Ed Sheeran Wins Copyright Case over Marvin Gaye’s ‘Let’s Get It On’
nytimes.com
nytimes.com
My favorite part from it:
> “We have spent the last eight years talking about two songs with dramatically different lyrics, melodies and four chords which are also different and used by songwriters every day, all over the world,” Mr. Sheeran continued. “These chords are common building blocks which were used to create music long before ‘Let’s Get It On’ was written and will be used to make music long after we are all gone.”
From a different article about the trial: https://www.newser.com/story/334575/ed-sheeran-sings-plays-g...
> Before Sheeran’s Thursday testimony, his defense played a video of Australian comedy band Axis of Awesome performing a medley of dozens of songs with the same four chords.
The video: https://youtu.be/5pidokakU4I
What's amazing is how they somehow failed to identify the original piece and its composer, i.e. Canon in D Major, P 37, by Johann Pachelbel.[1]
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WTWP_Classical_Talkity-Talk_Ra...
> Towards the middle of the repeat of the Canon, Blondie suffers a nervous breakdown, being the result of an overdose of Pachebel.
It's available via Streaming:
Amazon https://www.amazon.com/music/player/albums/B0BLXWCHQS
Apple Music https://music.apple.com/us/album/p-d-q-bach-classical-wtwp-t...
Spotify https://open.spotify.com/album/5gLmlAeNfrfzJJffMbdM3V?si=aiK...
(And a YouTube channel with it: https://youtu.be/x6qbIGJwuqw )
The biggest difference is that the Canon in D progression is an 8 bar loop, and the second 4 bars is a subdominant progression, which leads to a lot of different melodic options than a single 4 bar loop.
The progression of the Canon is
I-V-vi-iii-IV-I-IV-V,
I-V-vi-III-IV-I-IV-V
I-V-vi-iii-IV-I-II-V.
I-V-vi-III
Here's a popular song with the exact same changes transposed to G Major instead of D Major.[1] Here are 20 more of them.[2] (Watch the full video to understand why you are completely mistaken — i.e. why your analysis and objections are wrong, and why your nitpicking unsupportable). Axis of Comedy only used the first four chords of the progression for simplicity's sake, but all of those songs are identical or near enough to the Canon to either be considered the same or derivative. No one rational would consider changes novel because they changed one of three or one of eight roots from minor to major, nor would they consider changes novel because they only used the first four roots of the Canon progression.
You are either trolling or have something wrong with your ears. Your argument isn't even pedantry because it is factually incorrect. Please find something else to do.
The progressions are nothing close to identical or interchangeable or “derivative of each other.” Not that it matters, but I’m quite sure David Bennett (I’m guessing you’re a fan) would settle this disagreement in my favor.
Edit: okay, I just saw your edit
> are the same progressions, and any progression in 4/4 beginning with I-V-vi-x no matter what the last chord is, is the same.
I’m gathering that you saw the section of the David Bennett video about variations and somehow made the mistaken leap that it’s “the same progression” regardless of what the fourth chord is. This is certainly not the case. Note that in all those variations you pasted, the fourth chord is the third scale degree. You cannot conclude therefore that the fourth chord doesn’t matter at all and doesn’t affect the nature of the progression.
> it’s “the same progression” regardless of what the fourth chord is. This is certainly not the case.
Yes, yes it is. Watch the video. Absorb it. These are not two distinct progressions, they are the same. What you are arguing is that a variant of one progression is not the same progression, and you are mistaken.
I am arguing that the Axis progression is not a variation of the Canon in D progression, or vice versa. They are two separate progressions that share very little in common except the first 3 chords and a large influence in pop music. The video you posted does not say otherwise.
But it most certainly is. They chords Axis are using are
E – B - C#m – A, or I-V-vi-IV
E - B - C#m - G#m, or I-V-vi-iii
And Axis is doing the same thing. They're changing the minor third to a perfect fourth in many of the songs they're demonstrating. But how could they do that if it would make it a fundamentally different progression? Because it wouldn't.
https://youtu.be/_rvmf6YlyNE and https://youtu.be/Z0IUdjMcEmo being two examples.
So may great hits are reinterpretations of older less-known numbers, often as tributes to the musicians who wrote or played the originals.
