Did anyone hear this. They sound identical. Check it out.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1ofFw9DKu_I
Yeah I saw that on the Music Player Forums. Cold Play seems to be on the plagiarism kick.
I've always maintained that someone should sue Coldplay for constantly copying... Coldplay.
However, Joe has a pretty fucking strong case here. It's a shame that the music biz has come to this. And the fact is, Coldplay probably never listened to the song as a band and decided to copy it. Probably one band member heard it, years ago, and the melody floated around in his head, and morphed a little, and in the end came out in the song. But still, the fact that they are even in the same key is pretty damning.
I never heard either song, I would listen to both out of curiosity, but my MP3 downloading service has been fucked for a while, works only when it wants to (which is why I am here about to make a post asking advice on it).
Anyhow, there are tons of examples of similar, and exact ripoffs in music. I find it difficult to distinguish where the line is drawn.
Years ago, on another site, someone posted a backing track that is just a C major chord played in some synth sounds with drums. The poster had asked us to record something using the Lydian mode. It was before I came to the WH and it was my first ever FNJ type thing.
Here is what I recorded: http://soundclick.com/share?songid=3215464
Someone heard it and said that I had ripped off the idea from Satriani's "Flying In a Blue Dream". I don't really remember ever having heard the song before being told this, at which time I downloaded it and yeah, there were definitely strong similarities. Two ideas came to mind to explain this.
The first is that it is a basic, obvious straightforward Lydian melody. The type that someone was of course going to use, whether it be Satch, me, or 1000 other guitarists or composers. There are tones of examples of these types of melodies, many of which are in the works of the founders of our musical traditions, guys like Bach, Mozart, Beethoven, what made much of their work great was the fact that they got first crack at melodies the were inherently built into the materials (scales, chord progressions, etc...) with which they worked.
The second is like Charger had said above, I could have heard it somewhere, had it bouncing around my head, and spat it out thinking it was my own. This one, in my case, is unlikely because Satch had not released this album until well after I quit listening to instrumental rock guitar players. But it has happened to me, and I guess everyone, on occasion.
Either way, I guess these things just happen and it is bound to come to litigation every once in a while. I am going to try and listen so I can compare the two, if I ever get MP3 Rocket working again.
But, where do we draw the line? I guess it is only the primary melody of a tune that is subject to legal action? I mena there are a trillion metal songs that consist of basically the same E based power chord chunking. What about all those bluse guys playing the same solos and the same song with just very slightly altered melodies?
As I mentioned in another forum, I like the song a lot better with Satch playing. ;)
It ain't hard for a practiced cover artist to copy licks. And that guy dunnit for sure.
I could never be a cover artist, everything I know about guitar is alphabet based. In other words I learned the scales and how to apply them against the changes, and then began creating originals.
Never copied anyone except little licks I saw cover bands playing live in bars. And I long ago forgot all of those And of course I did learn Roy Buchanan songs note for note, but again I long ago forgot those too.