Are all melodies taken?

[Sendy]

This is one reason I became interested in microtonal music. When you listen to, say, an 18tet piece which is done well and has strong harmonies with paralells to 12tet (which our mind kinda works in out of habit), it's almost like seeing a new colour for the first time.

I doubt our current musical idiom is exhaustable in truth, but it can certainly feel restricting at times.

[tapper mike]

Much of the 12 tet system is based on rhythmic implications. Melody and harmony is more then the sequence of the notes. It also includes the metre and accentuation.


I usually find when people are bored with the equal temperment system it stems from lack of phrasing ability. If you are looking to create what has not been created and gain acceptance then you most probably will atain one without the other.

Earstwhile those who choose to work within the system will still be creating conventional music and gaininc conventional acceptance.

[Sendy]

I've found the opposite, those who can compose in strange temperaments and make it sound natural have my utmost respect. When I try to do it, it's a struggle, though I have a few results I'm not ashamed of. I do know that doing so has made my appreciation of music fundamentals stronger, and fed back into the bulk of my music which is in or very close to 12tet.

[ksandvik]

So what's the problem?

[aciddose]

i find that if you set up a "non-standard" temperament and stay playing in it, it's extremely easy to produce interesting results.

generally however you'll just end up with a variation on equal-tempered 12, generally a flavor of just intonation.

another interesting thing is that i find if you apply just intonation, regardless of the set of fractions applied the result will immediately sound "better" than equal temperament. although i'd like to explain this as due to being so used to 12tet, i think there are some other interesting properties here as well.

one argument for interesting properties is that just intonation can force you, or perhaps it's more accurate to say "very gently nudge" you in the direction of specific harmonies. it can increase harmony or dissonance giving more "life" to certain passages by increasing the apparent dissimilarity between dissonant and harmonic parts.

in any case, i think we should start using microsoft song-smith either more or less often and just shut up.

[Doug1978]

There's a Melody next door who I'd like to take.

Phwooar...

[Sendy]

Sometimes equal temperament can feel like a downer because all keys have the same pitch relationships. It's like, finally, you can modulate to anywhere in the world, but to do so, we had to transform everwhere to look like your hometown.

I've found that exploring different ways of moving ever so slightly away from this bring much colour to music, such as using slightly alternate tunings, just intonation, slightly stretched octaves (I swear that's how BOC get their dreamy pads) and the like.

It makes the possibilities even more limitless than they were

[jancivil]

unfortunately it's a simple fact that melodies can be recognized regardless of rhythm.

Absolutely - and it sounds extremely awkward in most cases (BUT recogniseable as you said!) There is a strong relationship between note-delta's and time-deltas (stating the obvious).

IMO the limitation of melodies already starts by the bass/chords and progression. In western pop music there are only of couple of progressions that are 'acceptable' and constructed with a certain receipe

well, that's an opinion alright, I grant you that much! However, neither you, or aciddose, have shown anything factual [EDIT/] nor have you revealed how it's "obvious".

[jancivil]

some bullshit... then this white flag of surrrender:
since the problem is impossible to solve objectively...

why were you pretending to argue via a purely symbolic type of logic then? Just taking the piss or what? You couldn't make a worse argument than you did IME.

& who knew that this was a discussion of copyright law? a truly ludicrous proposition was presented and I for one offered a demonstration of how it might work in practice.

[jancivil]

There is a strong relationship between note-delta's and time-deltas (stating the obvious).

IMO the limitation of melodies already starts by the bass/chords and progression. In western pop music there are only of couple of progressions that are 'acceptable' and constructed with a certain receipe:

You have before you a concrete example, of two pieces, one which can said to be derived in part or an homage to the other. I'm not just taking the piss.

You have "+1'd" an abstract principle (from a maths I have no familarity with) as though obvious. So to demonstrate how it works, apply it to a moderately complex piece of [early 20th c.] music. Neither of the two is inaccessible, have been around long enough to be something to perform for jury in competitions; that means there can be applied standards in how it's performed.

You appear to have decided that your math is valid based in a premise that is really only a personal opinion.
It reveals no more than that. You have 'the limitation already starts' as part of the premise 'only a couple of acceptable _' As I said to aciddose, these are not signs of a strong argument, you are trying to make the field of play fit your premises. That's full of fallacy.

