Why do many popular songs sound the same 1: public domain?
First of all, the concept is clear. The public domain refers to the collection of all the crystallization of human wisdom that belongs to the public cultural heritage and can be used and processed by anyone without restriction. Due to the existence of the public domain, you can use folk songs that have been circulating for hundreds of years, classical songs of Bach or Beethoven (pay attention to the score, you can play and adapt them yourself, because some recorded versions have not expired), and use music works that have entered the public domain beyond the copyright period (the same as above). This word came into being with the establishment of copyright system. Prior to this, all works were in the public domain.
Ok, after defining this concept, let's give an example. Just now, someone mentioned the twinkling stars and the alphabet. Let's take this for example. The original song of "Twinkling Star" is/kloc-a French folk song "Mom, please listen to me" in the middle of the 8th century. Mozart adapted K.265 variation in C major according to this song, and the alphabet also came from this song.
To give some modern examples, Ken Hirai?'s The Old Clock originated from henry clay Walker's My Grandfather's Clock. S.H.E' s "Don't Want to Grow Up" was all the rage, and the chorus borrowed Mozart's "Symphony 40 K.550 in G minor".
Why do many popular songs sound similar 2: Reference? Plagiarism?
The genres of music influence each other, and the creativity of music is intertwined. So many very similar works were left in the early days, such as folk songs, blues, R& etc. R whatever minor people hear from the countryside, what gospel songs they hear from the church and what performances they hear from the bar will be used in their own songs as long as they feel good.
Moreover, in the first half of the twentieth century, a considerable number of songs were unsigned, whether they were adapted from the public domain or borrowed from copyright works. For example, Elvis Presley's Love Me Tender is adapted from the old civil war song "The Public Domain", and Aura Lee ray charles's "I Got a Woman" is considered to be the earliest soul song prototype, which borrowed the gospel song "It must be Jesus"; Bob Dylan's songs quoted many Irish-Scottish folk songs such as Happy Month in May and Parting Glass. Of course, these songs belong to the public domain, but he also borrowed materials from many copyright works such as Patriot Game. In the 1970s, the most famous one was led zeppelin, which was borrowed too much, including Ladder, so I won't list them one by one. None of the above quotations or adaptations are specified.
This brings a problem. When you look back at those old songs, it's hard to know where they borrowed the material/inspiration. This situation continued until 1976 when george harrison was sentenced? Subconscious plagiarism? Ronnie Mack's "He's so nice" earned $654.38 +0.6 million, which had a great influence on the whole music industry.
Oh, right? Subconscious plagiarism? The psychological name is hidden memory, in this case, it is a copy of the subconscious mind. Is it not recognized in domestic music infringement complaints? Subconscious plagiarism? Yes
There may be some neat kids who can't accept this fact:) The history of music development is not so clean.
History is always strikingly similar. When we came to the hip-hop era, the same scene was staged again.
Why do many popular songs sound similar 3: sampling
Let's take what someone mentioned earlier as an example. MC hammer's "u can't touch this" samples "super freak" When this song was first released, rick james sued MC Hammer, and the two settled out of court. MC Hammer paid compensation and wrote rick james's name in the composition column.
Sampling refers to cutting and collating some fragments from existing music records into your own works. Hip-hop is accompanied by the rise of sampling and mixing technology. The Rapper's Delight of the first Hip-hop, 1979 sampled the bass part of Chic's Good Times, without authorization. The same bass later appeared in more than a dozen different songs. Most of them were unauthorized at that time. The representative works of the golden age of Hip-hop, such as Fear of a Black Planet and Paul's Boutique, are all collages at will, which is simply unimaginable today. Now, the sample will be marked as "The sample is from ...? Pay a large sum of money to get authorization.
Since the early 1990s, the situation has been different. 9 1, Della Soul was sentenced to 1.7 million sampling period 12 seconds, which was the first case of large amount of compensation for infringement. Since then, a series of huge compensation cases directly led to the development of hip-hop music in another direction. Last year, Beast Boy was sued for "Paul Boutique". Before, they said that the times were too chaotic, everyone was using it, and no one knew the original source of the sampling. ? Reasonable use? At present, in fact, hip hop singers can't protect them most of the time.
