{"id":309,"date":"2015-03-17T17:05:38","date_gmt":"2015-03-17T17:05:38","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/theworldprovider.net\/site\/?p=309"},"modified":"2015-03-18T14:46:57","modified_gmt":"2015-03-18T14:46:57","slug":"on-originality-and-its-opposite","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/theworldprovider.net\/site\/rants\/on-originality-and-its-opposite\/","title":{"rendered":"On Originality and Its Opposite"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/fp7Q1OAzITM\" width=\"420\" height=\"315\" frameborder=\"0\" allowfullscreen=\"allowfullscreen\"><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p>The music community was all aflutter lately with the news that Marvin Gaye\u2019s estate had prevailed in the \u201cBlurred Lines\u201d lawsuit.<\/p>\n<p>I was a bit surprised at the reactions I saw from the people in my community. The general feeling seemed to be that this legal victory was a bad thing. The basis for this perspective, as far as I can tell, is either a kind of post-modern\/death of the author\/nothing is original kind of mentality (one I\u2019m all too familiar with from endless earnest debates in my university years) or a position of unvarnished self-interest: \u201coh shit, now we\u2019re going to have to worry about being sued just for being influenced by stuff.\u201d Andy Herman articulated this point of view, as well as giving a thorough overview of the case, in <a href=\"http:\/\/www.laweekly.com\/music\/great-now-blurred-lines-has-ruined-the-entire-music-industry-5427407\">an LA Weekly opinion piece<\/a> with an ever so slightly hyperbolic title.<\/p>\n<p>I could say something about how strange it is that people who are otherwise reliably on the far left of most issues suddenly turn into laissez-faire free marketeers when it comes to the issue of musicians being compensated. Especially when many of those people are musicians themselves. But I feel that might go off track of the main point I wanted to make.<\/p>\n<p>It\u2019s certainly true that all art is influenced by what came before it; creative impulses don\u2019t come out of a vaccum, though some brilliant and\/or bizarre work might seem to.<\/p>\n<p>I\u2019ve stolen a lot from other musicians in my own work\u2014sometimes subtly, sometimes overtly; sometimes by accident, sometimes intentionally, more often somewhere in between the two.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" style=\"border: 0; width: 100%; height: 120px;\" src=\"http:\/\/bandcamp.com\/EmbeddedPlayer\/album=1621869322\/size=large\/bgcol=ffffff\/linkcol=0687f5\/tracklist=false\/artwork=small\/track=450774501\/transparent=true\/\" width=\"300\" height=\"150\" seamless=\"\"><a href=\"http:\/\/theworldprovider.bandcamp.com\/album\/the-elements-of-style\">The Elements of Style by The World Provider<\/a><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>For example, in the song \u201cA Thousand Pardons\u201d from the first WP album <em>The Elements of Style<\/em>, I spent a lot of time agonizing over changing a melody because I thought it resembled that of a <a href=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=QU35q7PAoxE\">Luna<\/a> song\u2014while somehow missing the fact that the instrumental bridge is lifted directly from <a href=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=oiWmmt6-sYY\">Guided By Voices\u2019 \u201cStriped White Jets.\u201d<\/a> And my style of singing blatantly apes the <a href=\"https:\/\/theworldprovider.net\/site\/uncategorized\/magnetic-powers\/\">Magnetic Fields<\/a>, who I was listening to a lot at the time. (If Robert Pollard or Stephin Merritt want to come after me, I will happily buy either of them a drink\u2014I think that\u2019d be about equivalent to a fair portion of the money I\u2019ve made from this song over the years.) (And yes, I&#8217;m aware that Luna, GBV and Magnetic Fields are all artists who used overt pastiche in their work. It was the 90s, what can I tell ya?) (And yes, I&#8217;m also aware that I&#8217;ve just used three parenthetical sentences in a row. It&#8217;s my own blog and I can do what I want.)<\/p>\n<p>But I like to think I wouldn\u2019t just take someone else\u2019s song, shamelessly duplicate it, and then try to pretend I hadn\u2019t\u2014which is what, as Herman documents in his article, Robin Thicke and Pharrell Williams did with \u201cBlurred Lines.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>When I read Herman\u2019s article, I was reminded of a passage in Randy Bachman\u2019s autobiography where he talks about his mentorship of Canadian classic-rock band Trooper. Bachman recollects as follows:<\/p>\n<p><em>The method I employed with the group was fairly rudimentary. First, I suggested they list their ten favourite songs. [\u2026] I then told them to pick one song from the list, keep the whole song and chorus, but sing a different melody over it using the same lyrics. Add a new guitar solo as well. Once they had a new melody, I told them to change the lyrics. [\u2026] Then change the phrasing and breaths. Finally, take the chord progression they had been using from the song and alter the tempo. Now they had a new song derived from their influences.<\/em><\/p>\n<p>Now, some might call this a coldly calculated attempt at commercial hit songwriting that has nothing to do with creativity. Others might say that it\u2019s as fiendish an example of creative thievery as the \u201cBlurred Lines\u201d case, but one in which the thieves cleverly covered their tracks. It is kind of brazen. (From another perspective, longtime friend and WP collaborator <a href=\"http:\/\/steveraegele.com\/\">Steve Raegele<\/a> suggested to me that it\u2019s what all pop songwriters do, just not as consciously.)<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/NowqPTLAtAk\" width=\"420\" height=\"315\" frameborder=\"0\" allowfullscreen=\"allowfullscreen\"><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p>But the point is, the Bachman method at least goes to the trouble of putting enough of a twist on the original that something new comes out of it. I think it\u2019s fair to say Pharrell Williams is a creative enough guy that he could be expected to do the same.<\/p>\n<p>When I realize that something I came up with (or thought I did) sounds too much like something else, I change it. Or I drop it. Or, in some cases, I leave it in and take my chances. Obviously that\u2019s what happened in this case, and they got caught on it. I don\u2019t see what\u2019s so awful about that, to be honest.<\/p>\n<p>If I\u2019m wrong, and Herman is right that this will precipitate an avalanche of lawsuits, maybe that will motivate people to put a little more effort into putting twists on their influences\u2014or just to be a little more original. Is that such a bad thing?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The music community was all aflutter lately with the news that Marvin Gaye\u2019s estate had prevailed in the \u201cBlurred Lines\u201d lawsuit. I was a bit surprised at the reactions I saw from the people in my community. The general feeling seemed to be that this legal victory was a bad thing. The basis for this &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/theworldprovider.net\/site\/rants\/on-originality-and-its-opposite\/\" class=\"more-link\">Continue reading<span class=\"screen-reader-text\"> &#8220;On Originality and Its Opposite&#8221;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[100],"tags":[177,179,25,178,175,176],"class_list":["post-309","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-rants","tag-blurred-lines","tag-guided-by-voices","tag-magnetic-fields","tag-marvin-gaye","tag-randy-bachman","tag-trooper"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/theworldprovider.net\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/309","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/theworldprovider.net\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/theworldprovider.net\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/theworldprovider.net\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/theworldprovider.net\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=309"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/theworldprovider.net\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/309\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/theworldprovider.net\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=309"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/theworldprovider.net\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=309"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/theworldprovider.net\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=309"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}