Seriously, don't worry about it. That's how music is created. No one "invented" anything. Unless you recreate the exact same song (melody, rythm, harmony, etc), you are making new music like every other human ever. People that say you are "copying" music because your song resemble another is simply ignorant on the topic.
As an illustrator, I can relate. Artists take the best bits of things we love from other artists and turn them into ingredients for our own art. Hopefully, with enough ingredients from enough sources we can create a fresh dish, with hints of what made it, but having a taste all its own. That’s all of art in a nutshell.
Definitely. Nothing people create is ever truly, wholly "original". We all take inspiration from something, and that's the whole point, to then meld it into something of your own creation.
@@cheesyanimationstudios6023 I once made a character that had black hair with red streaks, and a long lost love named Maria. It took my friend pointing out that I had just created a human Shadow the Hedgehog for me to realize what I had done! 😂
Let's be real: the idea that a chord progression or basic rhythm can be "stolen" is an invention of record labels who would copyright whole instruments if they could.
Eventually we're gonna run out of cord progressions and every new song will be copyright striked Brands have already copyrighted literal colours so the copyright industry is clearly doomed
@@justsomewheel9379honestly it just shows that copyright in it's current form need sto be scaled back a fuck ton to avoid this kinda shit from happening and preventing the greedy masters of entertainment from hogging everything to themselves
@@justsomewheel9379That’s just not true though, there’s so much more that goes into making a song than just the chord progression and besides even if you have the same progression your song can still sound completely different
Japanese city pop being the inspiration for the songs I grew up with explains why I get "nostalgia I never had" from them, being not alive when those songs came out
Yeah, as it turns out, most of these "genius" Japanese video games composers of the 80s and 90s, heavily plagiarized popular Japanese songs at the time, in addition to West Pop, Funk, Jazz, etc...
I always like it when you talk about video game music or music in general in the channel, even if I comprehend nothing about music, the video still feels very informational while keeping the comedy top notch
Honestly, I think its cool that there is so much video game music that is "stolen" from real world songs. In a way, its just a neat little reminder that everything we make intentionally or not is still inspired by our surroundings. I just think thats neat.
I am shocked, SHOCKED, that despite having Spamton in the thumbnail, you didn't mention that the main beat for NOW'S YOUR CHANCE TO BE A is virtually identical to the one seen in the Vile/Sigma Fortress Boss theme from Megaman X.
I love this sort of musical nonsense. Its so cool seeing songs that define so many fun memories and there are the cases where it's blantant plagarism, but the others feel more like these composers are putting bits of the music they grew up with, into these games and giving them a new sort of identity and something future generations can take inspiration from.
Bullshit, given the fact that others were also stolen how can this be not, I think all were stolen intentionally. How are you gonna defend the other songs of mario, huh?
Y'know, game music taking heavy inspiration from other tunes, can kind of feel like a cool little easter egg and perhaps even give some insight into the composer's music taste.
Thank you for mentioning Yamamoto. I discovered Stratovarius indirectly because of Budokai. I fell in love with Hunting High and Low in my teen years and it always felt super familiar to me. It wasn't until I heard about Yamamoto's plagarism scandal that I went through and found out that not only was that track stolen for Budokai, but 2 more songs from the same album were also stolen for Budokai. Finding out was somehow felt rewarding and hollow at the same time.
Apparently music is literally the main thing holding back Mother 3 from being localized; not dissimilar to how rarely Sonic 3 got rereleased (or its music referenced). And that's because one of the causes for it is the same. Japan can get away with ITS Mother 3 rereleases because the copyright laws on music are much more lenient apparently, but the game has several key compositions taken from western pop culture; INCLUDING the man, MJ himself, with M3's Natural Killer Robot sounding like the hit title Beat It (one of my personal childhood favorite). And that's without counting all the other songs it likely "stole" from (we don't know if it's an actual steal for any of them but apparently there's strong similarities). The Mother/EarthBound series in general did that quite a lot, but because the first two games were in an era where you couldn't really tell whether it was direct samplings or just inspirations, they're given more of a pass because most of them are transformative shorter snippets. Mother 3 does not have that luxury, as it does it for several kinds of songs, short or not, transformed or not, with NKR being the icing on the cake (it's a battle theme for a boss fight; it's clearly neither short nor transformative).
I love how despite having less than 100k views (not even 90k) feels like everyone watched the same video, kind of tells how small and concentrated the community actually is for it to seemingly feel like everyone knows about this now.
