Claire Leonard, Ashleigh Kilgore, Stephen Lunn, Ian Jordan
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Plagiarism:
The practice of claiming or implying original authorship of (or incorporating material from) someone else’s written or creative work, in whole or in part, into one’s own without adequate acknowledgement – the issue of false attribution.
Musical ‘imitation’ is when a musical gesture is repeated later in a different form, but retaining its original character.
Plagiarism and Imitation throughout Musical history
Due to the convenience of music in a digital rather than an analogue format, the idea of plagiarism seems like a ‘modern’ concept. In fact, plagiarism and imitation of musical ideas has to have been occurring since the beginning of music as we know it.
Music cannot progress without a certain amount of ‘imitation’ of general fundamentals. Consider a primitive tribal beat on a drum – neither melodic, nor harmonic, without structure, rhythmic variation or dynamic contrast. Then consider the most complicated, intricate, polyphonic electronic music of today. This progression has taken twenty to fifty thousand years of ‘imitation’ of musical fundamentals as well as the development of music technology.
In Medieval / Renaissance music, the ‘plainsong’ developed into the Gregorian chant through ‘imitation’ of previous composers’ work. The Gregorian chant itself, favoured by Palestrina and Tallis, is based on the imitation of the perfect fourth and fifth intervals.
In the Classical era, it was considered a necessary part of a young composer’s training to study under and to ‘imitate’ his master’s works – as well as that of other composers. Bach studied and copied the motets and masses of the Rennaissance period – paying particular attention to Palestrina’s masses and motets.
Beethoven studied under Haydn, ‘imitating’ certain traits of Classical music and bringing them into the Romantic era. Although ‘commissioned’ pieces existed and therefore composers were financially rewarded – this ‘imitation’ was still for positive creative purposes.
It is only in this modern age when virtually every musical concept imaginable has been experimented with that, paradoxically, much musical creativity appears to have been exhausted. A new, lazy disregard for original music has appeared, as well as a cynical monetary motivation that did not exist previously (to as great an extent) in musical eras before.
eg: Sweetbox’s Everything’s Gonna Be Alright sampling Bach’s Air on a G String
DJ Tiesto’s Adagio for Strings sampling Samuel Barber’s Adagio for Strings
Pachelbel’s Canon.
Plunderphonics
Plunderphonics can be considered a form of sound collage / music made by taking one or more existing audio recordings and altering them to make a new composition. No attempt is made to disguise the fact that the composition uses ‘borrowed’ sounds – sometimes the sounds may be taken from very familiar sources.
Straightforward sampling used in electronic/industrial/hip-hop music – in plunderphonic music the sampled material is often the only material used.
This obviously raises legal issues.
In 1989, Ozwald released a expanded album version of his Plunderphonics EP with twenty-five tracks. It reworked material by popular musicians like The Beatles / Elvis Presley / Dolly Parton and classical works such as Beethoven’s Symphony No.7 / Stravinsky’s The Rite of Spring but it was not offered for sale. A central idea behind the record was that the fact that all the sounds were ‘stolen’ should be quite blatant.
Plunderphonic artists whose work is sold commercially –
Kid606 – The Action Packed Mentalist Brings You The Fucking Jams.
DJ Shadow – Entroducing / Girltalk – Night Ripper
Worth mentioning…The Droplift Project created a compilation CD of plunderphonic works which was then “droplifted” into record stores (this involved slipping copies of the record onto the shelves without knowledge of the store owner — a sort of reverse stealing).
http://www.droplift.org/
Positive aspects of imitation in the Music Industry
Floods market with success
Boybands
“Some of the most common themes in pop music are romantic love and feelings. Pop music often uses the technique of taking from other records producing a satirical or self-reflexive mixture of past styles. It also employs techniques of sampling and sequencing to introduce individuality and creativity.”
“Coldplay’s early material was compared to acts such as Jeff Buckley and Radiohead, while also drawing comparisons to U2 and Travis. Since the release of Parachutes, Coldplay have also drawn influence from other sources, including Echo and the Bunnymen and George Harrison on A Rush of Blood to the Head (2002) and Johnny Cash and Kraftwerk for X&Y (2005). Both of these albums were released to great critical acclaim and commercial success.”
Dangermouse
The Beatles’ White Album
Jay-Z’s Black Album
Completely illegal
Music industry begins
Handel’s La Rejoussance
Beethoven
Tchaikovsky
Negative aspects of imitation in the Music Industry
How imitation has failed
There are rules on plagiarism
Industry is unoriginal due to imitation
So many diluted versions of other bands
All of this is inoffensive, easy to digest, uncontroversial.
Pointless!
