Guitarist breaks silence after announcing lawsuit against Chris Martin and co
Mon 08 Dec, 2008
dm99jme: You are most certainly not a musicologist, because your argument reveals an infantile understanding of the creation of music. First of all here, there is more than just a similarity of chord structure here. And yes, no intelligent musician would argue that anyone 'owns' a very common chord structure. The most important thing at hand here is the obvious parallels of the two melodies. They are nearly identical. Not only in note, but in articulation and expression. Even the 'cry and sing' nature of way each note is bent into is nearly identical. Then you add the fact that the chord structure is the same. That it's in the same key. That it's nearly the same BPM (beats-per minute) and in the same overall rock vibe, and you can easily defend that the overall execution of Satriani's song is mirrored here in near identicality. Now, I don't think Satriani is saying they INTENTIONALLY ripped of his song. (Nor should anyone assume Satriani is accusing them of such malice.) More likely they just accidentally ripped off the song. Here's what likely happened: At some point, Coldplay heard Satriani's song--whether in a bar, on the radio, in a movie soundtrack, at one of the 100 studios they are in every year, whatever. Then they forgot about it. Then a year later or so, Chris Martin (and whoever else does the writing) sits down to write a song. They stumble on to this fairly familiar chord progress, and even start humming this melody, and "wow, this song is coming REALLY easily. I'm really 'on' today!" they think. They flesh out the song quickly and think they're all geniuses. And sometimes, they're right. They ARE creating something original. But not this time. Satriani's melody was in the memory banks somewhere, and subconsciously his musical instincts dragged it out once those chords started flowing. But Chris had forgotten he'd heard Satriani's song and just assumed he made it up. As a songwriter, I've been guilty of this dozens of times--in songwriting only. So have all my songwriter friends. The key is to RECOGNIZE IT and admit it's not really your own material and scrap it. But Coldplay didn't. And what's worse, I guarantee you one of the few hundred people in Coldplay's corner knew they were ripping off Satch's melody, but didn't mention it. Or did mention it, but Coldplay arrogantly said, "who cares, no one ELSE will realize that..." Of course this is conjecture, but other musicians will nod their heads approvingly at what I'm saying.
Tue 09 Dec, 2008
Lydian5 news Comments (1)
Joe Satriani claims Coldplay plagiarism was a 'dagger through my heart'
Guitarist breaks silence after announcing lawsuit against Chris Martin and co
Mon 08 Dec, 2008
Comments (1)