{"id":26257,"date":"2015-03-12T10:57:41","date_gmt":"2015-03-12T14:57:41","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.ludwig-van.com\/?p=26257"},"modified":"2015-03-12T14:39:09","modified_gmt":"2015-03-12T18:39:09","slug":"feature-an-analysis-of-the-evidence-against-blurred-lines","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.ludwig-van.com\/toronto\/2015\/03\/12\/feature-an-analysis-of-the-evidence-against-blurred-lines\/","title":{"rendered":"FEATURE | An Analysis of the Evidence Against &#8220;Blurred Lines&#8221;"},"content":{"rendered":"<p style=\"text-align: center;\"><img decoding=\"async\" loading=\"lazy\" class=\"alignnone size-full wp-image-26265\" src=\"http:\/\/www.ludwig-van.com\/toronto\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/2\/2015\/03\/timthumb.jpg\" alt=\"timthumb\" width=\"1000\" height=\"666\" srcset=\"https:\/\/www.ludwig-van.com\/toronto\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/2\/2015\/03\/timthumb.jpg 1000w, https:\/\/www.ludwig-van.com\/toronto\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/2\/2015\/03\/timthumb-300x199.jpg 300w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 1000px) 100vw, 1000px\" \/><\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.cbc.ca\/news\/arts\/blurred-lines-jury-verdict-tests-boundaries-on-copyright-infringement-1.2990930\" target=\"_blank\">The verdict is in<\/a>. Marvin Gaye owns a certain \u201cstyle\u201d of music. And now thanks to\u00a0legal precedent, in the US anyway, if you re-create it like Robin Thicke and Pharrell Williams did, you could end up owing a mountain of money to the Gaye estate \u2013 in this case $7.4 million.<\/p>\n<p>For those who need to get up to speed, you can hear the side-by-side comparison of Robin Thicke and\u00a0Pharrell Williams&#8217; <em>Blurred Lines<\/em>, and\u00a0Marvin Gaye&#8217;s <em>Got to Give it Up<\/em>\u00a0in the video below:<\/p>\n<div class=\"jetpack-video-wrapper\"><span class=\"embed-youtube\" style=\"text-align:center; display: block;\"><iframe loading=\"lazy\" class=\"youtube-player\" width=\"640\" height=\"360\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/ziz9HW2ZmmY?version=3&#038;rel=1&#038;showsearch=0&#038;showinfo=1&#038;iv_load_policy=1&#038;fs=1&#038;hl=en-US&#038;autohide=2&#038;wmode=transparent\" allowfullscreen=\"true\" style=\"border:0;\" sandbox=\"allow-scripts allow-same-origin allow-popups allow-presentation\"><\/iframe><\/span><\/div>\n<p class=\"p1\">That this case even made it to court was surprising to many people; this case has been called everything from &#8220;pretty unusual&#8221; to &#8220;baffling&#8221; to &#8220;dangerous.&#8221; Although the backing tracks for the tunes sound very similar, the general way a backing track sounds has never been grounds for copyright infringement in the US. Successful copyright disputes\u00a0have always\u00a0hinged upon at least one\u00a0identical element shared between two songs or recordings, whether it be a melody, a set of lyrics, or the unauthorized use of an audio sample. The melodies, lyrics and instrumental performances in\u00a0<i>Blurred Lines<\/i>\u00a0are not identical to any element in\u00a0<i>Got To Give It Up<\/i>, nor was any audio from Gaye\u2019s recording sampled for\u00a0<i>Blurred Lines<\/i>\u00a0(it would not have mattered, anyway, since Gaye\u2019s family only owns the song, not the recording.)<\/p>\n<p>So what was the evidence against <em>Blurred Lines<\/em>? According to\u00a0<a href=\"http:\/\/ratter.com\/heres-the-pivotal-track-of-the-blurred-lines-copyrigh-1686896366\" target=\"_blank\">Kate Conger at Ratter<\/a>, the musicologist hired by the Gaye family presented the following slide in court in an attempt to prove more than a passing similarity between the two songs:<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\"><img decoding=\"async\" loading=\"lazy\" class=\"alignnone size-full wp-image-26258\" src=\"http:\/\/www.ludwig-van.com\/toronto\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/2\/2015\/03\/gaye-thicke-comparison.png\" alt=\"gaye-thicke-comparison\" width=\"636\" height=\"385\" srcset=\"https:\/\/www.ludwig-van.com\/toronto\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/2\/2015\/03\/gaye-thicke-comparison.png 636w, https:\/\/www.ludwig-van.com\/toronto\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/2\/2015\/03\/gaye-thicke-comparison-300x181.png 300w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 636px) 100vw, 636px\" \/><\/p>\n<p>With this slide the\u00a0musicologist puts\u00a0both melodies\u00a0in the same context and proves that they share the following elements:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li><strong>a<\/strong>: a melodic fragment of three repeated notes (but not on the same scale degree)<\/li>\n<li><strong>b<\/strong>: a melodic fragment consisting of\u00a0the 5th, 6th, and 1st scale degree in upwards motion in eighth notes<\/li>\n<li><strong>c<\/strong>: a rhythm of six repeated eighth notes preceded by a rest<\/li>\n<li><strong>d<\/strong>: a melisma (a phrase where one vowel sound is continued over more than one note) that contains a descending fourth (the second b)<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>Although this is compelling at first glance, these elements are far from novel, and Pharell and Marvin Gaye are hardly the only songwriters to use this material. Take those <strong>a<\/strong> and <strong>b<\/strong> melody fragments of <em>Got To Get It Up<\/em>, for example, notated here as \u201c5-5-5\u2033 and \u201c5-6-1.