Why all melodies should be free for musicians to use

[@TEDx]

Watch the full talk here: kzbin.info/www/bejne/qXvXnmODpLSan7c

[@LaPollaAtomica]

I liked the part where everyone who watched this short acted high and mighty and superior to a lawyer saying an erroneous factoid about music (which, granted, he doesn't really explain until further into the talk in the full video), ignored the context of the US legal system, and presumably smugly clicked on another video filled with the kind of unearned confidence that only comes with either feeling superior to someone else on the Internet or being a straight white guy explaining literally anything to someone who is some combination of not those things. Anyway, it was a cool talk and I'm glad this short brought attention to the three year old talk even though this comment section sucked.

[@highpockets2376]

We are at a point in time where every song has been sung, every note has been played, every dance has been danced. So these words are getting redefined.

[@rustyb.1301]

Words get redefined by other words😂 there's no place where they make a magical appearance on their own.

[@dougg1165]

Coincidentally, our time is in this existence is coming to an end.

[@oxey_]

this guy is a legend

[@carrienorris9729]

That's 7 notes because DO is repeated. Hard to take seriously when in the first 3 seconds you count more than the 7 notes we've had for centuries .abcdefg is 7 12 when counting Minor/majors.....

[@LaPollaAtomica]

If you actually watch the full talk, he goes into that about halfway through on why they only actually need the root to octave, major/minor, to approximate every popular melody.

[@shamoney992]

Every sound should be a public domain

[@SunFlowband]

Mononeon ain't runnin out. Also, there are 12 notes in western music, but there are Thousands of frequencies

[@LaPollaAtomica]

Frequencies don't matter when you there's not a legal precedent that they would make your song melody materially different for copyright purposes. If the relationships between those frequencies are similar enough, then you're still getting sued.

[@joshuayundt555]

I hope they can get other musicians to do the same and make their melodies public.

[@slizzardshroomer9666]

Heroes

[@TomRipley7350]

Agreed. Ed Sheeran wouldn’t be here if he didn’t rip off…sorry, wasn’t “inspired” by others’ music.

[@evanfasher2045]

Soon we will have “finished” music

[@rainbowspeedy]

It would be a sad world if there were only 8 notes. This guy is lying without turning red

[@kylejennings819]

Theres only 7 notes. Hes overlooked octives, and hes overlooked time signature… if he’s only doing 4:4 with a restricted scale, there are probably millions of possibilities for this. If you add in the higher/lower octives and time signatures &bpm, then yeah im curious how large that number would be. Probably not even enough time to listen to everything

[@Maloma12]

That's what I was thinking. He and Noah (whoever they are) seem quite short-sighted. Seven notes with and sharps (and flats) gives you 14 notes in one octave AND other cultures have more notes in-between. Exponential possibilities.

[@LaPollaAtomica]

​@@kylejennings819He explains this later in the actual talk why they didn't actually need more than that to approximate the melody itself.

[@twinryu]

Trying to find this complete talk. Anyone know where?

[@kiano5040]

Read description

[@oleyullah]

Ummm... yet Pantera's "I'm Broken" tuning is in quater-tones. Indian music has more notes than 8 believe... what's he on about

[@LaPollaAtomica]

Neither of your points has anything to do with what he's talking about. 1) Pantera's tuning doesn't change the relationship of the notes in the song. They may not be standard, but they're not technically different notes. 2) The purpose of their project was for the American copyright system and people who would be affected by it. It's doubtful the courts would care how many notes Indian music recognizes if they sound similar enough.

[@saadatt.3258]

8 notes? There are 7.

[@diamondcascadeblackspring7260]

A bit oversimplified... would have loved to see someone do this with frequency, pitch, consonant and dissonant harmonies etc

[@PhilJakes]

And maybe realize that there are 12 notes?

