The View from the Spaghetti Factory

Although my days of listening wide-eyed to Joe Satriani are long gone (I haven’t really enjoyed anything he’s done since 1995) I was still pretty surprised to see his name appear on the BBC website. Satch vs Coldplay in plagiarism case? Being hopelessly curious about this sort of thing, I decided to put my ears on and investigate properly.

Putting aside issues of instrumentation (string samples plus vocals on the Coldplay; acoustic and electric guitars on Satch’s tune) and subjective genre labels, the first main barrier is the tonality. So let’s transpose one of the songs, so we can analyse them both in parallel.

“Viva La Vida” is in Ab and uses the good old I-vi-IV-V progression, except it starts halfway, giving IV-V-I-vi…

Db5 - Eb7 (no 3rd) - Ab - Fm

“If I Could Fly” is in G lydian, and has two chord progressions…

Verse: Gmaj9 - F#m7 - Gmaj9 - F#m7 B(add11)

Chorus: Em - A - D - Bm

Now, simply transposing the Coldplay down a semitone from Ab to G won’t work, as G major and G lydian are not the same thing. G lydian contains the same notes as D major, so we’ll transpose the Coldplay by a tritone to D major. That gives this chord progression (simplifying the chord names to just majors and minors)…

G - A - D - Bm

… which instantly gives us a fairly close match with Satch’s chorus. I say “fairly close”, but it’s only the G/Em difference, and those chords are of course the relative major/minor of each other. It’s still just a fairly generic chord sequence, though, so we’re not exactly in litigious territory yet. How about the melody?

[click the image to see a larger version]

The first bar-and-a-half is identical! But that’s not exactly a unique melody… sit on the 9th (or maj7 in Coldplay’s case) and then resolve to the next chord via the note above? Pretty standard stuff. But then the rhythm is exactly the same, so could that be enough (for legal purposes) to signify intent?

There’s a similarity in the way both tunes use alternating D and E notes over the D chord, but the rhythms are a little different and the second target note is different (Chris Martin pushes up to the F#). Also, the notes over the Bm chord are completely different.

So, in summary… I have no idea! It doesn’t seem enough to me, what with the different first chord, and the fact that only the first bar of melody is truly identical, but I’m no lawyer.

Ooh, forgot to mention before… if you’re looking to pick up some jazz guitar skills, but have no idea where to start, my friend Matt is bloggishly documenting his own chronologically accurate journey of discovery…

Swing to Bop

What with the football, a week in the Lake District, a number of weekends away and the general stream of transcribing, guitar-magazining and bluesjamtracking, I just haven’t really done much guitar playing recently. That is to say, I always have a guitar to hand when I’m transcribing and I’ve practised stuff for the magazine CD, but that’s all very specifically focused; I’m talking about deep, intense playing.

Part of my problem is that I’m lazy. Another part of my problem is a very short attention span, especially when it comes to familiar old practice routines. The best way to make me work hard is to give me a new challenge. I’ve long intended to develop my slide playing, but was always confronted with a dilemma… whether to struggle with my clumsy technique on guitars set up with low action, or whether to tweak a guitar for slide, thus making it ineligible for “standard” duties.

Fortuitously, a solution arrived from (sweet home) Alabama, as you can see in the picture. This cheery little chap was built for me by my good friend Bill Jehle. As well as being a damn fine player, Bill has recently been investigating the fine old American tradition of the cigar box guitar. He’s already built quite a few examples and made an instructional DVD, so check out his website… BellyJelly Music.

So anyway… this is now my designated slide guitar. At the moment, I’m really just trying to build a solid, accurate technique (honestly, I’m working from a starting point of roughly 2% competence) so there won’t be any actual recordings just yet. I’m mostly working on intonation, improvising to little chord loops. Also, I have a tendency to lazily allow the bottleneck to pivot against the high E string, creating a very rattly contact with the B and G strings, so I’m working on developing a feel for angling it most effectively according to the string I’m playing. I love the way you can radically alter the tone by adjusting the way the slide connects with the string. More updates soon!

Pianist Esbjörn Svensson dead at 44 (Jazz News)

It’s my considered opinion that Bumblefoot’s album “Normal” is the finest rock album of the 21st century so far. Nick mentioned how he’s been playing the Alter Bridge album constantly, and that’s exactly how it was for me when “Normal” came out. I don’t think I listened to much else for a couple of weeks, and I still have regularly obsessive phases now, where nothing else quite hits the spot.

So… with the promise of a new album from the splendid Mr Thal this summer, I’m getting pretty excited, and the “Bumblefoot in the Studio” video diary on his Youtube channel is just SO tantalising!

I’ve been a fan of Paul Ford’s Ftrain writings for ages, but this article, from the Morning News, is one of the best things I’ve ever read by him…

Six-Word Reviews of 763 SXSW Mp3s

I’m sure every industry has its share of snake-oil and bad science; the music/audio industry is certainly no exception. This made me giggle…

Audiophiles can’t tell the difference between Monster Cable and coat hangers (engadget.com)

It doesn’t surprise me, to be honest. I remember Ben Goldacre issued a challenge in his Guardian column, offering to take part in a double-blind test of some IEC mains cables (kettle leads, in other words) that cost several hundred pounds. The manufacturers never rose to his challenge, as far as I’m aware. I’ve seen super-expensive guitar leads that were supposed to be connected between the guitar and amplifier in one direction only and I can clearly remember the discussions in Q Magazine about whether CDs sounded better after a few hours in the freezer. Yep, there’s a whole industry out there, dedicated to relieving the gullible of vast wodges of cash in return for complete bullshit.

And if it’s bullshit you want, Machina Dynamica must be the masters of the genre. I still can’t decide whether this site is the absolute pinnacle of snake oil or just a clever spoof…

Yep, stones. In a plastic bag. For anything from $39 to $159 each :-D

German composer Stockhausen dies (BBC)

My ability to dig out, rebrand and re-pimp old recordings is starting to amaze even me. Looking to refresh the musical selection on my Myspace page, I delved back to 2002 and found a couple of tunes that I’d almost forgotten about. I always assume that I’ll hate any old recordings, but I listened back to these two with quite a fond smile on my face. So, if you go here…

http://www.myspace.com/adrianclarkmusic

… you can listen to “The Reluctant Optimist” and “View from the Retro Kitchenette”. Both are untouched, audio-wise (I didn’t fancy trying to make sense of the old Pro Tools multi-track files in Logic) but I’ve smartened them up with new titles!

Yes, in a poor attempt to hide the fact that I haven’t written any new music since 1974, I have once more plunged into the back catalogue in search of another “yes, very nice, but…” tune.

The latest victim is a solo acoustic guitar piece called “Winter Thames Sunset”, inspired by… well, have a guess! The first version (from about four years ago) was for a Guitarist Collective task, so I probably made it in a hurry. Whatever, I just wasn’t satisfied with the sound of my guitar, which admittedly doesn’t really lend itself to this sort of sensitive fingerpicking, being better suited to chunky strumming or single-note lead playing.

Refusing to give in, I experimented with microphone positioning and EQ and recorded a better version. It’s still a long way from what I want, but it’s a lot better. You can listen to it with a feeling of community spirit on my Myspace, or in better quality mp3 form here…

Winter Thames Sunset