Originally Posted By: Notes Norton

About 10 years ago I was fooling around on the flute and wrote a melody. Being more of an improvisor than a song writer I never did anything with it other than messing around with it as a warm up to a practice session.

This went on for a year or so.

Then one day I bought a CD of an LP I had as a boy, "Time Further Out" by The Dave Brubeck Quartet. It's playing along, and all of a sudden, there was my song!!! Well there was what I thought I had written but merely remembered but forgot that I had heard it before. I was glad I never fleshed it out and tried to write an actual song out of that melody.

It's easy to do something like that.


Very easy to unconsciously adapt a pattern from memory.

Some time ago here on the user showcase, a Japanese song writer posted a song that sounded eerily like the melody of a well-known Christmas carol. Not being a Christian, he didn't have a conscious awareness of the song, so it didn't set off any alarms. But, given the pervasiveness of Christmas carols, he had evidently heard the carol at some point and it stuck with him. When it was pointed out to him, he changed the melody. But I have to wonder if it would even matter since the song in question was probably in the public domain.

https://www.dropbox.com/sh/ey71h8ep047758h/AAC12jNM0Hz9Q8zsh5iDeqNHa?dl=0