Mel-odious?

February 29, 2020

A musician and a musician-copyright attorney just paired up to computer-generate every 1-octave, 13-beat melodic note sequence possible.

Then they copyrighted the Musical Instrument Digital Interface (MIDI) data set they had saved on their hard drive.

Then they dedicated their copyright to the world.

Theoretically, no musician hereafter could end up in copyright hell for intentionally or even subliminally 'copying' another musician's melody.

You may recall Tom Petty's "I Won't Back Down" v. Sam Smith's "Stay with Me", which veiled threatened lawsuit some commentators have called extortion. Or Ronnie Mack's "He's So Fine" v. George Harrison's "My Sweet Lord". Or other famous copyrighted-music lawsuits or threats thereof.

Musician, programmer, and copyright attorney Damien Riehl and musician and programmer Noah Rubin algorithmically "produced" every possible melody on a computer. They copyrighted the MIDI data collection. Then they attempted to dedicate the nearly 69 billion melodies to the public domain by executing a so-called Creative Commons Zero license. All this according to Samantha Cole's posting at https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/wxepzw/musicians-algorithmically-generate-every-possible-melody-release-them-to-public-domain.

Copyright attorneys differ on whether their license grant is effectively a public domain dedication. But it is as close as one can get.

The problem with the melody project is the computer-generated melody data surely scooped up melodic phrases already owned by others, possibly millions of them. So the copyright seems to me to be suspect.

According to famed dance music producer Oli Freke, there are 75 billion 10-note sequences if rhythm is limited to one note per interval. If alternative rhythmic possibilities are included, the 10-note sequence possibilities expand to a glorious 82 septillion! https://plus.maths.org/content/how-many-melodies-are-there.

Regardless of the effectiveness of the attempt to free future musicians, thanks to Riehl and Rubin and dance-math whizzes everywhere for your clever legal/technical contribution to musical creativity.

You have restored--by sheer strength of numbers--this 69 year-old's faith in the likelihood that we will never run out of original motifs, melodies, and phrases.