If you write the (vocal)melody of the song, are you a cowriter of the song?

Y

yetanother

New member
Hi guys,
I`m a noob and dunno much about rights and copyrights:(
My bandmate came up with a nice reggae rhythm and I did the vocals. Well, he also contributed to the vocals, but I did most of it. Does that mean that we cowrote the song? Thank you in advance!
Andy
 
Thank you so much for the reply! I wrote 90% of the lyrics and more than 50% of the melody (vocals)
So even if I wrote the lyrics only we would be cowriters?
Do you happen to have a link to a site with the copyright laws etc.
I googled it, but I haven`t found anything.
Thank you!
Andy
 
There's no doubt in mind that you are co-writers if it is as you say.

I can't advise on what happens in US, seeing as I am in Australia. Others no more about copyright registration than I do.
 
Thank you so much. I wish I had something to show him. He says the vocal melody is not important in a song.
The chord progression is everything.
Andy
 
The vocal melody is not important? lol

That basically implies that there is no difference at all between reading out loud in a monotone voice and singing.

100% nonsense. It's beyond laughably ridiculous, in fact, and you can feel free to quote me. FWIW.

If it was all about the chord progression, the courts would be FULL of copyright infringement cases. Hundreds, if not thousands of songs have the exact same/too close for comfort chord progression.



You ABSOLUTLEY co-wrote the song--make no mistake about that--BUT you should always try to come to an agreement as to who will get credit, and for what part of the creation process that credit will be for, and then what that credit will be worth, if anything, BEFORE you start working with someone on any kind of professional level. It can save you from a lot of headaches further on up the road. Anything less than that is, IMHO, unprofessional.


Read the FAQs.

Good luck!
 
Funny this should come up right now. I've just been putting a bass part to a song I 'wrote' years ago. I did the lyrics, the chord progression, all the music......but it started off life as an excercize to see if a group of us could write a song. I just strung together a set of chords and said this can be the verse then I put together another set and said OK, let's make this the chorus. Everyone sat around blankly but eventually my mate Esther (she was a natural harmonizer) came up with a melody. I really liked it and eventually wrote some words and came up with 5 verses. This was like 12 years ago.
Anyway, I've since rerecorded it as I didn't like the initial recording from about 11 years back. But even though I've done 98% of the work, she still merits a co writer credit because the melody is integral to the song. It's integral to any song. To say the chord progression is the song is rather like arguing that the mother is more important to the creation of a human being than the father. Just as a person is a unique fusion of the two genders that "begat" it [:laughings: sorry, that word kills me !], so a song is a fusion of various elements that make it ~ melody, music, words (if there are any), rhythms etc.
Money is a great leveller.
 
As a kind of postscript, I apply the same principle to a song that emerges during a jam. Say a guitarist, bassist and drummer hit upon a riff or a groove and develop it while jamming. Then the guitarist goes off, does all the hard work and makes it into a fully fledged song. In my opinion, all three are still co writers because it's virtually impossible to divide up who did what and to which degree when the seeds of the music first sprouted. Similarly, if Miss A writes a song that consists of only lyrics and melody and Miss B knocks it into shape by putting in chords and notes etc, then as far as I'm concerned, they are both co writers.
Having been in both those scenarios that's how I've approached it. It does make you bite your lip when you give someone a writing credit because initially the two of you came up with something in a jam and you singularly develop it give it shape and then someone comes along and gushes admiringly about how the other person has written a great tune !
But then, on the other hand, we're hardly multi million selling household names, are we ? ! ?
 
I actually gave him the same example! This video! He needs to see the law! But I have no idea where to find the information.
yetanother said:
Thank you so much. I wish I had something to show him. He says the vocal melody is not important in a song.
The chord progression is everything.
Andy
Click to expand...
 
The thing is what you`re saying implies that people have common sense. Some of us don`t. That`s where law comes in! I can`t find anything online though! Just guidelines, not rules:mad:
grimtraveller said:
Funny this should come up right now. I've just been putting a bass part to a song I 'wrote' years ago. I did the lyrics, the chord progression, all the music......but it started off life as an excercize to see if a group of us could write a song. I just strung together a set of chords and said this can be the verse then I put together another set and said OK, let's make this the chorus. Everyone sat around blankly but eventually my mate Esther (she was a natural harmonizer) came up with a melody. I really liked it and eventually wrote some words and came up with 5 verses. This was like 12 years ago.
Anyway, I've since rerecorded it as I didn't like the initial recording from about 11 years back. But even though I've done 98% of the work, she still merits a co writer credit because the melody is integral to the song. It's integral to any song. To say the chord progression is the song is rather like arguing that the mother is more important to the creation of a human being than the father. Just as a person is a unique fusion of the two genders that "begat" it [:laughings: sorry, that word kills me !], so a song is a fusion of various elements that make it ~ melody, music, words (if there are any), rhythms etc.
Money is a great leveller.
Click to expand...
 