Creative people in music do not *accept* your parameters. They are severely narrow to the point of absurd. You have relied on them because you can't make an argument any other way. I guess you think it's intimidating to throw esoteric terms around but it only shows how vapid your reasoning is.

Your mathmatical abstract approach to a creative problem is not a very good approach if this is what it takes to back it up I suppose.

[chj]

A melody's note sequence can't be copyrighted. There are an infinite combination of other variables to throw in. Rhythm (which has been mentioned), Tone (flute vs. high gain guitar) Attack/sustain (i.e. legato vs. stabs), etc.

The legal U.S. standard is if the average listener would believe two songs or parts of two songs are the same.

The average listener is not someone with perfect pitch, theory classes, an extensive library of songs in their head, that can instantly name 10 songs that use the same melody.

Tone, rhythm, dynamics, etc. are all things the average listener would use to differentiate two songs as different, even if the melodic sequences were the same. Also, it doesn't matter if two songs use slightly different melodic sequences. If the average listener perceives them as the same, it is infringement. (i.e. Allegedly, Ice Ice Baby's sequence is slightly different from Under Pressure, but the tone, rhythm, etc. all obviously make it the same damn bass line).

Back to the original question. Are all the melodies taken? Probably. But that doesn't stop you from making completely original music with one. For any given sequence, there are already 1000 completely different songs that use it.

[aciddose]

The legal U.S. standard is if the average listener would believe two songs or parts of two songs are the same.

The average listener is not someone with perfect pitch, theory classes, an extensive library of songs in their head, that can instantly name 10 songs that use the same melody.

Tone, rhythm, dynamics, etc. are all things the average listener would use to differentiate two songs as different, even if the melodic sequences were the same. It also doesn't matter if two songs use slightly different melodic sequences. If the average listener perceives them as the same, it is infringement. (i.e. Allegedly, Ice Ice Baby's sequence is slightly different from Under Pressure, but the tone, rhythm, etc. all obviously make it the same damn bass line).

that's exactly what i said.

the reason to bring all that up is to point out the fact that it is impossible to say one melody is derived from another without direct evidence that it has been copied. more importantly, most people don't seem to care. it comes down to whether they happen to feel like two melodies bear something in common or not.

the point being - both sides of the argument are entirely correct. there is no point in having an argument at all. it is both true that all melodies are part of a shared set and further the majority of melodies are likely members of a much more specific shared set, as well as it is impossible to quantify without establishing a very specific, and very subjective system for doing so.

jancivil; i have no idea what you're going on about, and it appears as if you're just arguing with yourself.

[jancivil]

So. You like to boldy venture forth with 'unfortunately the simple fact is' and go into an abstract theory, set out to demonstrate it via sets which contain gibberish... and in your rhetorical construction skew the paramaters, skew them some more, and some more again and wind up saying 'it's all subjective anyway'. There was no fact. The argument was tortured and twisted rather than simple. You went to change the subject once this was uncovered.

To say that melodies are all taken, or strictly derived from a previous one is seeking to speak about objects. A melody's content, which is to say its structure, is not an opinion about melody. Someone's opinions about validity or acceptability (to whom? People that think the same things exactly?) does not make the concept of 'melody' more narrow. That is subjective. That subjectivity does not make the proposition which was presented here as though by a mathematician or statistican become otherwise.

[Sendy]

Reading this thread makes my brain hurt.

[aciddose]

...

well, yes. you're still arguing with yourself. my point has always been that yes, all melodies are already taken, and yes, there are an infinite number of possible melodies. it depends only upon how you quantify the similarly between two melodies, that is all.

i attempted to explain this very simply at first by proposing one method where you could quantify similarity between melodies and where by you would quite quickly find that all possible melodies are composed of a very limited "delta alphabet" no more complex than something like hanzi.

at what point does a melody become unique? if i take billy jean, loui loui and the girl from ipanema and play these one after the other, is that unique?

what if i splice them one note after another from each of the three parts? is it now unique? the chance of you recognizing the result would be close to zero, but you could also reverse the process and get back the original melodies if you knew the cypher used. (in this case, ABCABC...)

what if someone had written such a melody by accident? would it then be original or not? since these three parts already exist and the cypher is trivial we could say that the result of that applied to the melodies does already exist and so therefore that result is not unique.

now i really want to do this for fun