![]() Just be careful.įREE OFFER: Gary’s newest e-book, “The Essential Secrets of Songwriting- Chord Progression Formulas” is being offered for free when you purchase any other of his songwriting e-books. And infingement is essentially a cumulative thing: borrowing chords is legal, but borrowing the rhythms, instrumentation, and any other identifiable aspect of a song starts to look like stealing. You can’t do this with another songwriter’s melodies: they are subject to copyright, and are protected from other people “borrowing” them. This is a completely legal use of another chord progression. The more unique a progression, the harder it is to hide where you got it. This type of borrowing works better for songs that use standard progressions. So be sure that your use of the progression is unique. To use the same chords with the same rhythm as the song you found it in starts to move into the copyright infingement area. You won’t be able to take copyright melodies and doctor them for your own needs, (unless you do a considerable amount of doctoring!) but try this: Find a song that you really like, extract the chord progression, and then try playing it using a completely new tempo and new basic rhythm. Did you know that the famous musical theatre ballad “Hey There” from “The Pajama Game” follows, for a while, the chords and even the melody for Mozart’s Piano Sonata in C Major? You’d be very surprised to know how often this happens. It is a very useful songwriting exercise to take the chord progression of a famous song, and then apply a new rhythmic pattern, tempo and/or time signature to see what else can be done with it. This makes sense, because if you had to come up with a unique progression that the world had never heard before for each song you write, you’d be out of songs very quickly. Many songwriters are not aware of this, but chord progressions, as such, are not protected by copyright, and can be used by other songwriters. By Gary Ewer, from “ The Essential Secrets of Songwriting” website: ![]()
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. Archives
December 2022
Categories |