Who's The Copy And Who's The Original?

[Afronaut]

I happen to like a lot of Jens Johanssons way of playing the keyboard.
So, got bored and did some google stuff and found his pages.

This is a Cut/Paste from his site, FAQs or something:

Who's the copy and who's the original?
The accusation that some project/group/artist is a "copy" or "clone" is quite common. Basically, the short answer is that as long as the music is in a 12-tone well-tempered scale, everyne copies everyone, because we keep using the same 12 notes, over and over. I could say; Blackmore took the 'G' from the first note of Beethoven's 5th, the 'Bb' from the 4th note of JSB's "musical offering", the 'C' from the ending chord of 'Wohltemperiertes Klavier #1", and so on, and made the riff for "Smoke on the Water"..
If you're the type of nit-picker that isn't satisfied with this argument... well first off, you'd better realise that any theories you put forth on the subject will probably be utterly wrong. And that any opinion on "who copied who" depends on who's the true originator of a concept. Did A steal it from B who in his turn stole if from C? Or did both A and B steal it from C? If so, and if C is somebody you never even heard of, should A somehow get any 'credit' for stealing it first?

In my opinion this whole discussion becomes quite meaningless at this point, but I'll follow a thought I have at the moment at least, because if you want to claim to see any such "lineages" of idea theft, you had better show that you're very familiar with many styles of music.

A style of music is a little bit like many other things in the world — it changes depending on how close you are to the subject. It is sort of like comparing two human beings — if you see them from a kilometer away, they might seem very similar, but the closer you get, the more differences you can see. And if you get close enough to talk and interact, you can determine a lot of differences. (But from 1000 meters, even Darth Vader and Jesus would look pretty much the same to the unaided eye. Well, provided they didn't have clothes on I guess. I picture Jesus as usually walking around in a white sheet, just like in "Life of Brian". And Darth, as we all know, has some sort of black plastic outfit.)

This goes for music as well. The closer you scrutinize a style, a piece, or someone's life work, the better you will be at understanding differences, influences, and the like. And even if you're very familiar with one style that you like, when confronted with something different it can be like you're a kilometer away. For instance, a Jazz fanatic might be shocked at the metal dude who thinks Miles Davis and Kenny G sound about the same. The metal fanatic scoffs at the blues guy that says "Mindcrime" era Queensryche sounds pretty much like late Judas Priest. And the opera guy says all blues sounds the same, which makes the blues guy a bit bemused, but to him on the other hand Wagner sounds similar to Rossini or even Purcell — it's all a bunch of people screaming on top of their lungs over orchestral music. *

OK, so that's the "ability to differentate between sub-styles of music depends on familiarity" discussion. Whew, I'm not sure where that tangent headed off into actually. Anyway, now on to lines of influence; it at least seems like a remote possibility that:

Yngwie copied JSB, Uli, Eddie, Paganini, me, Allan, and a little bit of Ritchie, and added a lot of his own stuff.

I copied JSB, John Lord, Ritchie, Yngwie, Eddie Jobson, Allan, and a little bit of Zappa, and added a lot of my own stuff.

Tolkki copied JSB, Ritchie, Iron Maiden, Yngwie, Queensryche, Helloween, and a little bit of ABBA, and added a lot of his own stuff.

JSB himself copied Buxtehude, Albinoni and other contemporaries, and added a lot of his own stuff.

But as stated previously, you'd have to be really familiar with the music to sort out which conceptual bits were lifted, and which were "his own stuff", and how much of each is present.

What the hell, none of this stuff is making any sense!! I type and type and I can't get to the point. I've got to cut down on the coffee..

Interesting read, good points and funny too, thought i'd share this.



oh yeah, teh source

[zacspeed]

Did A steal it from B who in his turn stole if from C? Or did both A and B steal it from C? If so, and if C is somebody you never even heard of, should A somehow get any 'credit' for stealing it first?

A is a bastard

[wontellyagen]

interesting concept. i guess the same argument could be raised for literature too

I wonder if this could be applied as a defense for copyright laws....
"Prove those are your notes"!

[Nightwolf]

I realize this refers to similar guitar riffs and styles, but I've often thought the same thing about songs that sound very similar to other songs. When you think about it, there have been millions of songs written and recorded over the years, and when you only have eight notes to choose from (not counting sharps and flats) there's bound to be some accidental similarity. But I still think some of it is just plain stealing. In fact I made a web page about it several years ago if anyone is interested...

http://dennis.weidner.com/soundalikes.html

(I know the quality sucks, but I never claimed to be a Webmaster )

I also dabbled in merging audio files to compare how similar they sound. Here's one blatant example (see if anyone can name both songs)...

Click Here To Listen (515 KB)

[Afronaut]

Originally posted by Nightwolf@7 July 2004 - 22:46
I realize this refers to similar guitar riffs and styles, but I've often thought the same thing about songs that sound very similar to other songs. When you think about it, there have been millions of songs written and recorded over the years, and when you only have eight notes to choose from (not counting sharps and flats) there's bound to be some accidental similarity. But I still think some of it is just plain stealing. In fact I made a web page about it several years ago if anyone is interested...

http://dennis.weidner.com/soundalikes.html

(I know the quality sucks, but I never claimed to be a Webmaster )

I also dabbled in merging audio files to compare how similar they sound. Here's one blatant example (see if anyone can name both songs)...

Click Here To Listen (515 KB)

Nice site.

I kinda like the easy lay outs better than the flashy swf files all over
and heavy graphics.

Check out 2 similar songs by same artists:

Van Halen (album 1984)

Jump and Panama

Both songs has the same theme, sort of.

Eddie could Sue himself if he wanted to.