At what point is a song considered "unique"?

[SoundGoddess]

I was watching a video on "music theory for edm", and by what appears to be a complete coincidence the instructor seemed to create the bass melody of "gorillaz - el manana"...once the song was put together it sounded nothing at all like gorillaz, but while it was being built my brain went directly to looping some of the other layers of the gorillaz song.

Then I watched a different video from another instructor on kickstarting creativity, and this guy was intentionally grabbing riffs from popular songs and using those as starting points for coming up with his own music.

Then you have people like Weird Al, and while he's famous for parody, which is obviously intended to be almost identical to the original songs, he does have many original songs "in the style of xyz".

Then you have people like Vanilla Ice who clearly sampled Queen's "under pressure" for his song "ice ice baby"...

I created my very first song over a decade ago, and something like 7 years later there was a popular, signed EDM artist that had a very similar song with the same melody that popped up on one of the livesets I was listening to and I got really pissed off about it.

So I'm guessing, at what point does something become "inspired by" as opposed to "remix", "in the style of", "sampling"?

I've been deconstructing song elements from the Zelda II soundtrack, since is was my first memory of electronica that really intrigued me. At the moment I'm just going to be using a lot of the original stuff and essentially remixing it, but then I start noticing patterns...like how similar these two elements sound:

http://www.mediafire.com/listen/7icezkf ... zeldas.mp3 (me messing with elements of Zelda II)

(from Philip Glass' iconic soundtrack for Koyaanisqatsi)

Which is great for inspiring me, I'm even thinking of possibly mashing up elements of both soundtracks (Koyaanisqatsi and Zelda II) to see what I can come up with...but I don't know at what point a song is just "inspired by" something, as opposed to remix, mashup, or more blatant like those "cover bands" doing symphonic renditions of their favorite video game music.

I mean for all I know, Akito Nakatsuka was inspired by Philip Glass and that section of the song could possibly even be a literal "derivative work", but I doubt anybody ever got upset or even noticed the similarities if it was. It's just as likely that Akito Nakatsuka never even saw Koyaanisqatsi and that it's a coincidence, but it's hard to know for sure without talking to him.

I'm see this as a gray area, but I'm curious, at what point would something no longer be considered "derivative work", not just in the legal sense, but also in the ethical sense...I don't ever want anything I do to give someone else the same feeling I initially felt when I had when I heard a DJ playing what frankly seemed like a remix of my first song.

[Burillo]

i personally never care. if i never liked the original but like the "inspired by" version - so what?

[Halma]

If it's sounds like "Hey, that's from Zelda, those riffs & melodies..." then it's a derivate. But if it sounds like" Dude, that could be easily played in a Zelda Soundtrack though it sounds nothing like the OST" then it's unique for that moment.

It's more easily to sound different then inventing completely new melodies. Riffs, Chords, Melodies...they don't change that much anymore. But it's the sound which transports them into the Real World.

I watched a documentary about Lemmy (Motörhead) yesterday and there was this great scene. He is doing the soundcheck and while doing that he explains why he is different as a bass player than everybody else. All his amps were on default volume and he started to mimic the standard bass player with basic picking and rhythm style. "That's how you normally play a bass" he said. Then he turned around, turned all sliders and knobs on amp to the max and started to play the bass like an electric guitar on speed. Do you rermember the scene from "Back to the Future" where Michael J. Fox completely blew up speakers after he did some kind of power riff? Dude, that was the sound Lemmys Bass was doing. Completely mind blowing. Haven't heard that in isolation though I am a big Motörhead fan.

Point is: do things different. If they sound cool stick to them Then you are some kind of unique. No one asks which route you took to accomplish this task.

Regards
Sebastian

[twolives]

its pretty subjective