I've heard it said many times on other sites that the actual copyright ownership applies to only words and melody, not the accompanying instruments, backing tracks, chord progressions, performance or anythhing else. Just words and melody. However, I have never been able to find where that has been written and have found other articles to the contrary. Never the less, lyrics and melody are part of the song and you are a co-writer.

If you're in the US, start here:
US Copyright Office Circular 1
and peruse the rest of the site. You won't find the actual laws and you don't really want to read them, but the circulars will answer most/all of your questions.

Also, if you co-write a song with someone, it's best to have an agreement beforehand. Usually 50/50 no matter how much more one person does than the other. But you can agree to different amounts.

Here are some examples:

If somebody handed me some lyrics and asked me to put it to music. That person gets credit for writing the lyrics and I get credit for writing the music. Lyrics by Somebody, Music by Chili.

If I rewrite some of those lyrics to better fit the music (which happens often in my case), then I get partial credit for writing the lyrics:
Lyrics by Somebody and Chili, Music by Chili.

If I sit down with someone who has a guitar and we bang out a song, we both wrote the words, or helped write the words, I sang the melody and he did the chords, then Words and Music by Somebody and Chili.
 
"The Law" is usually what two lawyers agree it to be. Your lucky this is all together now because you probably are not going to have to worry about dividing up royalties (I am just taking a wild guess and saying this song is not going to be on the charts, as I am thinking you are not on a label, but you never know it could be on a demo and then go platinum, anyway).

Best to get this worked out for this song and then set some rules for future ones - if you don't want to share song credits then write the lyrics and melody yourself and copyright it and let the guy know that your not sharing a writing credit - if he wants to write a song - write his own song. Chord progressions aren't that hard - you could figure hose out yourself - especially if you have a melody already - its a no brainer if you apply the most basic music theory you can come up with a chord progression from a melody in like 5 minutes...

IMHO
 
yetanother said:
He says the vocal melody is not important in a song.
The chord progression is everything.
Click to expand...
Your friend's either completely ignorant or he's trying to bullshit you. It's the exact opposite of what he says. As others have made clear here, chord progressions are the same in many songs. It IS the melody and nothing but the melody that matters.

If all he did was write the "chord progression" (which is probably in 1000 other songs) and you wrote the lyrics and melody, then not only are you co-writers, but it's more likely that it's YOUR song completely.
 
Tell him he can copyright the chord progression and you will copyright the melody and lyrics...
 
arcadeko said:
Tell him he can copyright the chord progression and you will copyright the melody and lyrics...
Click to expand...

That doesn't actually work. When a song is copyrighted, it is basically a marriage of lyrics and melody.

But, um, er, I guess you were just making a joke.... LOL.

However, now that I think about it.... If the chord progression were to become the melody, like if it is intrinsic to the song and kind of like the song's signature, then maybe it can be copyrighted. But that would have to include more than just the chord progression, it would have to include the timing, etc. just thinking out loud here....
 
Chili said:
I've heard it said many times on other sites that the actual copyright ownership applies to only words and melody, not the accompanying instruments, backing tracks, chord progressions, performance or anythhing else. Just words and melody.
Click to expand...

arcadeko said:
Chord progressions aren't that hard - you could figure hose out yourself - especially if you have a melody already - its a no brainer if you apply the most basic music theory you can come up with a chord progression from a melody in like 5 minutes...

IMHO
Click to expand...

RAMI said:
It IS the melody and nothing but the melody that matters.