[@dooplon5083]

​​@@PhilJakesyeah but just thats the traditional western scale of available notes, different tuning systems yield different numbers of available notes, as seen with stuff such as microtonal tuning which often has twice as many, so the actual number of notes available to construct melodies with is actually rather fluid

[@LaPollaAtomica]

It's because it has to do with the copyrighting of melodies. Music is basically just mathematical relations (you can think of Do through Do in terms of 1-8). A song in E will just sound like a different pitch/frequency from the same song in C, so they're moot points. And the harmonies don't have to be the same either. If the relationship between the notes is similar enough to something already written, the older rights holder has grounds to sue.

[@BCSchmerker]

+TEDxTalks *With all due respect to Lector, copyright regulations are enacted for cause: Compensation for Composers, Lyricists and Librettists, and involved Publisher staff.*

[@stephaneboisjoli1320]

And then extended for centuries so nobody could possibly make anything close to it.

[@LaPollaAtomica]

Sure, but music as we understand it is finite. There's only so many combinations of sounds. There's even fewer that sound "good." Even the people that argue there's more than the European standard defines, well, the distinctions can only go so fine before our ears can't distinguish the frequency change and it's a moot point anyway since he's talking about American copyright law. It protects rights holders, but it also stifles creative output because the (again finite) melody you chose is too similar to one that someone else wrote before.

[@davidmurray5044]

Songwriters are not the only musicians who write music. Stay in your lane dude. You don't know what you're talking about.

[@jakubolan3481]

Copyright should not exist, it's actually sad we live in the world where somebody who "invented" something is just person who first legally decided to register something, even through this person may just seem something played by somebody else.

[@dhawk4186]

Imagine you make a song and then Drake copies it exactly and get millions off of your creation while you get nothing… copyright should absolutely exist. I agree that it needs to be revised though.

[@ageoflibra6767]

music/ an octave has 12 notes. the c major scale has 8 notes.

[@natjackson4880]

Surely they didn't work out all the spaces left by only including melodies that can be written using a major scale? Big mistake 😬

[@LaPollaAtomica]

They did major/minor, 8 notes, 12 beats, determined using data for what's considered a melody using musicologists' input as well as prior court cases involving copyrighted melodies. They'd already considered using the whole keyboard, then human vocal range, and so on before deciding on 8 notes.

[@jediv308]

So you are creating a box to limit people?

[@hkbr1681]

Wow. Lots of work

[@DubWalberg]

Music isnt just about notes, not at all. Also, nobody will ever hear and remember all the combinations of notes in actual music. I already had this idea about finite melodies as a kid, but I dont think its a problem anymore...

[@Misakigi]

Yes. But I guess his point is that the notes end up mattering in court.

[@lindaclairesartori]

Don't tell people all the music has already been written. That's like saying all the words have already been written, so don't bother to write more. Music, as everything else, is infinite. Your math is wrong.

[@thelordcommander5]

❤

[@Minecraftzocker135]

It's about melody's

[@dooplon5083]

bro, rewatch the video, this isnt about saying that we will run out of songs any time soon this is about saying that basic components of music creation being copyrighted is slowly draining us of the available melodies we are legally allowed to use to avoid getting hit by outdated copyright laws

[@ludokayshen]

The video say that whatever song you want to sing you won't be able to because you won't have the right to use the melody

[@chickadddee]

The more you isolate aspects of something artistic (like saying there are only 8 notes) , the more you diminish and de-value the effects and impact of the artistic creative act and experience. Instead of trying to market it like Kleenex, why not expand your mind and start listening to music from all ages and cultures? You won't be counting notes any more. You'll start to feel grateful and amazed at what people can do and how expressive we can be, instead of worrying about running out of melodies. 🙄

[@LaPollaAtomica]

People are less likely to want to create music if they feel that sharing it will get them into legal headaches.