What if the estates of Bobby Russell won against Reba McEntire, or the estates of Sonny Boy Williamson or Willie Dixon won against Led Zeppelin, heck, pick pretty much any old blues musician and you can claim they've been ripped off by newer bands. Freddie King's estate would be rolling in dough and their heirs would be set forever.
The problem lies with copyright laws, the way they are today. There will always be greedy money-grubbing lawyers and people wanting to make easy money by exploiting this system. This goes beyond copyright laws. Patent laws anyone? What if Volvo had decided to charge an arm and a leg for their 3-point seatbelt patent instead of letting competitors use the idea without charge? Nothing wrong about that, they may have made a ton of money (justifiably so), but they looked at the broader picture concerning public safety. Would Chrysler have done that had they invented the 3-point seatbelt? Probably not. I'm just trying to illustrate how two parties could make completely opposite decisions both compliant with copyright or patent law.
'George Harrison Plagiarism, Copyright'
George Harrison - This Song : https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/This_Song
George Harrison : https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_Harrison
A familiar name… And not in a good way. It's amazing how much damage one lone grifter can do to society
Or just someone spreading an anti-police one?
Does one side in this kind of affair get held to a higher standard than the other?
It's not a nice game. Any serious move you make can be pigeonholed into pro-police or anti-police, irrespective of whether you're motivated by truth, fiction, a pro-police position, or an anti-police position. And so long as there are enough people who play the pigeonhole game loudly enough, whether on mainstream or social media, it's the default game. You can't start by assuming the person you're talking to is playing a truth game, because then you'll waste all your time on trolls.
Right now, pro-police people will think you're covertly supporting their side. Anti-police people will think you're covertly opposing theirs. And truth people won't be able to tell which game you're playing.
Even if you're lucky and you start talking to a truth person, as soon as you or they, having to be alert for trolls, misunderstands or misinterprets something, the belief that both of you are in good faith will shatter, and a difference that otherwise might have been resolved instead convinces both of you that everything the other one said is something trolls say.
There, I think that's enough defeatism out of my system for a few days.
Every police department has internal affairs. Most have a citizen's oversight counsel. Plus, they are overseen by state and federal agencies which frequently attempt to maintain good policing (not saying they always succeed). Then we have the media to keep cops in check, the ACLU and SPLC who agitate for police reform and leniency for actual criminals, and hundreds of other anti-police organizations whose bread and butter is rooting out police corruption.
Thus far, there is no organization dedicated to tracking falsified and/or exaggerated claims of racial injustice or animus, claims which have directly led to dozens of deaths, billions in property damage, lawless cities where DAs dismiss charges against the same people dozens of times and a fractured society.
Why did Smollett lie about the race and political affiliation of his attackers? He was clearly trying to drum up violent reprisal against whites and conservatives. Smollett is but one prominent example; a Google search will lead to hundreds more. Are such incidents unworthy of being tracked? Why?
> Every police department has internal affairs.
Which does squat all.
> Most have a citizen's oversight counsel.
Which is at best a committee with no disciplinary power, whose suggestions go straight in the paper shredder.
We've seen the outcomes of IA and oversight councils, and they are, quite frankly, rotten.
> Plus, they are overseen by state and federal agencies which frequently attempt to maintain good policing (not saying they always succeed)
Consent decrees are also completely worthless, but, in an ironic twist, have been used to prevent city-driven reform.
> Thus far, there is no organization dedicated to tracking falsified and/or exaggerated
The organizations you've listed aren't working.
It's doubly ironic that while you're tilting at falsified and exaggerated problems, you are both falsifying and exaggerating what you're complaining about.
And by lawless cities, do you mean the ones where the police act like they aren't bound by laws, with the lack of DA action on this question proving them right?
Is there? It's actually hard to tell. A review of the evidence: https://manhattan.institute/article/fatal-police-shootings-a...
> Or a police accountability problem in this country
I agree. Police union corruption is a huge issue, "asset forfeiteture" is a total scam, police officer immunity is too strong… But the solution is not "turn a blind eye to all of it until something happens that you can pigeonhole into a politically convenient racial narrative, at which point burn down the city." It also isn't "stop prosecuting crime, and allow criminals to victimize the least privileged people in society with impunity."
Disingenuous statement of the year.