Please allow me to complain a little. The harsh copyright law in the late 1990s not only brought a huge blow to the hip-hop industry, but also brought a large number of speculators? Buy the copyright of records that are no longer sold, and make a fortune by suing people, and it becomes the music industry? Like a ghost? . Famous in 2005? Sampling ghost? Bridgeport Music Company sued N.W.A for winning "100 miles and running", but only because of two seconds of guitar harmony. Excessive freedom and excessive harshness are not what I want to see, but if I can only choose between them, I would rather choose excessive freedom:)
So, when two songs are similar, usually my first reaction comes from the public domain? Is it sampling? So is there any possibility of being affected? Whether borrowing or copying. Original songwriters before 70' s and sampling sources before 90' s, some of them may be in songwriters column or? The sample comes from? You can't see it in the park because no one knows. But these are obviously not? Coincidence Although some people don't know the specific source, you can clearly feel the context between songs.
Let's talk about it? Coincidence Yes, it's not a coincidence, it's just a question of probability.
Why do many popular songs sound the same? 4. Chord progression.
Someone posted a 4-chord video of Axis of Awesome and sang more than 30 songs with 4 chords. Many people have made similar videos, and the most famous one in China should be Playing with Qu Wanting:
The chord progression used in Axis of Awesome is I-V-vi-IV, including C G Am F/G D Em C/D A Bm G and so on. Although he plays C G Am F, the original song is not necessarily in C key, but has the same chord progression (direction). This chord progression has a proper noun called. Pop punk chord progression? (Mongolian meter) and folk meter.
I'll explain it in detail here. The so-called common law means that syllables are distributed according to 8-6-8-6, two long sentences rhyme at the end and two short sentences rhyme, that is, alternating rhyme (a-b-a-b). The rules of folk songs are similar, but the requirements are not so strict, only short sentences are required to rhyme, that is, x-a-x-a(x is random rhyme). In addition, long sentences need four iambic and short sentences need three iambic. This means that the eight syllables of a long sentence are divided into four steps, and each step consists of an unstressed syllable and a stressed syllable. In short, it is weight, for example: because I can't stop for death,/he kindly stopped for me (the poem of the famous poet Emily Dickinson
The famous website xkcd has an article about this: /788/, he said? Ever since I tried to sing this poem by Emily Dickinson in The Island of gilligan, I have never been able to read it properly. ?
Because of the existence of common law/folk law, there are a large number of country/gospel/folk rock songs that can be sung in perfect exchange of lyrics, which is the similarity of lyrics. Please refer to the example mentioned in my first translation video.
In Chinese pop music, of course, there are lyrics in a certain format, such as 3-3-5, 3-3-7 or a sentence with seven words. There are so many paragraphs that can be interchanged, but I rarely encounter examples of perfect collocation of the whole lyrics. Not long ago, someone sang other songs with the lyrics of fairy tales. None of the syllables match the rhyme, but most of them are just pieced together.
Why do many popular songs sound like 6: Riff?
Here comes the main event. Most listeners are not so sensitive to chords, samples (if not very long, not often used) and lyrics rhythm, so the most important thing is timbre. Am I allowed to use it here at will? Tone? It's not a melody, because most of the riff fragments in the songs we are talking about contain a short melody, but some of them belong to harmony in function, depending on how you use them, such as guitar/bass riff. When listening to songs, we are most impressed by the main theme and bars.
Let's start with riff. Short repeated segments that are played repeatedly are most often considered similar. This brainwashing effect causes you to react immediately when you hear similar riffs? Hey, isn't this from that song?
Most of these examples focus on a large number of guitar/bass improvisation rock music in the 1970s and 1990s. For example, Nirvana's Here You Are and Joke No.8 of Killing, Breaking My Mouth and Dawn, and Animals Are My Life, such as the opening riff paragraph of these three songs, Steriogram's Walkman, The Kinks's Picture Book and Green Day's Warning, are all very similar.
Another extreme example, Riot's sword and tequila, Accept's flash rocker, Iron Maiden's 2 minutes at midnight, Mercyful Fate's Pharaoh's curse, Raven's Seek And Destroy, White Spirit's midnight chaser and Lori Gallech's moon child? I don't want to list any more. The riff of these songs are actually different, but they all have a strong sense of auditory similarity (if they are exactly the same, it must be either sampling or plagiarism). Intuitively, you might think that there is the possibility of mutual learning/interaction that we talked about in 2. Yes, there must be, but there should be a lot just because of coincidence.
Why do many popular songs sound like 7: Melody?
In addition to improvisation, the main theme is mainly the melody of vocal lyrics. In this regard, I recommend two examples collected by websites as reference. In foreign countries, that song sounds like a collection of a lot, of course, not all the melodies, but also all aspects; At home, a blog compiled about 500 songs in the Chinese music scene a few years ago. If you watch my first video, you will naturally have questions? Why do we have so many melodies to write, but there are so many similarities in the melodies written? Plagiarism or coincidence?
