I’m currently in the process of writing a song. I’ve got a tune and I’m putting the lyrics together but I’m always concerned that any tune I think of might just be another song I’ve heard somewhere randomly that I don’t remember hearing.
Do I just have a shitty memory or is this a problem that other people have too?
It’s normal.
Especially if you’re writing in a popular style, tons of musicians just use the same chord progressions over and over .
Once you start layering things on the melody, it’s pretty unlikely that it will resemble anything too closely.
As long long as you’re just using your own creativity, I think it’s very unlikely you’ll just clone a song.
If you’re really worried about it, you can just change a few notes in the melody on the page in a way that you wouldn’t think to sing “naturally”
Here is an alternative Piped link(s):
Will We Ever Run Out Of New Music - Vsauce
Piped is a privacy-respecting open-source alternative frontend to YouTube.
I’m open-source; check me out at GitHub.
It might be similar to a song you’ve heard but you’re misremembering the notes of the existing song.
Maybe try playing it for an app that recognizes the song that’s playing and then listen to any songs it guesses might be the song.
No, you see it’s: “dun-dun-dun-dudu-dun-dun dudu dun-dun-dun-dudu-dun-dun”
not
“dun-dun-dun-dudu-dun-dun, dun-dun-dun-dudu-dun-dun”
No joke but I remember many years ago seeing vanilla ice basically do that to explain why ice ice baby is nothing like under pressure
Ice counts the dings “not the same”
“Beep boop beep”??? “Boop boop bop”!!
Stop…
collaborate and listen?
Ice is back with a brand new invention?
Hammer time?
Stop.
Not sure how to help you out with it, but you’re at least not alone. Robert Smith from The Cure had the same problem with the song “Friday I’m in Love”: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Friday_I%27m_in_Love
“During the writing process, Robert Smith became convinced that he had inadvertently stolen the chord progression from somewhere, and this led him to a state of paranoia where he called everyone he could think of and played the song for them, asking if they had heard it before. None of them had, and Smith realised that the melody was indeed his.”
Similar story with Yesterday by the Beatles. Paul McCartney was convinced he had unconsciously plagiarized the song after he’d supposedly heard it in a dream.
Is that what inspired the movie?
The same thing happened to John Anderson when he was writing Seminole Wind
It is a problem for other people too, but I would argue it’s a very small insignificant one. Unless you’re ripping off an entire song and it’s not parody, you’re fine.
Don’t worry about it. There are only so many progressions. Everything else is just variations within them, with bass lines, melodies and rhythms.
Why worry when you are just writing a song ?
Write the song about the song sounding like another song.
This is just a tribute
a tribute song is still a song
You gotta believe it, I wish you were there
Copyright bullshit has made artists paranoid.
No you see, that’s the secret. All my songs are just me Weird Al-ing every aspect of them.
Eventually they’re different enough that they’re truly mine.
Nope, happens a lot to me, too. Worst part is that whatever you’re accidentally plagiarizing, will immediately sound great and will be really easy to write, because of course, you’ve listened to it before. And it can be nigh impossible to distinguish between accidental plagiarism and just being in a flow.
Art is theft
All art is inspired by other art, it grows, evolves, eats itself, parodies life, informs living.
I wouldn’t worry about it
Here is an alternative Piped link(s):
https://www.piped.video/watch?v=jcvd5JZkUXY
Piped is a privacy-respecting open-source alternative frontend to YouTube.
I’m open-source; check me out at GitHub.
You don’t lol. There have been instances in the past when pro musicians did this
I’ve done this. Yes, they did exist. That’s one of the risks of creating songs from melodies stuck in your head
Run it through shazam (or a foss alternative if there is one) and check?
