Jealous about your songs?

As far as you read this, it means you’re interested somehow in the tracker community and you probably are a composer yourself.
There is, certainly, a question that you’ve been puzzled by:

What happens if I publish a song somewhere?
Will people be stealing my song? Will they copy my ideas?

:rolleyes:

I’ve been discussing about this many times, so I think you might appreciate my contribution.

Point 1
Most probably your song is NOT as GOOD as you suppose it to be
Most of the time you compose with your own taste in mind so you might end up with a song pleasing you… but that can’t please other people.
While this might be usefull to boost self-confidence and aesthetic it might be unpleasant while competing in a Mod-Compo. You can probably post your song for people to download it and listen. You will be amazed when you’ll notice that -nobody- will even consider the idea of ripping your song.
Getting REAL GOOD music from the net is not as easy as it might seem.

Point 2
Much work to be done to rip ideas and leave the shell
You can hardly imagine how many people is giving a try at the music business. People is near to music because of a lot of simple tools to write it… so the idea itself becomes “Easy” to write down today… what is hard is to make it “Sound” great. Sound quality is the keyword today.
I would not be concerned about releasing songs… unless my music is not only a great musical idea but is delevoped with super-high-studio-quality as well…

Point 3
Great ideas are protected by fame
Remember Jogeir with Guitarslinger? I don’t think he ever concerned himself about registering that song somewhere.
That was a great idea -for real-… and people felt it. I would be an idiot in trying to rip such a success.
If your idea is TRULY good, it will be much easier for you to prove it’s your if the whole world downloaded and listened to that song.

Point 4
Face it. You can’t register ideas. Influence happens every day
Any musician, even the most honest musician of this planet, can easily tell you that there is nothing to invent. We all listen, we all manipulate and then spit back our own idea. We’re all influenced by musics we heard in our past. You have to accept this. People, less experienced users mostly but also experienced users, will listen and replicate your style and ideas if they are good. You should be proud of this, not afraid. Most of the times this is something they do with great respect for the artist.

Point 5
Double blade. If you’re SO lame to rip music…
If you’re such a lame leech, compelled to steal music ideas from other people, your life in the music scene is going to be short.
VERY short. I guarantee you that.
Music skill is what you need to survive. Skill and passion. DEEP passion.
You can skip skills only if you’re a successfull pop-star already and have tons of money to PAY other people to write songs for your “successfull” image. How many tunes can you steal before being caught? Sooner or later you’ll find yourself face to face with someone asking you to show your real skill. If you had none, be prepared to be the laughing stack.
So, any honest music writer should be assured that leeches have a very short life in music, even when they rip your great tune. If they do, what do they stolen? You still have the POWER, the SKILL to write such tunes… they don’t.
:yeah:

Point 6
Great idea, good sound, what to do?
I’m not telling you that your work is safe. You know by yourself that your posted works are -not- safe. That’s the web brothers and sisters. If you made it to this point it means you have a REAL GREAT IDEA for your tune… if you managed to have it ready to listen in a GOOD quality… hey, it’s up to you! Even so, it’s very very hard to see it ripped by anyone more serious than a young lamer… as I said in point 3 …but if you still are concerned with it… what can we say? Don’t post your music! If you write such masterpieces it will not be hard for you to convince producers and sell and publish your own music. If you have the top selling song in the world and you still publish it in a popular forum instead of making money from it… you’re a jerk!
:lol:

Point 7
If you’re a musician you know it can’t be done
Most musicians are self-proud. It means they feel SO proud about their productions they would never xchange it with anything else. Even the lamest musician is proud of his own productions.
They might sound lame… but they are “HIS” productions… and he loves them. You might not think they are good value in terms of sound quality… or even ideas… but any music is a creature of your, a doughter, a son… and in the end it’s your opera. So be sure… no real musician is ever going to rip your music. If one does… it means he is not a musician… and however, the story will end like in point 5.
;)

Conclusions:
Post your songs with no fear!
If you’re a noob you’ll surely have PRECIOUS feedback.
If you’re an experienced composer you will help noobs understand and develope their musical sensibility.

:)

Very nice post!

Uh… Yeah, that’s all I have to say right now. :P

WORD!!!

~Dufey (Writing posts instead of music)

Yeah nice post!!

…and Guitarslinger truly rocks!!! :)

yeah, i guess i agree with most of what you said

except that ‘REAL GOOD music’ doesn’t exist

very interesting post ;)
i have started tracking about ten years ago and in between i have been thinking often about some arguments you mentioned…

in my opinion a lot of songs are not as good as the composer might be, because the composer didn’t find his “own style”.
in my case, it took more than 5 years to make music, to that i really would listen and i think in fact of this, it is important that - how you said - you compose with your own taste in mind…

It is very very important to get a feedback. From Friends, or better from a lot of people who don’t know you. Also, because if you work 2 or more days on a song, you get used to it…

I’m glad you made me notice this point
:lol:
It’s true! “Real Good Music” doesn’t exist! …because music is basicly a matter of taste… but mind my words: I said basicly. Let’s say that music is also a matter of taste.
What else?
It is also a matter of pressure, math, geometry, fractals, frequencies, electricity… and that’s a whole bunch of stuff that definitely NOT related to personal taste.

