) The Reaper) 
? Ok, I’ll post them:
One of these is a bit obscure unless you know Broadway tunes, but I’ve always thought Stephen Schwartz’s “Magic to Do” from Pippin to be very reminiscent of Carole King’s “It’s Too Late.” I believe Carole King’s song predates “Magic To Do” by a year (1971 vs 1972). It’s not just the two chord vamp – the little bass ditty that links the two chords are, while different, a very similar idea, and at the end of Carole King’s verses (right after “maybe we just stopped trying”) there a rhythmic figure on the chords that is echoed in “Magic To Do” (at the end of “come and waste an hour or two”) that make me think the Schwartz song was at least subconsciously inspired by the Carole King. The choruses are quite different, though.
I have always loved Quicksilvers Gypsy Lights, but never had a clue about this obvious source, never heard the artists name, until last year. I’m not sure why it never became a lawsuit.
Whenever I hear Jewel’s “Standing Sill,” it takes me a moment to realize I’m not listening to Cyndi Lauper’s “Time After Time.”
(Weaker than my other posts… but)
Same 7-second motif, different keys and rhythm. It is the thematic motif in “Spain”, and the B section in “Lost Woods”.
| "Spain" | |
|---|---|
| Artist | Return to Forever |
| Album | Light as a Feather, 1973 |
| "迷いの森 [Lost Woods]" | |
|---|---|
| Artist | Koji Kondo |
| Game | The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time, November 1998 |
| Album | ゼルダの伝説 時のオカリナ オリジナルサウンドトラック [The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time Original Soundtrack], December 1998 |
~Max
Listening to James Carr’s excellent singles compilation “The Complete Goldwax Singles”, I spotted another case of a rather obvious rip-off. “That’s What I Want To Know” sounds VERY similar to the Supremes’ “Where Did Our Love Go”. I don’t know who wrote the song, but I guess it were Chips Moman and Dan Penn, as they were Carr’s producers at Goldwax, and they are not uncomfortable with the subject of cheating: they wrote the greatest cheating song ever for James Carr on a dare in the break of a poker game.
