Original Music
“There’s no such thing as original music anymore. Everyone is undoubtedly ripping someone else off.”
A musician friend of mine told me that a while back and it’s always stuck out in my mind. I’m not sure if I agree with it or not – I guess I see both sides. Oasis sounds like The Beatles, The Beatles were influenced by Elvis, Elivs was influenced by Hank Snow…and on and on.
I suppose it all depends on your interpretation of the word original. I’ve always thought that you can’t have an original unless there is a copy or another version. For example, KFC had to change the name to original chicken only after they created extra crispy. You don’t hear them saying original mashed potatoes because there’s only one…right?
If you support the same logic, then it suggests that original music is the first version of music that has been copied in some way. I had to re-read that sentence to myself a couple of times to fully understand it. And after I did, I can say I feel comfortable agreeing with it, but there’s definitely more to the story. How can one decipher what is the ‘first version’ of a song? If I write a song with a simple chord progression, am I copying whatever European musician created it back in 40 AD? If I use the lyric, “I love her,” is that being copied from artists like Whitney Houston, Frank Sinatra, Yoko Ono, and the Beatles who have all used those three words in succession?
Classical pianist, Chris O’Riley says, “The best musicians, period, are those that assimilate, refine, and regurgitate in a creative way everything they hear. So you have a musician, who is writing music that could not have been written at any other time in history and yet takes into account all that has come before it.”
Maybe I should look as original music as any work that is pieced together by an individual’s own inspirations, influences, emotions, and creativity. If that’s the case, then I absolutely disagree with the quote at the top of the page. I’ve always liked to think of the best musicians as song engineers. Those who have the ability to take different aspects of their life; love, heart ache, triumphs, and tragedies and mix those emotions with the musical influences that have moved them throughout their lives and design sometime new and fresh. Something original.
