# How to realize if you've stolen a melody?



## nikolas (Feb 27, 2012)

Is there a somewhat decent way to know if a melody you 'came up' is stolen or not? Software I know track recordings and not melodies, so it doesn't seem to work this way. 

Any other ideas?


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## lee (Feb 27, 2012)

Let the skilled crowd at vi-control have a listen, analyze it, and give you advice?


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## Mike Greene (Feb 27, 2012)

I sometimes wonder if there isn't some database out there with the melodies of all songs of significance loaded into it. It would sure be a useful tool and I get the impression that musicologists do have something like this.

It would be very complicated to construct, though.


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## nikolas (Feb 27, 2012)

lee: I've done it a number of times, but apart from the fact it failed it's also not a good idea when you're under an NDA.

Mike: I see what you mean, but the problem is not gathering the songs but comparing them. Even if you were working on midi, the comparison would be just too difficult to do!


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## Daryl (Feb 27, 2012)

There is at least one book that is for non-music readers that analyzes tunes by Up Same and Down:

SSSD USSD would be Beethoven's 5th. I was fascinated with this book as a kid, but there were so many gaps that it would be foolish to rely on it. I can't remember the name of it though.

There are also various books of themes, but the snag there is that you have to know what theme you're looking for to find it.

Musicologists (in my experience) are a bunch of charlatans. For a start you have to tell them what the similar pieces are; they wouldn't have a clue without. Some of them have no musical qualifications, and the most damning point in my view is that there is no value attached to their opinion. They have no liability insurance, and if you get sued you get nothing from them, even though they may have signed off on your track. They accept no liability at all, so why pay them in the first place when in your heart you know whether something is too similar or not. :wink: 

Lastly I wouldn't worry about tune being similar. It is unlikely that two tracks will be identical. What normally causes the most trouble is intent to copy, and that is not really about the tune at all. In fact you could have changed all the notes and still lose. This is one of the reasons that music libraries don't offer sound-alikes any more; they offer style-alikes.

D


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## Justus (Feb 27, 2012)

http://www.musipedia.org/


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## reddognoyz (Feb 27, 2012)

I've stolen more melodies than I've written I'm sure. there are only twelve notes after all. : ) 

I remember doing a song for a show a few years back and the director was a dj and avid musicologist kinda guy who knew tons of obscure music and had turned me on to several things I'd never heard before. I presented the song to the producers and they liked it but he had some concerns that I had ripped one of the songs he had recently turned me onto and, in fact had used in a little funny Flash rip-o-matic he made for fun. I re-referenced the song and said it was all cool. He said welllll......alright then....I guess.

Fast forward six years, I wound up listening to another song by the same artist, we had crossed signals and confused the song he was concerned that I had ripped and, yep, I ripped it alright. Total George Harrison style. I had no idea. Ah well.... let's let our mistakes slowly sink into the murk. Probably would be okay, it was an ancient 1920's song and not at all well known, but it could as easily have been a Lady Gaga song. It just welled up in the unconscious mind and I confused that for inspiration.


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## danika (Mar 3, 2012)

Justus @ Mon Feb 27 said:


> http://www.musipedia.org/



I've tried using this site several times to identify classical melodies in pop arrangements and never had any success.


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## synthetic (Mar 3, 2012)

You have. It's unavoidable. There is so much music out there. Telemann alone wrote everything already.  Just accept that you may have borrowed from Williams, who borrowed from Stravinski, who borrowed from Rimski Korsakov, who borrowed from...

But I have had a few of those. "This melody is too good, I must have lifted it from somewhere!" Then I figure it out a month later and it's not as close as I thought.


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## synthetic (Mar 3, 2012)

Mike Greene @ Mon Feb 27 said:


> I sometimes wonder if there isn't some database out there with the melodies of all songs of significance loaded into it. It would sure be a useful tool and I get the impression that musicologists do have something like this.



I can imagine the software. Melody goes up a fourth (2,500,000 matches) then down a third (1,200,000 matches), then a rest and up a fifth (450,000 matches...)

What if your piece happens to match the bassoon part in the 4th movement of Bizet's such and such? What does that matter? 

It's good to have a trusted group that you can send stuff to, who can listen for things like that. Because you don't want to accidentally copy something from the film score canon, like accidentally cop the love theme from How To Train Your Dragon.


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## Angel (Mar 3, 2012)

Some university posted a reward for composing a melody that's not already written before.
Don't know any details. But in the end nobody got that reward.
This university wanted to prove that every single melody was already written yet.

Like I said I don't know any details. And don't ask me what they meant by "every melody"


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## skyy38 (Mar 13, 2012)

I think I might have done a slight lift from something with this:

Tell me what YOU think:


https://apps.facebook.com/buitoni_jingl ... Detail/497


First seven seconds concerns me the most.


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