Lana Del Rey, Radiohead, and the Difficulty of Making Original Music
For anyone who doesn&#x27;t play the guitar, &#x27;Creep&#x27; and the Hollies track is is derived from come feature a rather obvious chord progression. Physically it is the result of sliding an open E chord down the neck to produce higher notes then, la piece de resistance, taking a finger off. Radiohead added a killer feature of turning the gain up on the amplifier for the chorus, genius. It&#x27;s the kind of thing teenagers everywhere find in their second month of guitar mastery.<p>It shouldn&#x27;t even be copyrightable. The guitar is full of things like this that are not great feats of musical theory but simple physical movements that are bound to happen. This is why guitar music generally sounds so derivative, because there are a number of obvious steps that all players will find quite quickly.<p>Why should you get paid for the guitar equivalent of pressing all of the white notes on a piano?<p>Edit: typo