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If I turn somebody else's song upside down, who wrote it? #668844 08/17/21 07:16 AM Off-Topic
Joined: Jun 2021 Posts: 1,689 Mark Hayes OP Expert
OP Mark Hayes Expert Joined: Jun 2021 Posts: 1,689	I'm working on a project that began as a Logic rendering of a Beatles MIDI downloaded from the Internet sometime in the 90s. At some point, I took all the parts and inverted them, melodically, using Logic's MIDI transform function. To my surprise, the result was surprisingly musical, and required only a little adjustment to sound like a decent pop song. Now, every ascending passage descends and vice versa, and a bouncy major key has become a fairly grim minor. I like it. But who wrote it? I can't say I did, for obvious reasons. But the result is a distinctly different piece of music from the original, and, really, not one to be reasonably (or fairly) credited to Lennon and McCartney. I wonder about the general ethics / esthetics involved here, given that it's theoretically possible to produce a steady stream of "original" compositions this way.

Re: If I turn somebody else's song upside down, who wrote it? Mark Hayes #668850 08/17/21 07:29 AM Off-Topic
Joined: Dec 2013 Posts: 2,732 St. Louis, MO. USA sslechta Veteran
sslechta Veteran Joined: Dec 2013 Posts: 2,732 St. Louis, MO. USA	There's a lot of similar videos on YouTube about "inverting" songs so-to-speak. I don't see a problem with this but I'm sure someone out there would take issue.... they always do. Steve BIAB/RB 2022, Pro Tools 2020, Korg N5, JBL LSR 4328 Powered Monitors, AKG/Shure Mics. PC: Win11 PRO, 4 TB M2 SSD, 2 TB HD, 128 GB Memory

Re: If I turn somebody else's song upside down, who wrote it? Mark Hayes #668855 08/17/21 08:29 AM Off-Topic
Joined: Dec 2002 Posts: 12,653 Wauconda DrDan Veteran
DrDan Veteran Joined: Dec 2002 Posts: 12,653 Wauconda	What! You have an original song written by the Beatles which was never published? Or... Steve Jobs was quoted saying... "good artists borrow and great artists steal." However, he probably stole that quote from Picasso… who probably took it from Stravinsky. We stand on the shoulders of giants as we move forward in life. BIAB – 2026, Reaper (current), i7-12700F Processor, 32GB DDR4-3200MHz RAM, Motu Audio Express 6x6 - My SoundCloud.

Re: If I turn somebody else's song upside down, who wrote it? Mark Hayes #668915 08/18/21 03:17 AM Off-Topic
Joined: Jul 2000 Posts: 6,446 Fort Pierce, Florida, U.S.A. Notes Norton Veteran
Notes Norton Veteran Joined: Jul 2000 Posts: 6,446 Fort Pierce, Florida, U.S.A.	I don't know. If you want advice, contact a lawyer versed in copyright law. I do know that in classical music, inversion of a theme is a legit method of developing the song. Notes Bob "Notes" Norton Norton Music https://www.nortonmusic.com 100% MIDI Super-Styles recorded by live, pro, studio musicians for a live groove & Fake Disks for MIDI and/or RealTracks

Re: If I turn somebody else's song upside down, who wrote it? Mark Hayes #668917 08/18/21 03:51 AM Off-Topic
Joined: Apr 2009 Posts: 10,664 Middlesex, NC Guitarhacker Veteran
Guitarhacker Veteran Joined: Apr 2009 Posts: 10,664 Middlesex, NC	So.... essentially, if you hadn't said a word about it, no one would have ever guessed where you got the inspiration from..... is that correct? If it's not an obvious rip-off.... I don't think it's considered stealing. I see it as processing something through the filter of your brain both conscious and subconscious, and getting a unique outcome. But again.... I'm not a lawyer versed in copyright law. If no one recognizes it as having other origins.... it's obviously an original. That's how I look at it. The secret is to take what you hear from others and make it your own in such a way that the one who inspired the idea doesn't recognize it as something they did in one form or another. We all do this constantly. Chord progressions, as everyone knows, are not copyrightable. And if you reversed it, and have a different melody, which would obviously be the case, I think you're in the clear. You're under no obligation to even mention it or give credit to the "other" song or writer unless you simply want to let folks like in this forum know how it was achieved. I don't think I would have even done that. Just a simple..... here's a new song. Done Edit: the only way I could see trouble brewing in a legal sense is if you sampled the original, reversed it and used it. That is a copyright violation. But.... if you don't do that, there's nothing to worry about. Last edited by Guitarhacker; 08/18/21 03:53 AM. You can find my music at: www.herbhartley.com Add nothing that adds nothing to the music. You can make excuses or you can make progress but not both. The magic you are looking for is in the work you are avoiding.

