JPF Home Page Forums General Messages General Message Forum Stairway Lawsuit

This conversation is leading towards an area I find interesting which is..should we as composers consider changing the basic structure of how we approach writing a song? (for fear of a lawsuit)

Short answer? No way..

As FD points out it, takes a "hit" to create litigation..

Long answer, "no" with an asterisk...

Like most folks, when I write a song I'm using "the God model" (I like to call it) which is simply the old fashioned way of presumably "writing from the void" --starting tabula rasa and then using our inner editor to tell us when we're encroaching on another's song.

But sometimes I'll start with an existing work, melody, chord progression, and then deviate from it 'til it's unrecognizable as that existing work, which I think is a totally okay practice at this point in time, in the world we live in. Whatever works, yanno..And with non-commercial projects and instrumental work? I am at this point mostly deviating from known works. But DO understand..the processes I use create something FAR, far, removed from the original--and this to me, at this point in my life, is where the fun is. and so I can thoroughly understand and empathize with a Led Zep who worked this way..only I DON'T empathize with how they forgot to deviate enough from the original, or give proper attribution when they didn't!

My mom loved shopping at second hand stores, and I think my love for finding a re-purposing for old, forgotten things (which is mostly the material I'm deviating from) is not so different from her passion..so I think I am partly 'where I'm at' as an homage to her.

Consider writing the innocent way, the God model way..I think this works best if we don't listen to a lot of music, cuz we don't want our inner editors hitting a buzzer every time we encroach a little on another's work. I think this would be very inhibiting if you know a lot a music!

Writing from a known source and then deviating is perhaps the best way for someone who knows a lot of music. Consider that "all known melodies" create, to steal a John Luis Borges story title, a "Garden of Forking Paths" with which we must navigate to find a path less traveled..

"Blasphemy!" --some will say.."this is not composing! You are turning the act of creation into an act of circumnavigation!"

--to which my response would be, "but hasn't our modern litigious society in a world full of countless songs more or less forced this upon us?"

And why should "writing from the void" be the only way? I think it is NO LESS creative to start with the known and deviate, ESPECIALLY if you have a head full of other people's music. It's a more honest approach, for those of us who do..and sorry, I'm a broken record here, most works are in fact derivative of what has come before in some degree..in varying degrees..

Mike