Plagiarism & Imitation from the artists perspective
There is a fine line to be tread between the act of plagiarism and the artist’s right to imitate. Without imitation there would be no development – look as far back as the renaissance period to see obvious examples of imitation between composers, as have already been discussed. Without this, we would not have seen the rise of the Classical period, and eventually the Romantic period where experimentation with orchestras began.
To put a more relevant spin on things, look at popular music from the 1950s onwards. Since the likes of Chuck Berry, Bill Haley and Elvis Presley there has been one long chain of development. Without the skiffle bands of the 50s there would have been no Beatles, who have been endlessly imitated and have influenced basically all pop music after them. Without Jimmy Page first learning to play Lonnie Donegan songs there would have been no birth of heavy metal. It is hard to argue that we would be at the same place we are today in the modern pop industry were it not for this long chain of imitation from artist to artist.
Plagiarism, however, is something far more controversial….
It can be argued that, when it is done right, it brings older music that most weren’t aware of back to the fore, and brings back some appreciation for older music; for example, take a listen to DJ Tiesto’s or William Orbit’s version of Samuel Barber’s piece Adagio for Strings. Unless you’ve seen the movie Platoon, or else Kevin and Perry Go Large, very few would be aware of the piece or indeed of Samuel Barber, and it gives the piece a new life.
Would the composer be happy? When people get more fame/money out of something they ripped off from you would you be flattered? This was the case when The Verve released Bittersweet Symphony. This song uses a sample from the Andrew Oldham Orchestra’s recording of the Rolling Stone’s Last Time as its basis, from which Ashcroft builds his own original continuous riff. Mick Jagger and Keith Richards however, seeing how well the song was doing commercially, took all the rights to the song.
Plagiarism is alive so much in the modern music industry people just take it for granted. Look at the use of the same old chord progressions and cadences in songs. So many pop ballads have followed the same format and chord progression, with the same use of the first, fourth and fifth chords, even down to the same interrupted cadence before the end.
Also then, look at the modern “RnB” and Hip Hop. Most have the same beats and the same percussive sound to them. This is what people want to hear, so this is what people get. This does nothing for the true artist, who wants to explore and develop music.
It just gets lazy; even for the listener. People have been conditioned to expect this when they listen to the radio. This is not good artistically. This restricts those who want to explore other elements in commercial music. This is especially the case with US rock bands, where it seems the industry is irreversibly restricted. It takes a band ten years to have established themselves enough to be allowed to try anything different. For example, it took the death of Kurt Cobain for Pearl Jam to be allowed to explore anything outside grunge, and it took REM nearly a decade after their first album before they were allowed to stop producing the same old indie music expected of them.
Other examples of plagiarism:
Vanilla Ice’s “Ice Ice Baby” is a good example of when appreciation of another artist’s music crosses the line into plagiarism. It samples Queen/Bowie’s Under Pressure without permission.
George Harrison’s “My Sweet Lord” uses the melody of The Chiffon’s “He’s So Fine”.
John Fogerty was sued for plagiarising himself. His song “Old Man Down the Road” was ruled to be a musical copy of the Creedance Clearwater Revival Song “Run Through The Jungle”. Is this lazy song-writing or an artist claiming his right to his own sound?
Progression or recession?
Does Plagiarism and Imitation further the boundaries of modern music, or are we curbing creativity by promoting re-mixing and sampling?
Remixing: Magic Carpet Ride
Jimi Hendrix // The Crystal Method
Revitalising or tiring?
Sonically enhanced? The warmer sound of vinyl vs digital clarity
A matter of taste?
Impossible to argue: there is equal progression and recession through the remixing and recreation of existing music.
Existing popular music is more economically viable than a new song / piece. More and more existing music has been re-used by more recent artists: generating more income for the publishing labels and songwriters, but very little income for the artist.
“New artists are often introduced to the record-buying public with performances of well known, “safe” songs as evidenced in Pop Idol and its international counterparts. It is also a means by which the public can more easily concentrate upon the new performer without the need to judge the quality of the songwriting skills.” (wikipedia)
However, from a creative and critcal perspective, re-mixing and reproduction has a very limited lifespan and a limited appeal. The Beatles’ Yesterday is the most covered song since the original was released.
Similar to the evolution of music over the past two millennia and beyond, music will continue to develop by imitation and expansion into future.
Due to the availability of equipment and teaching, more people are able to compose. This exponential growth of numbers of composers should allow music to diversify and develop more quickly.
Over time, however, as music continues to be critically analysed, and as taste dictates the soundscape, the same classic songs retain their status, whilst the others are ignored to fade into obscurity… Until it is remixed. Again and again.
Perhaps the combination of Progressive Recession will continue to be the foremost method of development.
