Originally Posted By: Guitarhacker
When the chord progression to a song is so unique that simply playing the chords with no melody indicates immediately to the listener the song's name.... it can in fact be a copyrightable situation.

You are correct, and I'm wrong.

Darned it, you made me do more research! smile

A legal entity doesn't own the "copyright" to the chords, in the sense that no one else can use the progression.

But they do have the right to prevent the song from being intentionally copied in a way that has "substantial similarity" to the song.

An infringement case has to prove two things: "access" and "substantial similarity."

If the defendant can prove that they came up with the progression on their own, there's no infringment, even if the two songs are identical. Which means their version isn't a "copy", so no rights were infringed.

So in your example, given how ubiquitous the song is, it would be fairly easy to demonstrate "access" as well as "substantial similarity."

-- David Cuny
My virtual singer development blog

Vocal control, you say. Never heard of it. Is that some kind of ProTools thing?