Does this ever happen to you?

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Your sitting there with your instrument when suddenly inspiration hits. You come along something that is pleasing to your ears and the melody just starts to flow. You go over it and over it again and again until you have a basic idea of what the song will be like. Finally, you are happy with what you have created. Then....it happens. Maybe not right away...maybe the next day or even a week later...a tiny voice inside your head says "hey, wait a second....this sounds familiar....is this already a song?" Suddenly your "masterpiece" sounds very familiar.....yes....you have heard this before on the radio or somehwere, but you can't quite remember where. You can't seem to remember what the song is or who sings it, but you are almost sure that you are ripping someone off....and when you finally make it big you will be exposed just like vanilla ice and you will forever be laughed at for the poser that you are. Or maybe you did write this song and your mind is just playing tricks on you and if you don't record this song you may miss out on the hit that will define you career.....you just don't know.
 
Happens all the time. We all have a million songs floating around in our subconscious all the time so a lot of the stuff we "create" is bound to have some relation to songs we've heard before. I'd say 1 out of 3 song ideas I have end up sounding a lot like songs i've listened to a million times. It happens to everyone, and hell, there are a lot of commercially-released songs that sound a lot like each other, so you're definately not alone.
 
Every single note that you play is somehow, if only slightly, culled from your influences as ssource material. It is inevetible that some things that you write are going to sound familiar. As long as its not note for note embrace it and let it evolve. I'm working on something right now that I know I've heard before, but I'm gonna go for it.
 
songwriters rule.

First of all make no mistake; Vanilla and his boys knew what they were doing when they sampled “Under Pressure.” It wasn’t a case of someone writing something and not knowing that it subconsicencly came from somewhere else. There have been cases where artists have been sued for stealing an idea and it turned out they didn’t do it intentionally.

The best case of this was a Christian band that had a song that sounded very close to a Kiss classic. Instead of suing Kiss got permission to record their song and didn't pay royalities. Straight trade off. Good thing for Kiss since years later Alice Cooper discovered that Kiss’s song “Dreaming” had the same riff and chord structure as “Eighteen.”

If you hear something in your stuff that sounds a little too familiar, twist it around and change it until it is yours. And remember the songwriter’s rule: “Steal from one source and it’s plagiarism. Steal from a bunch and it’s research.”
 
Indeed it does happen to anyone. But I think that if it happens to you all the time, like, every 2 or 3 songs, then you just don't listen to enough diffirent kinds of music, or at least not to enough music. I had that almost 100% of the time a few years back. Now I listen to so many diffirent things, and the stuff I think up still come from songs I know, but I can now reach from another thing every bar or so (consiously (sp?), or without actually trying to). The mood your in, and the song you just listenen to also increase the chance of you writing something very, very familiar, I think.
 
I know what you mean. Every time I come up with a great chord progression I call my wife in to let me know what she thinks. Everytime "Hey, isnt that off the Edwin McCain Misguided roses album. DOOOOHHHHH... Back to the drawing board.
 
paul Mc was so sure that "yesterday" was someone else's song already (it came to him as he was waking up or something) so he apparently asked everybody around him "have you heard this melody somewhere" In fact, I have a song that I think somebody already wrote ... but so far noone has said to me "you know what, that's an old loretta lynn number" or whatever
 
With the onset of mass recordings in the earlier part of the last century, songwriting grew leaps and bounds.
From what I can gather, there has not been an original melody written that would be considered "unique" for quite some time. Being that there are just so many combinations of notes that "sound good" together, I would wager that you could assign the source an old song to any new song......
The thing that makes them different is key, tempo, arrangement, genre and lyrics.

I mean....how many songs out there are D-C-G?
(the answer is .a shit-load :D )

Sampling is indeed stealing.....I do not consider it creative at all.....especially without the original artist's/writer's permission.


Joe
 
joro said:
Sampling is indeed stealing.....I do not consider it creative at all.....especially without the original artist's/writer's permission.


Joe
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Yeah i agree..... thats not being creative. BUT there is still sampleing that CAN be done that I dont consider stealing.. and should require persmission.. is if your samplling a drum sound. Say you like that one snare you hear on such and such... and you sampled it to use on yours... i dont see any problem.. cause saying you CANT sample that certain drum sound woud be like saying "Since you bought that certain snare drum and used it on your recording.. that no one else is allowed to have the same snare!.. then Instrument manaufacturers would go out of business" hehe!!!