\u201d Together they are also the\u00a0melody of the opening phrase of the chorus to Janet Jackson\u2019s song <em>Runaway<\/em>:<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\"><img decoding=\"async\" loading=\"lazy\" class=\"alignnone size-full wp-image-26259\" src=\"http:\/\/www.ludwig-van.com\/toronto\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/2\/2015\/03\/runaway.png\" alt=\"runaway\" width=\"783\" height=\"317\" srcset=\"https:\/\/www.ludwig-van.com\/toronto\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/2\/2015\/03\/runaway.png 783w, https:\/\/www.ludwig-van.com\/toronto\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/2\/2015\/03\/runaway-300x121.png 300w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 783px) 100vw, 783px\" \/><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: left;\">They\u2019re also basically the opening piano melody to Smokey Robinson\u2019s\u00a0<em>You Really Got a Hold On Me<\/em>:<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\"><img decoding=\"async\" loading=\"lazy\" class=\"alignnone size-full wp-image-26260\" src=\"http:\/\/www.ludwig-van.com\/toronto\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/2\/2015\/03\/holdonme.png\" alt=\"holdonme\" width=\"778\" height=\"259\" srcset=\"https:\/\/www.ludwig-van.com\/toronto\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/2\/2015\/03\/holdonme.png 778w, https:\/\/www.ludwig-van.com\/toronto\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/2\/2015\/03\/holdonme-300x99.png 300w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 778px) 100vw, 778px\" \/><\/p>\n<p><em>(*In this case phrase\u00a0<strong>a<\/strong>\u00a0is reduced to one note on the 5th scale degree, however phrase\u00a0<strong>b<\/strong>\u00a0continues onto the 2nd and then 1st scale degree, as is the case of Got To Give It Up.)<\/em><\/p>\n<p>That eighth note rhythm indicated as\u00a0<strong>c\u00a0<\/strong>is also extremely common,which makes me wonder why it\u2019s even being considered as part of the lawsuit. Here it is in Beauty and The Beast:<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\"><img decoding=\"async\" loading=\"lazy\" class=\"alignnone size-full wp-image-26261\" src=\"http:\/\/www.ludwig-van.com\/toronto\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/2\/2015\/03\/littletown.png\" alt=\"littletown\" width=\"780\" height=\"304\" srcset=\"https:\/\/www.ludwig-van.com\/toronto\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/2\/2015\/03\/littletown.png 780w, https:\/\/www.ludwig-van.com\/toronto\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/2\/2015\/03\/littletown-300x116.png 300w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 780px) 100vw, 780px\" \/><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: left;\">Here it is in <em>Old Time Rock and Roll<\/em>:<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\"><img decoding=\"async\" loading=\"lazy\" class=\"alignnone size-full wp-image-26262\" src=\"http:\/\/www.ludwig-van.com\/toronto\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/2\/2015\/03\/oldtimerockandroll.png\" alt=\"oldtimerockandroll\" width=\"783\" height=\"297\" srcset=\"https:\/\/www.ludwig-van.com\/toronto\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/2\/2015\/03\/oldtimerockandroll.png 783w, https:\/\/www.ludwig-van.com\/toronto\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/2\/2015\/03\/oldtimerockandroll-300x113.png 300w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 783px) 100vw, 783px\" \/><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: left;\">And in the opening phrase of\u00a0Beethoven\u2019s Piano\u00a0Sonata No. 21 (<em>Waldstein)<\/em>:<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\"><img decoding=\"async\" loading=\"lazy\" class=\"alignnone size-full wp-image-26263\" src=\"http:\/\/www.ludwig-van.com\/toronto\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/2\/2015\/03\/beethoven-1024x371.png\" alt=\"beethoven-1024x371\" width=\"1024\" height=\"371\" srcset=\"https:\/\/www.ludwig-van.com\/toronto\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/2\/2015\/03\/beethoven-1024x371.png 1024w, https:\/\/www.ludwig-van.com\/toronto\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/2\/2015\/03\/beethoven-1024x371-300x108.png 300w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 1024px) 100vw, 1024px\" \/><\/p>\n<p>These are common melodic and rhythmic ideas. I have only been working at this for about an hour\u00a0and have already came up with one example that is an exact match for the Gaye\u00a0<strong>a<\/strong>,\u00a0<strong>b<\/strong>\u00a0and\u00a0<strong>c<\/strong>; one match for\u00a0<strong>b<\/strong>\u00a0and\u00a0<strong>c<\/strong>\u00a0that contains a significant fragment of\u00a0<strong>a<\/strong>, and three rhythmic matches for\u00a0<strong>c<\/strong>. This can be contrasted with the\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=qkcZV97O3pw\" target=\"_blank\">Sam Smith \/ Tom Petty plagiarism case<\/a>, where my\u00a0<a href=\"http:\/\/danreitz.com\/blog\/2015\/tom-petty-melody-search\/\" target=\"_blank\">$180 prize for a third\u00a0exact match<\/a>\u00a0that predates\u00a0those songs has yet to be claimed despite a response from my friends that would lead me to estimate at least 15 man-hours have been spent looking for one.