I’m currently in the process of writing a song. I’ve got a tune and I’m putting the lyrics together but I’m always concerned that any tune I think of might just be another song I’ve heard somewhere randomly that I don’t remember hearing.
Do I just have a shitty memory or is this a problem that other people have too?
Not sure how to help you out with it, but you’re at least not alone. Robert Smith from The Cure had the same problem with the song “Friday I’m in Love”: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Friday_I%27m_in_Love
“During the writing process, Robert Smith became convinced that he had inadvertently stolen the chord progression from somewhere, and this led him to a state of paranoia where he called everyone he could think of and played the song for them, asking if they had heard it before. None of them had, and Smith realised that the melody was indeed his.”
Similar story with Yesterday by the Beatles. Paul McCartney was convinced he had unconsciously plagiarized the song after he’d supposedly heard it in a dream.
Everything is derivative of something else. Thag made that drumbeat on a rock 20000 years ago and it has passed down in oral history to eventually be in a Nirvana song.
This sometimes results in songs like Dani California that are almost certainly overt or unintentional copies of another song. When you find out your song is subjectively too close to another song you do the right thing, whatever that may be between you and the original musician.
Crug hit rok fist.
It’s normal.
Especially if you’re writing in a popular style, tons of musicians just use the same chord progressions over and over .
Once you start layering things on the melody, it’s pretty unlikely that it will resemble anything too closely.
As long long as you’re just using your own creativity, I think it’s very unlikely you’ll just clone a song.
If you’re really worried about it, you can just change a few notes in the melody on the page in a way that you wouldn’t think to sing “naturally”
