[Controversial Plagiarism Issue]

On a guitar forum I frequent, there was a discussion recently about how modern music has become boring, mainly due to the use of the same melodies over and over again. In just about every genre, you can hear songs with nearly the same melodies.

Back in the early 1900s, Schoenberg, and a bunch of composers who agreed with him, stated that every melody that could be written on the conventional eight tone scale had been written. There were no more new melodies to be written on it.

So he, and they, came up with a 12 tone scale and wrote a whole bunch or new melodies. No one could hum them. Very, very, very, very few could stand listening to them (according to Wikipedia, 14 people have been found, so far, that actually can stomach listening to Schoenberg's 12 tone stuff. They all teach music theory, so they may be lying just to preserve their lesson plans.)

Then there is India and the Winnipeg Folk Festival. They are sources of new melodies no one can abide also.

As John Prine so rightly said, if it has more than three chords, I don't do it.

[Controversial Plagiarism Issue]

You can't copyright chord progressions, but lyrics and melodies can be.

There was a recent controversy here over songs by Beyonce' and Kelly Clarkson being the same. Turns out that both songs were penned by the same writer and have eerily similar melodies. After it was proven that there were no copyright issues, both are getting radio airplay.