The way you equalize your tunes, the way you widen up the frequencies of single instruments… you might be doing this with your instinct… but this does not means that’s a matter of personal taste.
Harmony is not personal taste… and frequencies are not personal taste :)

A lot of modern products are built up of their sound quality.
Most grooves you hear on your favourite commercial radio they “sound right”… they “work” because they are well-equalized…

Take Chemical Brothers… where the excellent quality of sound and amazing equalization are making up for more than half of the final product…
American studios are well known for this habit they have about compressing like hell with top-notch machines for mastering tracks…

So when I say “Real Good Music” I’m obviously not (only) talking about the style or genre of that song… that’s obviously a matter of personal taste
:)

Holy words!
:D
Invite people! Share your music… and never forget to stress people by asking em accurate insight on your music! Impressions, feelings, reactions… all precious feedback you should treasure

I assume you don’t mean “which harmonies are nice to listen to” but if a chord is harmonic or not (ie dissonant). The first is obviously wrong. The second is sometimes right sometimes not. I think we all agree that an octave (example: C4-C5) is harmonic, and a minor second (ex: C5-C#5) is dissonant but what about a minor sixth (ex: C5-Ab5)? It’s somewhere in between, obviously. Harmonic or not, it’s up to yourself. And that’s a good thing. :D

hmm… let me put it down elseway…
One of the last things I’ve done was featuring real violins performing some improvisation on a slowbeat with jungle fill-in. When I went down to the studio to listen to this guy’s tracks we found out they were out of scale. The guy played the whole time on a minor scale… while the bass, some spacey whistles in the background and all pads where pointing to major chords
:wacko:
Low volume in headphones, probably… but when he listened with me the resulting… both had no doubt that there was something wrong in that :lol:

Obviously, I know that is not the case you were talking about
:rolleyes:

What I think is that even the most hazardous combinations were analyzed already and are now well known… (we don’t have an unlimited choice)
the frequency they glue toghether binded by some invisible rules… and those rule seem to have the power of moving people’s feeling in precise way.
Major chords will sound sunny, positive, glorious…
Minor chords will sound sad, troubled, emotive, epic…
Your C5-C#5 will sound like high tension - thrill - suspence
and so on… it all comes down to the way you balance your tune with atmospheres… no matter if you do that by instinct or by math rules and equations… you will never sound positive and sunny by playing minor chords… if you get what I mean
;) :lol:

I get what you mean, but I don’t agree completely.
And that, IMHO, is proof that I’m right :P , since if we don’t agree then it is personal taste. Even more so, it’s more cultural than anything else. 12 note scales is a western music tradition, in other places they don’t even have major and minor chords. And the exact frequency relations for minor and major thirds that we use today hasn’t got more than a few hundred years of tradition, even today a lot of musicians and composers use other tunings. Because of different cultures and different personal taste.

Hmm … dunno about that. I believe “Axel F” was written in a minor scale, and it sounds as a positive mood to me.

Besides that, can’t anything that was written in a minor scale be notated in a major scale (and vice versa)?. For ex, scale of A minor has same notes as C major?

Of course, I speak as an amateur, I don’t have any formal music training.

B)

You’re right that A minor has the same notes as C major, or in general every minor mode has a parallell major mode with it’s root a minor third above. But that doesn’t make it the same mode, although smaller parts of songs in different modes might have the same chords without becoming the same mode :blink:. Music theory is not a simple beast, and there are always different ways of interpreting.

Agree that minor sometimes can make you feel positive. Maybe in an other way, but still… And if you’re in a lousy mood too much major will just make you even more depressed. Once again, it’s up to the listener :)

hum… very insteresting things said here…

I agree with Parsec’s first post: share your music, chances it will be ripped are minimal. And in many cases it would be some lame person wanting to impress a (hypothetical girl)friend. This won’t lead this person very far anyway…

About harmony: chord combinations are almost limitless… If music was as predictable as you seem to say, that would mean that somebody, with some rules, could do a song without actually having some talent.
There are songs like this… but they are COMMERCIAL succeses which doesn’t mean that they are actually good songs (although they are enjoyable)… but again, it’s a matter of taste…

About music theory… Since I started to learn music theory (and play the piano) my songs became better in some aspect but soon they became pointless… And now I don’t really like the songs I do…
That’s weird because before taking lessons, I liked what I did (and still like songs from that period)…

I don’t think music can be summed up or compiled into some kind of accurate “algorithm”. More than taste, interpretation is important too… Depending on ones personnality, someone can be more affected by a particular chord instead of another…
I think that music isn’t easy at all and is almost as troubling as love… :P

See you, have a nice time composing, I look forward to hear all of your contributions, renoisers!

I remember there was an old Amiga proggy that actually generated mods. All sounded pretty much the same and kind of boring, but it’s kind of interesting that it can be made… how much was an algorithm and how much was predefined by the programmer I have no idea… And it generated stupid song names as well :)

Actually, I heard some people in an american university (if I remember correctly) created a program that could analyse the notes of large and complicated classical pieces and generate songs that only experts could separate from the original composers works. This included composers like Bach, hardly a simple algorithm to program…

:o :blink: :o
Need to know more!!!
Where? Who? When? Start a new post with this please!
:)

I don’t know more… I read it somewhere™, sometime™ a while ago and it was written by somebody™ :(

It might not even be true <_<

Wow, I certainly learn alot from just reading your “little” conversation on this topis! Very nice! Keep it up!

:rolleyes:

Oh, and one more thing, which I read somewhere, sometimes:

“In music, there are no rules!”

:P

Which you should ALWAYS bare in mind, because the only way to create something new and, hopefully, exciting music, is to (more or less) break the rules.

(A good idea would be to listen to the Fight Club soundtrack by “Dust Brothers” (Chemical Brothers). Those songs are very fun. Maybe cuz they were made for movie scenes, but still… It’s a nice little experience

:blink:

~Dufey (Learning something new every day)

If you can get a software to know the rules of music, I guess you could also make it break them :P