<\/p>\n<p>As for the material labeled <b>d <\/b>and the second\u00a0<strong>b, <\/strong>these fragments\u00a0should be considered\u00a0irrelevant; melismas like this are frequently improvised, and these are two different melismas despite the fact that they share a common interval. You\u00a0can\u2019t copyright the broad idea of including a melisma that contains\u00a0a descending fourth.<\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\">The songwriting\u00a0copyright\u00a0case that set the modern precedent in the United States was\u00a0<a href=\"http:\/\/mcir.usc.edu\/cases\/1970-1979\/Pages\/brightharrisongs.html\" target=\"_blank\"><span class=\"s1\">Bright Tunes Music\u00a0v. Harrisongs<\/span><\/a>, in which George Harrison was successfully sued over the similarities between <em>My Sweet Lord<\/em> and <em>He&#8217;s So Fine<\/em>, a hit song\u00a0from 1962. Both of these songs have similar three- and five-note melodic fragments as well as the same chord progression. In his ruling, the judge decided that using the same three- and five-note fragments on their own would not have been\u00a0novel enough to be copyright infringement, but that the &#8220;<span class=\"s2\">four repetitions of A, followed by four repetitions of B&#8221; shared by each melody\u00a0&#8220;create a highly unique pattern.&#8221;\u00a0(It&#8217;s actually four and three; his description in the ruling is incorrect.)\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\">So the copyright\u00a0was violated\u00a0in the Harrison case<b>\u00a0<\/b>not because a few notes were the same, or because the tracks sort of sound the same, but because specific melodic\u00a0fragments\u00a0were repeated the same way in each song for a total of twenty-seven\u00a0shared notes<b>\u00a0in a row<\/b>\u00a0between the two songs. This is clearly not happening with <em>Blurred Lines<\/em>; there are only three\u00a0(arguably five) notes that match each other exactly, and they are neither novel nor repeated throughout the tune.<\/p>\n<p>With the verdict\u00a0going in favour of the Gaye family, things are about to get very interesting. The Gayes\u2019 musicologist has chopped the music up into pieces that are so small that it will likely have a chilling effect on songwriting in the United States. If three common notes and a similar-sounding backing track is all that is needed to successfully sue someone, then the floodgates of litigation are about to swing wide open.<\/p>\n\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The verdict is in. Marvin Gaye owns a certain \u201cstyle\u201d of music. And now thanks to legal precedent, in the US anyway, if you re-create it like Robin Thicke and Pharrell Williams did, you could end up owing a mountain of money to the Gaye estate \u2013 in this case $7.4 million&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":26,"featured_media":26265,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[118,4967],"tags":[5340,5342,5341],"yst_prominent_words":[],"acf":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/www.ludwig-van.com\/toronto\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/2\/2015\/03\/timthumb.jpg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p9bakr-6Pv","amp_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ludwig-van.com\/toronto\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26257"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ludwig-van.com\/toronto\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ludwig-van.com\/toronto\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ludwig-van.com\/toronto\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/26"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ludwig-van.com\/toronto\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=26257"}],"version-history":[{"count":19,"href":"https:\/\/www.ludwig-van.com\/toronto\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26257\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":26286,"href":"https:\/\/www.ludwig-van.com\/toronto\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26257\/revisions\/26286"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ludwig-van.com\/toronto\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/26265"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ludwig-van.com\/toronto\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=26257"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ludwig-van.com\/toronto\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=26257"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ludwig-van.com\/toronto\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=26257"},{"taxonomy":"yst_prominent_words","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ludwig-van.com\/toronto\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/yst_prominent_words?post=26257"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}