Re: If I turn somebody else's song upside down, who wrote it? Mark Hayes #668939 08/18/21 06:39 AM Off-Topic
Joined: Jun 2021 Posts: 1,689 Mark Hayes OP Expert
OP Mark Hayes Expert Joined: Jun 2021 Posts: 1,689	Guitarhacker: "So.... essentially, if you hadn't said a word about it, no one would have ever guessed where you got the inspiration from..... is that correct?" I guess that would depend on the listener; some people can hear things like that! But essentially, yeah. I'm not thinking of anything you could call an "interpretation" of the original, as a normal listener would hear it. A normal listener can recognize a theme in a different key, or a different mode, but not inverted. But regardless of normal listeners and recognizeability, it's a trivial matter to reverse-engineer a reversed piece back into the original. And I don't know how such things actually play out in courts, but I can imagine a lawyer playing a contested song on a laptop and showing how you just do "select all" then take a certain menu option and suddenly you're listening to "Raindrops Keep Fallin On My Head" – and the jury going, whoa, it's the same song. I suppose what you do to finesse the legal situation is take your inversion of "Raindrops" and call it something like "Neutrons Keep Shooting From the Ground" where the listener will get the winky-winky meaning. In terms of "obligations", I would just feel dishonest if I presented such as I've described as completely original material. Plus it would be too easy to get caught, once any suspicions were raised!

Re: If I turn somebody else's song upside down, who wrote it? Mark Hayes #668940 08/18/21 07:05 AM Off-Topic
Joined: Mar 2018 Posts: 6,938 Rustyspoon# Veteran
Rustyspoon# Veteran Joined: Mar 2018 Posts: 6,938	ecilA morf dnalrednoW thgim wonk eht rewsna.

Re: If I turn somebody else's song upside down, who wrote it? Rustyspoon# #668942 08/18/21 07:23 AM Off-Topic
Joined: Dec 2002 Posts: 12,653 Wauconda DrDan Veteran
DrDan Veteran Joined: Dec 2002 Posts: 12,653 Wauconda	Originally Posted By: Rustyspoon# ecilA morf dnalrednoW thgim wonk eht rewsna. Good idea Misha. Mark, can you upload the song in question for a brief period, to this very select audience, to allow us to see if we recognize it from the Beatles catalog? BIAB – 2026, Reaper (current), i7-12700F Processor, 32GB DDR4-3200MHz RAM, Motu Audio Express 6x6 - My SoundCloud.

Re: If I turn somebody else's song upside down, who wrote it? DrDan #668943 08/18/21 07:31 AM Off-Topic
Joined: Jun 2021 Posts: 1,689 Mark Hayes OP Expert
OP Mark Hayes Expert Joined: Jun 2021 Posts: 1,689	Originally Posted By: MusicStudent Originally Posted By: Rustyspoon# ecilA morf dnalrednoW thgim wonk eht rewsna. Good idea Misha. Mark, can you upload the song in question for a brief period, to this very select audience, to allow us to see if we recognize it from the Beatles catalog? Sure! I was of course thinking of doing that, but didn't want to if the discussion never took off. https://soundcloud.com/mark_hayes/inversion To complicate things even further, the MIDI that I started out with says it is "(C)1996 by Eiko & Nobuo Takenaka". Not sure how that works, considering that these are note-for-note transcriptions of the original Beatles performances, but I certainly owe those folks a lot of credit here.

