Chord Progessions Copyrighted?

onlyfingers said:
I don't think Led Zeppelin stole tunes from bluesman.
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Sorry, you're wrong.... major segments of Dazed And Confused, The Lemon Song, Bring It On Home, Babe I'm Gonna Leave You, and You Shook Me, and I'm sure a few more were all penned by bluesmen, and ripped by Zeppelin.
 
Wrong again, emphatically

Blue Bear Sound said:
Sorry, you're wrong.... major segments of Dazed And Confused, The Lemon Song, Bring It On Home, Babe I'm Gonna Leave You, and You Shook Me, and I'm sure a few more were all penned by bluesmen, and ripped by Zeppelin.
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I'm always ready to learn. I thought, when Led Zeppelin credited a song, like You Shook Me, to Willie Dixon, that they had made arrangements with Dixon or the owner of the rights to the song to use the material. But you're saying that Dixon was never paid? Go figure. Dixon, who was a staff producer at Chess records, should know enough about the music business to have gotten his due.

http://www.led-zeppelin.com/EMl1.html


You Shook Me: Dixon

Babe I'm Gonna Leave You: Trad. Arr. Jimmy Page.

Dazed and Confused: Page

The Lemon Song: Originally Plant/Jones/Bonham, but now listed as Burnett, after an out of court settlement with Jewel Music. (http://groups.yahoo.com/group/LZHistory/message/199)
 
"Sorry, you're wrong.... major segments of Dazed And Confused, The Lemon Song, Bring It On Home, Babe I'm Gonna Leave You, and You Shook Me, and I'm sure a few more were all penned by bluesmen, and ripped by Zeppelin."

most of those british invasion cats "borrowed" heavily from our black blues musicians (with the exception of maybe the Beatles).
Led Zeps lemon song was a direct ripoff IMO.
Cream didn't really plagurize the lyrics, but, Clapton pretty much ripped off Albert kings signature guitar chops on a couple of songs (as best he could...Albert licks ain't easy to copy).

Those blues musicians got ripped off alot worse in the good old USA... by record companies.
(the song "breathless" has Jerry Lee Lewis as a co-writer and he had no part in that composition...it was all otis blackwell.)

I could list alot more examples of that
 
It would be interesting to know how the court decides if its infringement or not. Just because something isnt as popular as the star wars theme does that mean you can come closer to copying it? I hear people get away with copying the begining to songs like "smells like teen spirit" all the time and they get away with it. Its always dissapointing though cause your expecting to hear the real song and then some filler comes on after it. I guess its only natural to sometimes recycle sounds, which was kind of the point of the thread, but instead of copying as close as possible theres as always a way you could make it original sounding.
 
Re: Wrong again, emphatically

onlyfingers said:
....they had made arrangements with Dixon or the owner of the rights to the song to use the material.
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Nope...


onlyfingers said:
But you're saying that Dixon was never paid?
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That's right....


None of them were paid..... and I suspect it was more likely due to the fact that Atlantic Records had a bigger legal budget than Chess or the songwriters themselves to fight it.
 
I love Zep, but I bought a blues compilation CD and there was a song, I am not sure if it was Muddy Waters or Willie Dixon, but there were the EXACT lyrics to Whole Lotta Love. The song was not called Whole Lotta Love, I think it might have been called You Need Love or something. I was shocked!!
 
its kind of funny actually. The brits got into blues and realized that american bluesmen were basically not selling enough records in this county to get above the poverty level.

Lift a line here....steal a riff there....who's gonna know? The stuff was SO obscure.

The "wrench in the works" was this....the british cats made it big and they actually covered some blues songs and gave the bluesmen credit on those tunes (the rolling stones come to mind). That caused a resurgence of the blues in this country and put alot of focus on those "obscure" songs that were ripped off.

moral of the story: you can fool all the people some of the time and you can fool some of the people all of the time, but, you can't fool all of the people all of the time.

if you rip off an obscure song SOMEBODY SOMEWHERE is gonna bust your ass....rightfully so I might add.
 
its kind of funny actually. The brits got into blues and realized that american bluesmen were basically not selling enough records in this county to get above the poverty level.

Lift a line here....steal a riff there....who's gonna know? The stuff was SO obscure.