But to get on with subject.. about subconciously coming up wiht a song or riff that HAS NOT already been published.. yeah.. that is HARD.. there is just to many out there.. it is almost like how do know?!?! you dont!.

One example this may not literate on the same subject..I am trying to do a concept album project.. all original music and lyrics... (i am influenced by Pink Floyd.. ex The Wall)... but what gets me is that i am finding out that being there is so many songs out there like "Somthing Cool" stated.. Millions!.. that it makes it hard for me to come up with anything orginal as far as music.. granted I like PInk Floyd. Influenced by the WALL.. I dont want this project I am working on to be a PINK FLOYD album!..

thats what makles it hard!.. tho the lyrics are almost ALL done.. the music is whats throwing me off.. i feel like i am in behind a Brick Wall (no Pun Attended) and a Hard Place! .. the creative flow just seems to be dwindling!.. and i like to get this bloody thing done sometime soon.. it has been 2 years or more in the making :)

well thats my two cents... a Penny for your thoughts... ok ok someone is making a penny!


Dog
 
leavings said:
What's worse is that there are like forty motherf*ckers out there whose hit songs I wrote first...
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(chuckle...snort...hehehehee...etc.) And dammit, I'm sure I wrote that quote before you did!! Where in the hell is my money?!

But seriously, I feel ya on that one. And it's not like I'm writing "Every Rose Has Its Thorn" for the 9 billionth time like so many others have. Luckily, I can always chalk this up to the fact that we really do only have 12 notes to work with. Have all mathematical combinations of these notes been explored over the last few centuries? Most likely. So what makes a song yours? What makes it original? The answer--YOU DO. Out of 6 billion people on the planet, it is certain that not a single one of them have shared 100% of the experiences and feelings that made you pick up an instrument to begin with. For that reason alone, somebody could sit there and strum a G chord for an hour, and in his mind (depending on the feeling put into it and what-have-you) he just might be "creating" the most powerful piece of music that's ever been conceived.

A little convoluted and overgeneralized...but seeing how we're all musicians here (in one way or another) it can be argued that none of our feet are really that planted in reality anyway and everything is fair game. Even "Every Rose Has Its Thorn".
 
I had a strange experience my freshman year of college. I spent a week laying down a new floor in my parent's basement so they would buy me this music notation program called Finale. I installed it on my roommate's computer, and the first time I used it I wrote out this great melody for a string ensemble. Not more than two days later, I went into the Tower records down the street. I was listening to Loreena McKennitt at the recommendation of a friend, and out came the EXACT same melody on track 10. I mean note for note, exactly the same for all of the instruments. That was more shocking than disappointing. In the end, the song became one of my favorites because I felt a little propriety for it.

Peter
 
joro said:
Sampling is indeed stealing.....I do not consider it creative at all.....especially without the original artist's/writer's permission.
Joe
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Sorry to sound like an aXXhole, but- give me a break. Name any musical artist you admire and you will find folks who will tell you from where they "stole" every riff and progression. The only people "being creative", as you define it, qualify as such by making noise that has no precedent in anything any of us recognize as music. You want that? Enjoy...

Art and music are a process of building on and in doing so reconstituting and commenting on what has come before. Sampling is just the next step. I respect the skill involved in creatively taking something from one rhythmic framework and insinuating it into another and sounding cool... try it sometime. I'm not talkin' about the P-Diddy crap here, where something like "Every Step You Take" is more remake than sample. DJ's who get a groove going and can mix in a recognizeable riff from elsewhere are indeed practicing a creative art.

Further... any of us wanking off here doing home recording should be flattered if anyone found anything we did interesting enough to sample.

Yee haw: flame away!
 
barabajagal said:
Sorry to sound like an aXXhole, but- give me a break. Name any musical artist you admire and you will find folks who will tell you from where they "stole" every riff and progression. The only people "being creative", as you define it, qualify as such by making noise that has no precedent in anything any of us recognize as music. You want that? Enjoy...

Art and music are a process of building on and in doing so reconstituting and commenting on what has come before. Sampling is just the next step. I respect the skill involved in creatively taking something from one rhythmic framework and insinuating it into another and sounding cool... try it sometime. I'm not talkin' about the P-Diddy crap here, where something like "Every Step You Take" is more remake than sample. DJ's who get a groove going and can mix in a recognizeable riff from elsewhere are indeed practicing a creative art.