Re: If I turn somebody else's song upside down, who wrote it? Mark Hayes #668944 08/18/21 07:41 AM Off-Topic
Joined: Dec 2003 Posts: 24,032 Hamlin NY MarioD Veteran
MarioD Veteran Joined: Dec 2003 Posts: 24,032 Hamlin NY	Inverting a Beatles' song has already been done. It played "Paul is dead"! It takes courage for a man to admit his wife was wrong. 64 bit Win 10 Pro, the latest BiaB/RB, Roland Octa-Capture audio interface, a ton of software/hardware

Re: If I turn somebody else's song upside down, who wrote it? Mark Hayes #668946 08/18/21 07:44 AM Off-Topic
Joined: Jul 2000 Posts: 27,338 Hudson Valley & Lake George NY Matt Finley Veteran
Matt Finley Veteran Joined: Jul 2000 Posts: 27,338 Hudson Valley & Lake George NY	The rhythm of the resulting song melody would be identical to the original, correct? You’re doing a vertical mirror image, not a horizontal one? BIAB 2025 Win Audiophile. Software: Studio One 7 Pro, Swam horns, Acoustica-7, Notion 6, Song Master Pro, Win 11 Home. Hardware: Intel i9, 32 Gb; Presonus 192 & Faderport 8, Royer 121, Slate VSX, Adam Sub8 & Neumann 120 monitors.

Re: If I turn somebody else's song upside down, who wrote it? Matt Finley #668951 08/18/21 07:49 AM Off-Topic
Joined: Jun 2021 Posts: 1,689 Mark Hayes OP Expert
OP Mark Hayes Expert Joined: Jun 2021 Posts: 1,689	Originally Posted By: Matt Finley The rhythm of the resulting song melody would be identical to the original, correct? You’re doing a vertical mirror image, not a horizontal one? Correct, I didn't mess with that at all.

Re: If I turn somebody else's song upside down, who wrote it? MarioD #668953 08/18/21 07:55 AM Off-Topic
Joined: Jun 2021 Posts: 1,689 Mark Hayes OP Expert
OP Mark Hayes Expert Joined: Jun 2021 Posts: 1,689	Originally Posted By: MarioD Inverting a Beatles' song has already been done. It played "Paul is dead"! Mister Ed the Talking Horse got in trouble when his TV show theme was exposed as containing backwards Satanic messages. Here's the song reversed, if you try hard, you really can hear "someone sung this song for Satan" and "the source is the devil". https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bHbHpz3KwnM

Re: If I turn somebody else's song upside down, who wrote it? Mark Hayes #668955 08/18/21 07:56 AM Off-Topic
Joined: Apr 2009 Posts: 10,664 Middlesex, NC Guitarhacker Veteran
Guitarhacker Veteran Joined: Apr 2009 Posts: 10,664 Middlesex, NC	I don't recognize it. I might have figured out that it was reversed, or maybe not. There's only a few places that sound like they are reverse audio. I was going to capture it but couldn't figure out how.... so I can't reverse it to unlock the magic .... oh well. It's actually pretty cool sounding. The only thing is that the melody line.... that flute sounding thing..... if it's the original melody to the song, if reversed would give it away.... then your simple solution is to delete that midi track and create your own. It becomes totally unidentifiable at that point I would assume. You can find my music at: www.herbhartley.com Add nothing that adds nothing to the music. You can make excuses or you can make progress but not both. The magic you are looking for is in the work you are avoiding.

Re: If I turn somebody else's song upside down, who wrote it? Guitarhacker #668957 08/18/21 08:02 AM Off-Topic
Joined: Jun 2021 Posts: 1,689 Mark Hayes OP Expert
OP Mark Hayes Expert Joined: Jun 2021 Posts: 1,689	Guitarhacker, thanks for the listen! To be clear, the lines are inverted, not reversed.

Re: If I turn somebody else's song upside down, who wrote it? Mark Hayes #668964 08/18/21 08:31 AM Off-Topic
Joined: Dec 2002 Posts: 12,653 Wauconda DrDan Veteran
DrDan Veteran Joined: Dec 2002 Posts: 12,653 Wauconda	I got nothing! I would have to analyze the notes very carefully to ID the origin and I'm likely not one who could do it. Thanks for sharing. BIAB – 2026, Reaper (current), i7-12700F Processor, 32GB DDR4-3200MHz RAM, Motu Audio Express 6x6 - My SoundCloud.