I don't want to explain the music theory too much here, nor do I intend to point out the criteria for judging plagiarism. Use one of the most interesting examples to illustrate:
In 2008, American guitarist joe sutter Rani sued coldplay for plagiarizing his works in Viva La Vida, which caused quite a stir among foreign music fans. More interestingly, cat stevens, a British folk rock master, stood up and accused Coldpay? Plagiarism? His "Alien Suite" began with the same melody, and then said that he was not going to sue them. Obviously, this is the old British guy who is muddling the water to protect the calf. In addition, an unknown band, Creaky Boards, also stood up and said the melody of Viva La Vida and his own "Song I Didn't Write". This is the difference between this case and ordinary similar/plagiarism cases. The busybody collected 12 examples with this similar melody, which is called? The most commonly used melody in pop music? : 12 sounds the same song. In the following reply, this number is still increasing. In fact, many examples are not quite similar to mine, but it depends on your ears. Listen to it if you are free:)
What's the problem? In fact, "Viva La Vida" and "If I can fly" are even different in chord progression. Even in the same key, the former is IV-V-I-vi and the latter is ii-V-I-vi, which are similar to a great extent, but the chord progression is much worse than the previous one.
The main problem is melody. Of course, there are others, such as the same beat, but we are not here to defend coldplay, but to discuss why there are so many similar melodies. In this regard, cat stevens's point of view is that the melody will naturally show its proper direction under similar chord progression. ? The original words are: "This song (viva lavida) definitely sounds like it (Alien Suite). This is such a logical poem, and the melody must be like this ... "This may explain why the melody is similar.
Why do many popular songs sound similar to 8: Other?
When we talk about other things, the other here refers to all the less noticeable elements in pop music. For example, the same style, such as key, such as beat, such as beat, such as the current sound effects and so on. If you take anything out separately, no one will think it is similar, but if the similarities form a whole, you will find that it seems really similar?
Examples in this regard, such as Katy Perry's California Gurls and Ke $ ha's Tik Tok, all have the same style, both are Fmajor, their tempo is almost the same (120 and 125), the overall paragraph arrangement is the same, and there are similarities at the climax? Oh, oh, oh, oh? . Although the melody is very different, many people still think these two songs are too similar. The audience doesn't care about music theory, they care about feeling. Similar to these two songs, miley cyrus's "Eternal December" and Justice's "The Party" are simply products written on the assembly line.
To do this, you can adjust the rhythm and play California Gurls and Tik Tok at the same time, and you will find it very suitable. No, it's okay. Someone has made Katy Perry miley cyrus and Ke $ hatik Tok into the same song. If it is not edited, just adjust the speed. Some people mix two songs into a new song:)
There are many similar examples, too numerous to mention.
At this point, I think I have completed all the similar aspects. Finally, I want to talk about two extreme views on the similarity of songs: First, the similarity of songs is roughly attributed to the lack of creativity in the music industry, such as the aforementioned Long Chao blog; Second, the similarity of songs is roughly attributed to plagiarism. Well, I won't mention this kind of thing. Undoubtedly, this is a very wrong cognition.
On the one hand, I want to point out that no matter what kind of music, it comes down in one continuous line, and most people tend to be familiar with modes. Although the music industry has a mode of production, it is the audience who pays the bill. If you must complain about this, you might as well start by changing your musical habits. It is a good choice to listen less to pop songs that C G Am F likes to listen to, less to bands that only know how to ponder the rock spirit and show off the lyrics without technological innovation, and more to try to get in touch with new genres and new fields, including differential music.
For the second one, what I want to say is that the audience had better not build it themselves? Psychological court? Easily influenced by prejudice. The identification of music plagiarism is a technical problem in any country, because unlike many criminal cases with conclusive evidence, there must be possibilities in probability? Although it is very low. The law can only maintain the balance between freedom and fairness in music creation here. Japan's judgment on music plagiarism is very strict, and cases counted as plagiarism between China and the United States may have different results in Japan. If every song is like this? Trial? Then I suggest you analyze all the similar elements before making a judgment, but even at this time, different people will still have different judgments. Finally, an interesting website is attached: whosampled listening to music samples, mixing and covering songs. This website is a good place to find music background. The disadvantage is that the website is not judged by credit or technology, but in a subjective way, all similarities are simply and rudely classified as? Like what? I see that some people regard this website as a sampling database based on official information, which is wrong.
Finally, I spent a whole day explaining this question, hoping to answer this doubt. In addition, I am just an ordinary music lover who teaches himself music theory, and I am more interested in listening to songs than writing them. I also like to study the history of modern pop music. If anyone has any corrections or supplements to the theory of music, please feel free to advise.