[@chickadddee]

​@@LaPollaAtomica Sharing compositions (or not) was not part of my point regarding this video. Reducing them to a commodity and resource is. Technology should support creators who want to share their work, but it is only worth doing if appreciation and cultural curiosity is the norm rather than a rarity. Take away the latter and eventually something potentially moving and inspiring gets reduced to a sit-com theme, which also happens to closely resemble a jingle for a fast food chain, and then ends up in a remix of a remix. We only run out of melodies when we settle for the same old same old.

[@LaPollaAtomica]

​@@chickadddeeThe entire context of his talk is that the US copyright system can only recognize so many combinations of notes for a melody. Your comment honestly doesn't make much sense in that context. He and his partner were worried that ordinary people would not want to share their music for fear of legal repercussion and he gives multiple examples of high-profile cases to back up that sentiment. Not sure what you think technology has to do with that or how the release of most of the potential melodies into public domain is a bad thing with regards to creative output. Heck, there's the story that Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds had to be shopped around to different people just so Paul could make sure it wasn't a melody he heard that was copyrighted. Anyone feeling particularly unscrupulous that he approached could have written a basic song with the melody he had, postmarked it to prove timeframe and then challenged the actual Beatles song on copyright infringement. Like, copyright and fear of legal consequences are the context here.

[@chickadddee]

@@LaPollaAtomica Hi, yes I got all that...and I do understand the concern. Here's what happened when I listened to this clip of the full talk. I wondered whether we would be so worried about all the legal aspects like people stealing, protecting our compositions, and also the fear of sharing something we have created, if we started to think of music as more than a single riff, a beat, or a collection of finite notes in only one of the musical scales to begin with. The legal and copyright issues seem to relate mostly to pop music in this discussion. Maybe if the music became more layered and complex, the system would have to change. Maybe it should anyway. So I see our modern problems as being linked to a bigger issue: "what more can we do with only 8 notes", "oh no, we're running out of melodies", and "what's the point of creating when someone will accuse me of plagiarism", etc. are very limited ways to think, (but I do understand the concern). Maybe it's how we are writing pop music that is part of the issue. I feel that technology follows what we are capable of, and so if our thinking becomes limited and we panic, our creativity suffers first at that point. We are worrying about the consequence before looking at how we create. If we only listen to 20 similar artists, that is what will get stuck in our brains. The copyright system may be limited, and so too is how we think about music in the first place. They go hand in hand for me. Someone with legal expertise would surely have a whole bunch to say on why this is backwards (to them) or that it's me being too idealistic or that I am connecting other ideas to this one and it's not appropriate... I can live with that. To me it's connected!

[@rustyb.1301]

I'm like yeah bro I get it you are so smart but then I'm like yeah bro we don't get it because yes I'm such uh errr um. 😊

[@nelsonyurok]

Nice way to eliminate the actual motivation for most music. Without ownership of the intellectual properties produced by a creator there is little to no reason to create. Which will result in little to no quality content being produced. Why bother becoming a rock star if you can’t afford the party. Why bother with learning an instrument or developing a talent for singing. The ability to create is why people create. You would deny a creator ownership and acknowledgement of their talent, sacrifice and journey. You describe a world inspired by posers, wannabe’s and no talent hacks. Just my opinion.

[@TomRipley7350]

And very just one at that.

[@LaPollaAtomica]

If you accept his basic argument though, then the alternative is potentially any melody opening up any given person to a copyright dispute. The basic premise of his argument is that potential legal trouble would dissuade people from ever releasing their music.

[@ThatGuyFromDK]

Very eurocentric thinking as; all music is in the european style of sheet music and that is universal and everything is 4/4. Laughable.

[@LaPollaAtomica]

Not like he's talking about (presumably based on his accent) the American copyright system and American amateurs who would be sticking with 4/4 as it's kind of the most common for that. You know, a system, people, and audience that would be eurocentric because it's the one he's dealing with in this talk given in... Minneapolis. Like, you just look foolish and full of yourself. Context matters, yeah?