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Thread: WTF Has this ever happened to you??

  1. #1
    Forum Member boobtube21's Avatar
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    WTF Has this ever happened to you??

    So I came up with a melody/chord progression a few months back, and it's been slowly evolving ever since. That's how I write most songs...it starts with an idea that pops into my head, and I usually won't push to finish it unless I'm really feeling it so it takes awhile.

    About an hour ago I got inspired to add some stuff to it, and as I was mixing what I'd done, the wife came in to have a listen. She says, "that sounds like that new Incubus song, 'Love Hurts'". I'm thinking, she doesn't know what she's talking about, there's no way anything I've written sounds anything like any Incubus song.

    So I go on their MySpace page, and there it is. Same tempo, strikingly similar drum beat, very similar chord progression, almost identical vocal melody, and............a rather prominent mellotron flute melody.

    WTF??

    I like mine a little better...but it doesn't matter. I can't ever use it now, because it's so startingly similar, you'd think Incubus had hacked into my computer and said, "that sounds good, let's write one like that." Very frustrating! If I get around to it I'll post it on Myspace, then link to it and the Incubus track so you can compare. It's ridiculous.

    This ever happen to you guys?

  2. #2
    Forum Member Cygnus X1's Avatar
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    Re: WTF Has this ever happened to you??

    There is almost nothing that hasn't been written before (it seems).
    I wrote an acoustic/electric riff that 10 years later I heard as a Metallica intro.
    It was as if they stole mine!
    I switched it up, but it remains as something that was never mine.

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    Forum Member chuckocaster's Avatar
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    Re: WTF Has this ever happened to you??

    yep. it's frustrating as hell.
    "don't worry, i'm a professional!"

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    Forum Member Timbo's Avatar
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    Re: WTF Has this ever happened to you??

    I remember reading a Chris Rea interview years back when he talked about sitting in his studio and working on a new song idea. After spending all day developing it and being convinced it was a keeper, his wife walked in, has a listen, and let him know that he'd just recorded the theme tune from Postman Pat.
    'Alton Towers - Where the magic never ends', or so the commercial says. Imagine my disappointment when it closed at 7.30

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    Forum Member gibsonjunkie's Avatar
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    Re: WTF Has this ever happened to you??

    I wrote a song years ago that sound remarkably like "Down on Mainstreet" by Bob Segar, including a strikingly similar guitar solo. I actually copyrote (copyrighted?) it about three years before his came out... :)
    "We catched fish and talked, and we took a swim now and then to keep off sleepiness." Mark Twain

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    Forum Member Los7's Avatar
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    Re: WTF Has this ever happened to you??

    yep, i know the feeling. I dont really write many songs, i just noodle around. I had a noodle i was working on (acoustic) that grew on me so worked a little harder on it. A little while after a friend sent me song from "City and Colour" called "Day Old Hate" (which is great song). I started listening to it and it slowly it dawned on me...The writer had been listening through my window lol
    I've changed it up now, and although it still has pretty much the same progression, i sped it up a bit. Just one of those things
    "I'm not mad, i just like to keep myself company"

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    Forum Member Gris's Avatar
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    Re: WTF Has this ever happened to you??

    Oh well, I guess there are only three real blues songs then, LOL.

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    Forum Member refin's Avatar
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    Re: WTF Has this ever happened to you??

    Quote Originally Posted by Gris View Post
    Oh well, I guess there are only three real blues songs then, LOL.


    I think that has happened to all of us............ a riff or melody we are excited about,and then we hear it somewhere else.
    "My flesh and my heart fail...but God is the strength of my heart and my portion forever."
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    Forum Member boobtube21's Avatar
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    Re: WTF Has this ever happened to you??

    I knew I wasn't alone...crazy though, so many elements of the two songs were so similar--drum beat and tempo, chords, melody, mellotron. Though the wife and I have both since decided it sounds more like Benny Mardones' "Into The Night" anyway.

    Anyway I'm going to hold onto it, if that Incubus song doesn't blow up huge maybe I'll use it.

  10. #10
    Forum Member Wilko's Avatar
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    Re: WTF Has this ever happened to you??

    Back in the 80s my band the Outriders had a song about the "syndrome" called it's all the same.

    When I finally sit down to write myself a song
    'takes me 20 minutes to figure out who I'm rippin' off
    'cause it's all the same
    It's all the same.

  11. #11
    Forum Member NeoFauve's Avatar
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    Re: WTF Has this ever happened to you??

    Hey, John Fogerty got sued for sounding too much like the guy that used to sing and write songs for Creedence Clearwater Revival.
    "Well, I used to be disgusted, now I try to be amused..."
    Elvis Costello

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    Forum Member NeoFauve's Avatar
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    Re: WTF Has this ever happened to you??

