Thing is, you can't really 'patent' a chord progression, unless it's a very unusual one. Melodies can be tampered with in terms of timing, phrasing, etc. Then it becomes a question of how an individual listener reacts to it. To me, one of the most obviously plagiarised melodies was George Harrison's 'My sweet lord'
Think you're all being a bit harsh on Ed Sheeran. He's not exactly my cup of tea but you're wrong if you say he's not an excellent musician. He knows how to write songs better than 99% of the current mainstream.
The Beatles had previous. The Stones and The Beach Boys too. Three of the greatest bands ever ripped off Chuck Berry's riffs for fun. They were paying homage to him though - which is what many bands do with their influences. They want to mimic their heroes. The Ramones are the most copied band ever. Ramonescore bands pride themselves on copying every nuance of the Ramones sound - and their look too.
Aye i personally find the whole "your song sounds similar to a song i wrote ten years ago, so im gonna sue" attitude ****ing pathetic anyway. Its music, there are only a certain number of notes in the world and an infinite number of songs. Take the two recent songs "pricetag" by Jessie J and "We cant stop" by Miley Cyrus. Written independently and released pretty close to each other yet both artists claim they had never heard the others track before
Most of Berry's stuff was three chord bash - 12 or 16 bar. Pretty hard to claim a copywrite on that. The riffs are mostly ones that he copied from piano riffs and transferred to guitar.
Tuneless sh#te does tend to sound the same. These aren't songwriters or musicians. It's not about a hook, a catchy tune.... It's about image and style.
All artists do that. Every single one of them, without exception. "Steal everything" - Pablo Picasso. Shakespeare got all his best stories from the Greeks. Led Zeppelin got all their guitar riffs from the blues. So did John Fogerty of Creedence Clearwater Revival, who made music industry history when his record company, who owned the rights to Born On The Bayou, took him to court for lifting one of his own riffs. What the best artists do is, having taken ideas and inspiration from wherever they can find it, they turn it into something uniquely their own. But there is nothing in music, poetry, literature or art, that hasn't been done before.
It's the melody, always. Take Lennon's Imagine. It's a very, very simple chord progression. It's the melody that makes it the song it is.
I agree totally. More than three chords are wasted. A simple repetitive melody is appealing. It sticks in the brain. Subtle variations result in countless more catchy tunes which the brain recognises as similar yet different. It's like human faces; it shouldn't be possible for there to be millions of different ones by subtlety changing common characteristics.
That's even true of Motorhead's Ace of Spades. The rhythm drives it, but it's the really simple chord progression that elevates it above 1000 other fast rock n roll riffs.
Absolutely agree, but this is not just about a riff or a melody, he is lifting practically complete works and passing them as is own, the one he settled out of court he had stolen 70% of the composition. But whatever, I think the guy is ****e anyway. Just a clever ****e.
It's standard stuff "He's rich and famous and I'm jealous of him" "What can I do to make myself feel better" "I know, I'll abuse him online" Standard behaviour of an inadequate
ok let's just cover this one for a minute or two or even three... I certainly do not agree in online abuse, however, we are all subject to online abuse at some point, including you dear fella naturally it dosen't make it right, but why should a multi millionaire be treated any different i could argue and to what level is this abuse. Well if he is going to complain about it, the way to protect others is to highlight it. The one thing that bugs me though with some people that claim online abuse is what did they do to provoke it. Take me for example, i'm constantly being the village idiot on GC, hence i get abused, it's to be expected, personally i wouldn't want it any different, after all who wants someone liking them, only 'normal' people. So is Ed 'normal' - **** off is he, he's a music industry fraud, so why shouldn't he get a bit of ****! He's made ****ing millions from media publicity, even at Glastonbury, he wouldn't do it unless he got the special treatment of centre stage, so it's all a bit rich really....hmmm yes he is rich, I probably get more abuse than that cun.t and don't get a penny for it... Hence i'm really struggling to shed a tear for the fraudster myself.