Further... any of us wanking off here doing home recording should be flattered if anyone found anything we did interesting enough to sample.

Yee haw: flame away!
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yeah, right on - has anyone ever heard DJ Kid Koala's stuff? if that ain't creating new music I don't know what is. I mean, do you credit the guy who created the guitar when you play it on a record - better yet, do you credit the guitar? after all, ut's making the noise, not you.

there's an unfair prejudice against sampling from the "rock community" at large, an' it's gotta stop, man
 
I have to chime in some agreement here as well. I'm a rock guitarist who used to be of the belief that if it's not an instrument being played by a real human, then it isn't music. Then I discovered industrial which is now one of my favorite genres. Of course from there, it's only a short step away to techno and other kinds of music that utilize sampling. I'm glad I found out about all this other stuff, and I think my own playing (an especially my songwriting) has benefitted greatly from being willing to have an open mind about it.
 
I really like a lot of sampled music, but the bottom line is that if you are going to do nothing but sample other artists then don't get mad when people say things about your lack of creativity or talent. Sampling is easier than coming up with something from scratch no matter how you look at it. I don't think it's wrong or anything (except when Puff Daddy "sampled" Kashmir and fucked it all up), it's just something that hardcore purists are always going to gripe about and DJ's or whatever are going to defend. Then end product is all I really care about, but a lot of musicians don't see it that way.
 
You know i hate to mention it but i DO agree.. tho!.. cause you know with programs like ACID PRO seems that ANYONE and EVERYONE can make something up by chopped up samples from other people... and they arent even musicians... man i heard some baddddddd totally bad stuff on Mp3.com.. people stealing samples and just spitting in the mike over top of it trying to make it sound like rap!.. and that shows NO TALENT what so ever!....

OK..some may agree that TALENT is NOT required to make a good song.. some .. to some people that may sound like gold.. and isnt that what matters is that at least someone LIKES what you did mno matter HOW you did it?


But then for the real musicians who take pride in their work ... who, which their music is like giving birth!.. That is where their music shows WHO this musician is.. based on thier creativity!... to me thats what music is about.. getting to know the musician through thier music. and sampled acid burn stuff does NOT do that!

Dont get me wrong there is alot of GOOD stuff i heard on MP3.com as well.. but the percentage is way low compared to the bad and no talent stuff.. and it is hard weeding and forcing yourself to listen through all the BAD, ear wrentching, stuff just to get to the half way decent stuff!.

thats my opinion and i am sticking to it :)

Dog

"Damn, now everyone wants to be a pop star!!!!"
 
DogRox said:
Dont get me wrong there is alot of GOOD stuff i heard on MP3.com as well.. but the percentage is way low compared to the bad and no talent stuff.. and it is hard weeding and forcing yourself to listen through all the BAD, ear wrentching, stuff just to get to the half way decent stuff!.

thats my opinion and i am sticking to it :)

Dog

"Damn, now everyone wants to be a pop star!!!!"
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and isn't it the same with artits who DON'T sample their music?
I would think the hit rate would be better no sampled music as you're working with stuff that's been proven to be good . . .

don't get me wrong - puff daddy and his ilk have brought some atrocities to the scene - his "remake" of kashmir completely butchered the orignial, but how many shitty cover bands have done the same down at your local pub?

all I'm saying is, "playing" a sample is no different to playing an instrument - when you play a G, are you not playing the same G a million people have lpayed before - no, it all depends on context, rhythm, feel and emotion - in the same way, the way a DJ or similar artist mixes a track changes the original material they are working with. you can't narrow the term "musicians" down to people who play "real" instruments - mixers, samplers and computers are instruments in themselves and the people who play them just as valid as "real" artists.

a violinist reproduces an orchestral piece note for note with all the correct intonation and emotion as written in the piece, which was written a thousand years ago. At the same time DJ Dange Mouse takes a Beatles sample, cuts it, dices it and puts it in a new context under another sample from Jay-Z. who of the two is the more creative?

yes, you are entitled to your opinion, and everyone should respect that, but I think sampled music gets a bad rep for no reason, and it's not fair.

respect to everyone's opinion though, that's just my 2 cents (although that's probably about 50 cents by now)

we've kind of drifted away from the original topic of the thread here . . . oh well :rolleyes:
 
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