Posted on Sep 06 2023 09:14 PM
It’s all but impossible to come up with something totally unique; every phrase we play will probably have something similar out in the wild. I wrote a song in the mid ‘70s which was designed to be a Chet Atkins style instrumental. A few years later, I played it for my niece, and her friend, and they were very impressed, that I could play Stray Cat Strut. Actually the melody was completely different and even the chords were different, but, it did have a descending bass line that would have fit Stray Cat Strut
perfectly, for the first six bars.
Anyone that knew music would know that they were different songs, but the similarity of bass line was undeniable. I don’t care, because I’m not planning on publishing it, and if it ever came up, I could probably prove prior art, but I doubt that Setzer would care in the slightest, because the Andalusian Cadence of Stray Cat Strut precedes his writing by many, many years.
When I was still a child, I realized that much of the music I heard reduced to four patterns: the Twelve-Bar Blues, the I, VI, IV, V pattern of a blue Moon and countless ‘50s ballads, the innumerable Country songs with variations on I, IV, V changes, and the Andalusian Cadence. To this day, those make up a lot of music, and Surf is far from immune. When it comes to fills and other lead licks, almost nothing is unique. Rock n’ Roll is, a very limited number of idea snippets, used creatively.
Honky Tonk was an instrumental from the mid ‘50s, and some call it the Big Bang of Rock n’ Roll guitar. Master Honky Tonk, and you will be exposed to a lot of ideas used to this day.
Howard Roberts, a famed session guitarist and Jazz artist, not to mention founder of Guitar Institute of Technology, spent a couple of decades trying to improve how guitar was taught to serious students. One of his statements was that if you copy one person, that’s plagiarism, but if you copy everyone, that’s research. I think he’s spot on.
Some years ago, I heard a lick in a Pop/Rock solo that was really unique. One day I decided to use that lick deserved to be remembered and in fact, I use it a lot. No one would confuse my use of it with the original recording, but there is one measure that I’ve never heard elsewhere, and I love to use that lick on occasion. Even if I were to use it at a gig, the seat tax of the venue covers my use of prior art, so I’m legal for live performances. In recordings, it is permissible to play short quotes from other solos, and this is common in Jazz. Actually, it’s considered an homage to the original artist to include such a quote in a Jazz recording.
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The artist formerly known as: Synchro
When Surf Guitar is outlawed only outlaws will play Surf Guitar.
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