If all he did was write the "chord progression" (which is probably in 1000 other songs) and you wrote the lyrics and melody, then not only are you co-writers, but it's more likely that it's YOUR song completely.
Click to expand...

arcadeko said:
Tell him he can copyright the chord progression and you will copyright the melody and lyrics...
Click to expand...
I think this is where the grey area becomes greyer still. In some songs the part the melody plays and the part the chord progression plays are both of such and equal importance {thinking out loud, "Kashmir" by Led Zeppelin} that to ascribe the authorship to just the melody and words writer where maybe two [or more] people were involved seems to me to be unfair. And unrealistic.
I remember coming home once and finding on my answering machine two songs that my mate, a drummer/percussionist, had written. Just his lyrics and melody. He asked if I could put music to them. I remember spending ages working out chords for both songs. Though we've tended to think of them as 'his songs', I'm most definitely the co writer because there are simply aspects of the overall song that would not have existed without my input {whereas, the vice is not versa. I've given him many credits on songs that initially appeared in jams, though he couldn't even recall the jams, much less the songs and did no further work after the jam}. Some years later, I was teaching someone else {a keyboardist} one of those songs and he was trying to anticipate the chords. What I recall finding really interesting was that the chords he was using weren't mine at all and in my ears gave the song a completely different flavour. I got to thinking after that that actually, the person(s) that comes up with the chord progression, though there may be many different progressions that could work or though that progression may be in loads of different songs (after all, there are only so many multiples of chords that can exist), it's that initial progression in the song that helps define and give shape and various bits of emphasis to the song.
It's kind of interesting how some sheet music quite often, by the chords that are included, lose some of the way a particular song may work by the emphasis on just the melody and words. That said, many a band in the past just put out a group credit to avoid the kind of battles that the OP's scenario is in danger of heading.
 
yetanother said:
Thank you so much. I wish I had something to show him. He says the vocal melody is not important in a song.
The chord progression is everything.
Andy
Click to expand...

Tell him to look up the lawsuit involving George Harrison's "My Sweet Lord" and "He's So Fine", The Chiffons' hit. It's all about the vocal melody.
 
Well, this is exactly what happened. One day he started playing a tune. It looked like he had an idea of what the song would be. He had an idea for the chorus that I changed a bit after that. Then he started playing something for the verse. I said to him that we could come up with something better. And a few minutes later, I came up with a melody for the verse. Let`s say he takes credit for the chord progression and chorus. The melody for the verse and 90% of the lyrics for the song belong to me. I think not many people would say that the song belongs to them. I wouln`t allow somebody to put their name on a song where I wrote 50% of the melody!

Chili said:
I've heard it said many times on other sites that the actual copyright ownership applies to only words and melody, not the accompanying instruments, backing tracks, chord progressions, performance or anythhing else. Just words and melody. However, I have never been able to find where that has been written and have found other articles to the contrary. Never the less, lyrics and melody are part of the song and you are a co-writer.

If you're in the US, start here:
US Copyright Office Circular 1
and peruse the rest of the site. You won't find the actual laws and you don't really want to read them, but the circulars will answer most/all of your questions.

Also, if you co-write a song with someone, it's best to have an agreement beforehand. Usually 50/50 no matter how much more one person does than the other. But you can agree to different amounts.

Here are some examples:

If somebody handed me some lyrics and asked me to put it to music. That person gets credit for writing the lyrics and I get credit for writing the music. Lyrics by Somebody, Music by Chili.

If I rewrite some of those lyrics to better fit the music (which happens often in my case), then I get partial credit for writing the lyrics:
Lyrics by Somebody and Chili, Music by Chili.

If I sit down with someone who has a guitar and we bang out a song, we both wrote the words, or helped write the words, I sang the melody and he did the chords, then Words and Music by Somebody and Chili.
Click to expand...
 
We`re both songwriters. We`re in the same band. So, when he came up with this song idea, I said to myself: 'This is not bad. We can make a song out of it'. I put a lot of heart into it, and I came up with the melody for the verse and some ideas for the chorus. I must say, he wrote most of the chorus. The name of the song, the idea of the song, were mine. He wrote 4 lines in the whole song, which is about 10% or 20%. I tried to explain to him that writing songs is like building a house. You need more than one brick. And I added a lot of bricks to it.
 
The thing is that until now, he was like a brother to me. I had an idea for a song, finished it with him, and gave him credit for it. He is a cowriter. So when he started telling people that he wrote this song by himself, when I wrote 50% of the melody and most of the lyrics, I was pretty shocked. I`m not quite sure what`s going on in his head.

RAMI said:
Your friend's either completely ignorant or he's trying to bullshit you. It's the exact opposite of what he says. As others have made clear here, chord progressions are the same in many songs. It IS the melody and nothing but the melody that matters.

If all he did was write the "chord progression" (which is probably in 1000 other songs) and you wrote the lyrics and melody, then not only are you co-writers, but it's more likely that it's YOUR song completely.
Click to expand...
 
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