Re: If I turn somebody else's song upside down, who wrote it? Mark Hayes #668993 08/18/21 10:43 AM Off-Topic
Joined: May 2000 Posts: 22,384 Mi., USA rharv Veteran
rharv Veteran Joined: May 2000 Posts: 22,384 Mi., USA	OK, I'll say it, if anyone bothered to look you'd get caught. ie, if I wrote a song and you inverted it, it would catch my attention enough to notice (IF I heard it). Not many Beatles left to worry about these days, and I doubt they are on your Soundcloud channel <grin> Simply knowing it was a Beatles song tipped me off enough to know it was familiar, let alone if it was a song I wrote. I'd still have to re-engineer it back to prove anything, but that would be the easy part if I had the same tools. I do not work here, but the benefits are still awesome Make your sound your own!

Re: If I turn somebody else's song upside down, who wrote it? Mark Hayes #669016 08/18/21 12:44 PM Off-Topic
Joined: Jun 2021 Posts: 1,689 Mark Hayes OP Expert
OP Mark Hayes Expert Joined: Jun 2021 Posts: 1,689	This be the song it came from... https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OsjTO0yZQjk

Re: If I turn somebody else's song upside down, who wrote it? Mark Hayes #669022 08/18/21 01:03 PM Off-Topic
Joined: Jun 2021 Posts: 1,689 Mark Hayes OP Expert
OP Mark Hayes Expert Joined: Jun 2021 Posts: 1,689	Originally Posted By: Mark Hayes This be the song it came from... https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OsjTO0yZQjk PS – Another "conceptual" thing I considered was taking the original recording, isolating the vocal and fixing one long and horribly flat note of Paul's that's been bothering me for 50 years now. But then a voice from deep within my soul said: NO, DO NOT GO THERE, and I didn't even let myself try it for chuckles and yucks – I didn't want that corrected version in my head!

Re: If I turn somebody else's song upside down, who wrote it? Mark Hayes #669065 08/18/21 08:59 PM Off-Topic
Joined: Sep 2010 Posts: 8,016 Sacramento, California dcuny Veteran
dcuny Veteran Joined: Sep 2010 Posts: 8,016 Sacramento, California	Gerry Beckley took the song "Till The Sun Comes Up Again", ran it backwards and came up with "Now Sue". Of course, since he wrote "Till The Sun Comes Up Again", he avoids issues of authorship. As you said, you can't really say that you wrote it. Although the Beatles didn't write the melody, it would reasonably and fairly be credited to Lennon and McCartney. From a legal perspective, it's "derivative work" - deriving new content from existing material. I can't take credit for this statement - someone on this Reddit thread wrote it, making my own comment here a derivative work. There in fact was a case where someone sued a songwriter for using the reverse version of his melody. That case didn't succeed. But a case against your version of this song undoubtably would. Quote: To establish copyright infringement, you must establish that you own a valid copyright in the work and that: The work has been copied; and The copy is “substantially similar” to the protectable elements of the original work. There's no doubt that the work has been copied. It's rhythmically identical to the original melody, with the intervals exactly inverted. So it's a copy that's substantially similar. While The Beatles didn't compose the work, the derivative relies entirely on their creative work - none of it could exist without the source material, and the resulting material lacks anything that creatively transforms it. It's a bit like taking a photograph of the Mona Lisa, and claiming the negative of the painting is your own creative work. Sure, it was "transformed" - but every element of that transformed painting came from the painter, even if it's an inversion of some of those creative choices. Since the derivative work is 100% built on a melody by Lennon and McCartney, not crediting them for the result would simply be wrong, as you'd be passing off someone else's work as your own. -- David Cuny My virtual singer development blog Vocal control, you say. Never heard of it. Is that some kind of ProTools thing? BiaB 2025 \| Windows 11 \| Reaper \| Way too many VSTis.

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