    I had this little lump of chords I wanted to do something with since before I ever finished a song. I didn't even know what one chord was. I just liked the sound.
    A year or so ago, I fleshed it out some when I came up with some lyrics and a melody that gave a home to that old chord lump.

    The progression is different, but the first three lines of the melody and the meter of the lyrics are a dead ringer for an old Crowded House song that I knew mainly through a cover version.
    On one hand, I thought it was pretty cool that I was writing something that sounded like a Neil Finn song.
    But I was struggling with the lyrics, and the similarity was subconciously blocking me.

    In retrospect, I should probably have just plowed through a "problem" like that.
    It might actually be easier to tweak a complete song than to avoid similarities midstream.
    It was distracting and caused me to second guess my next move, for a long time, but but there really are worse things than a song resembling the work of a craftsman like Neil Finn, or Incubus.

    Be glad you finished it. Play it. Listen to it. Mess with it. I'll bet you can make it different without ruining it.
    "Well, I used to be disgusted, now I try to be amused..."
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    Forum Member chuckocaster's Avatar
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    Re: WTF Has this ever happened to you??

    Quote Originally Posted by NeoFauve View Post
    Hey, John Fogerty got sued for sounding too much like the guy that used to sing and write songs for Creedence Clearwater Revival.
    "don't worry, i'm a professional!"

  14. #14
    Forum Member bignote's Avatar
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    Re: WTF Has this ever happened to you??

    It is nearly impossible to write lyrics or play a riff on the guitar that hasn't been done before or at least is eerily "close" to something else.
    Remember! It is the indian, not the arrow! Although the arrow can help.

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    Forum Member boobtube21's Avatar
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    Re: WTF Has this ever happened to you??

    This is all true, thank you gentlemen for the words of encouragement.

    As of now I haven't finished it, there's no lyrics, just whistling the melody and the recording only lasts for about a minute. I just hit record one night to save the idea so I wouldn't forget it, and have been slowly adding layers to it ever since. I'll finish it someday.

    I have noticed quite a few songs that sound just like other songs, and they seem to get away with it. I heard a new song on the local teeny bopper station the other day (KROQ) and it sounded just like that 80's song, "I don't wanna looose your love, toniiiiiiight". You could literally sing that line to the new song' chorus and it matched their melody and everything.

    But then there was the Verve getting sued by the Stones for 'Bittersweet Symphony', alledgedly because part of it sounded like 'This Could Be the Last Time'. Must be a technicality they got them on because I can't hear hardly any similarity.

  16. #16
    Forum Member boobtube21's Avatar
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    Re: WTF Has this ever happened to you??

    OK nevermind I just found this...Bittersweet was basically ripped straight from this:

    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q9Qgp...eature=related

    but as my wife says, "I'd like to hear the Rolling Stones make it sound like that."

  17. #17
    Forum Member Kap'n's Avatar
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    Re: WTF Has this ever happened to you??

    Quote Originally Posted by Wilko View Post
    Back in the 80s my band the Outriders had a song about the "syndrome" called it's all the same.

    When I finally sit down to write myself a song
    'takes me 20 minutes to figure out who I'm rippin' off
    'cause it's all the same
    It's all the same.
    If I play the same three chords, will you just yawn and say
    It's all been done
    It's all been done
    It's all been done before.

    Maybe you could sue BNL for stealing your song about stealing songs.
    Several guitars in different colors
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  18. #18
    Forum Member Kap'n's Avatar
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    Re: WTF Has this ever happened to you??

    Quote Originally Posted by chuckocaster View Post
    But true.
    Several guitars in different colors
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  19. #19
    Forum Member Kap'n's Avatar
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    Re: WTF Has this ever happened to you??

    Quote Originally Posted by boobtube21 View Post
    OK nevermind I just found this...Bittersweet was basically ripped straight from this:

    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q9Qgp...eature=related

    but as my wife says, "I'd like to hear the Rolling Stones make it sound like that."

    As I understand it, the entire string section hook from Bittersweet Symphony was sampled, and looped ad nauseum from a "Symphonic Rolling Stones" album.
    Several guitars in different colors
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  20. #20
    Forum Member Cygnus X1's Avatar
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    Re: WTF Has this ever happened to you??

    Straight up, (as they say down here in SC), I've seen that...somewhere.

    I should sue Metallica myself.
    I should have just mailed it to myself.
    "Poor Man's Copywright".
    Or some such nonsense.

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    Re: WTF Has this ever happened to you??

    Quote Originally Posted by Gris View Post
    Oh well, I guess there are only three real blues songs then, LOL.
    Heh. I was going to say, you never hear a blues guy say "I wrote a song the other day, and damned if it didn't turn out to have the same chord progression as such-and-such."
    "I haven't slept for ten days...because that would be too long." -- Mitch Hedberg

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