The "wrench in the works" was this....some british cats made it big and they actually covered some blues songs and gave the bluesmen credit on those tunes (the rolling stones come to mind). That caused a resurgence of the blues in this country and put alot of focus on those "obscure" songs that were ripped off.

moral of the story: you can fool all the people some of the time and you can fool some of the people all of the time, but, you can't fool all of the people all of the time.

if you rip off an obscure song SOMEBODY SOMEWHERE is gonna bust your ass....rightfully so I might add.
 
I've got a real interesting 2-CD compilation called Where the Blues Was Born, made in Holland, produced by Biem/Stemra, I think.

The collection is unusual because of the span of time and talent it covers. Jellyroll Morton, John Lee Hooker and Elmore James to Fleetwood Mac and the Yardbirds. Clapton, too.

The fine print tells who the tunes were licensed from. The BB King tune and quite a few others are licensed through San Juan Music Group, for instance. About half the tracks have no licensing information--the CD just says "live recording," indicating that these guys probably have not paid any royalties to use the performance or the songs. Artists recorded live: John Mayall, Hendrix, Ray Charles, Mike Bloomfield, Fleetwood Mac.

Here are a couple of copyright links that I came across, that tell a bit about the business of music.

http://entertainment.howstuffworks.com/music-royalties.htm

http://www.empiremusicco.com/busofson.html

http://www.iwritethesongs.com/articles/how_songs_make_money.cfm
 
philboyd studge said:
Your copyritten work can be protected and defended only if you register it.

As was said earlier, some chord pro...ken to this a few times in Keyboard Mag. Daf
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Ya, I don't think you can get sued for copying a style. Otherwise, where would Weird Al be?
Remember the theme song from Ghostbusters? they originally wanted Huey Lewis to do that. When they couldn't arrive at a deal, they hired someone to cop Huey's vibe. As I remember it, he sued and lost.

And I don't think anybody has mentioned Robert Johnson by name... he's the bluesman that wrote the lyrics Led Zep used in the Lemon Song. He was long dead by the time Zep ripped him off. I doubt his kids got anything either.

Pretty stark contrast to the producers of Oh Brother Where Art Though, who conducted and exhaustive search to track down the guy that wrote the lines to Poor Lazuras, the song they sing at teh very beginning while the chain gang is busting rocks. According to what I've read, the only place that song existed was on a cassette tape that some producer had recorded years back while doing interviews with prisoners. The tracked the ex-con down and gave him something like $75,000 in royalties.

got mojo?
www.voodoovibe.com
 
By the way.... Did Led Zep owe Tolkein's heirs any royalties? Half of their lyrics were ripped off from bluesmen, and the other half were ripped off from Tolkein's works....

And that creepy guy holding the lantern on the back of "IV" is directly lifted from the artwork for "The Hermit" card from the Rider-Waite Tarot Card deck. Did they pay the artist for that?

got mojo?
www.voodoovibe.com
 
FattMusiek said:
cough Vanilla Ice cough
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Ice Ice baby is dum dum dum da da dum dum...da dum dum dum da da dum dum

Under Pressure is dum dum dum da da dum dum...dum dum dum dad da dum dum

Ice Ice baby has an extra da in it. It's not the same!
 
fenix said:
Ice Ice baby is dum dum dum da da dum dum...da dum dum dum da da dum dum

Under Pressure is dum dum dum da da dum dum...dum dum dum dad da dum dum

Ice Ice baby has an extra da in it. It's not the same!
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Yah he lost the suit though. Had to pay royalties. Thats why I wonder how they decide when your copying. 2 notes different? 3 notes different? 4? Not that im going to copy anything, but its interesting anyways.
 
applesmasher said:
He does death metal now. And it makes you want to die. :rolleyes:
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Not death metal. Numetal. He is also doing rap again. Members of wutang and ICP make cameos on his latest cd.

I'm a huge fan.
 
He still sells out midsize venues (<2,000 capacity). The guy can perform no matter how shitty the music is.
 
Neither Chord Progressions nor melody notation can ever be copyrighted.

Only entire arrangements are offered copyright protection.

Think about this for a moment - for most instruments (guitar and piano for example) this is finite field. (But Fretless instruments technically have an infinate number of possible notes)

You could sit down and in a day figure out each and every possible chord combination and note combination on a guitar using a simple computer program.

So if they allowed anyone to copyright combinations - no one would be able to make music afterwards without paying the "vig"..

It is the total combinations used in a song - the arrangement - that is capable of being copywrited. (along with words and melody if that applies)

Thats why - when you want to register your copyright - you either include a complete musical arrangement - or the recorded song itself.


Sincerely,

Rod
 
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