One example I really like is the Touhou Project series. A lot of the songs ZUN makes, especially the older ones, sound like they are nods to other songs. My favorite example the theme of Momiji Inubashiri(the awoo meme girl) and how it sounds just like a song called Song in Blue! There's a lot of other similar examples in the series and I really recommend you check them out!
i knew about green greens , sonic 3 and dooms music but just seeing the expanse of it across the entire video game library is astounding however songs like these are the reason that sillva gunner exists
The fact is, you can’t base a plagiarism argument on three notes, a popular cord progression nor a common drum beat. Artist don’t create out of nothing, we have influences and the creation process usually come down to mixing multiple already existing ideas and influence to create something fresher. Thanks for having a nuanced opinion 🙏
for the sonic 1 stuff. I remember hearing the composer was a pop musician and he liked adding a pop style opening to the songs. which is why they sound like that and why the sonic soundtrack is so memorable.
Dreams Come True was a popular J-pop band and they did the soundtrack for Sonic 1 and 2. Green Hill Zone was based on one of their songs called Sweet Sweet Sweet.
I've been studying music for the past 2 years so far because I love video game music. Accidentally plagiarising music is something that scares me sooo much. I once had a song idea that I let sit in my head for a while, until I wrote it down and immediately realised I was literally copying the melody to "The Clock Tower" from dead cell without even remembering that's where it came from. I really wanna make some bops but I have so many inspirations I'm a bit scared of just straight up ripping off a song.
A recent example of this I personally really like is the similarities between the intros to, orb of dreamers from 2008’s Littlebigplanet. And chirp from 2011’s Minecraft. There was some talk about c418, the composer of Minecraft plagiarizing from ( I believe his name was Daniel Pemberton ) the composer of lbp. But the truth is that they both just ripped a sound loop from apple’s garage band app and called it a day. lol As someone who adores both series, and came to the conclusion that one copied the other long before I ever heard anything online about it, that’s a very funny end to that story.
It's so cool to me that the actual main drum groove from the original Knuckles theme is hidden inside the final version of Blood On The Dancefloor, in the chorus. It's used more as an accent in the final track but for Knux, it's the entire song base. It's cool to see it utilised in different ways based on the context
please keep making videos like this I need to inject them straight into my mind like it's chicken soup. Which means it's time for me to go on a rant (well, at the end of the video, you asked for it). Here is some of what I can offer in this regards: I can tell you while K.K. Slider's songs obviously have inspiration because they're meant to represent different genres as a whole, probably like half of them are blatantly inspired by or directly quoting a famous song from that genre. Toru Minegishi and Kazumi Totaka well knew what they were doing. Some examples: - K.K. Faire and Tancha Mebushi (Okinawan folk song) - K.K. Condor and Carnavalito (Chilean folk song, these are basically the exact same) - Rockin' K.K. and "Johnny B. Goode", again - Steep Hill and "Ichigo Hakusho o Mōichido"/"The Strawberry Statement Once Again" (Japanese folk rock song by BanBan) - K.K. Moody (aka K.K. Bolero) and "Sabor a Mí" (bolero by Álvaro Carillo) - K.K. Chorinho and "Tico Tico no Fubá" (choro by Zequinha de Abreu, these are also near identical) - Hazure02 (invalid song #2) and "Sparkle" (city pop by Tatsuro Yamashita) Not to mention lots of other general references, like "Two Days Ago" and the Beatles. Aside from that I also like how Mario Maker's edit themes get a bit cheeky, SMB1 Underground resembles "Take Five" (even though it's in 6/4) and SMB1 Underwater quotes Juventino Rosa's waltz "Sobre las Olas" so well I can't help but wonder if it originally inspired Kondo, especially given the meaning…
this is easily like top 5 RelaxAlax videos, your love and attention to these sorta things is INFECTIOUS. Defs would be interested in hearing you talk about connecting details like this
8:12 Nichojou mentioned!! I was thinking about that exactly. That was my introduction to that song. I love you Alax. I also loooove this kind of videos talking about music inspiration and crossrefferencing and all that. I'm so happy to have you back Alax
I think my favorite example of really weird blantant style rip-offs is Mujoe’s theme in the Bomberman Jetters anime. It’s very similar to a certain comedy show about nothing.
@@the-NightStar It was cool when the US dub had to finally use the 1989 Shunsuke Kikuchi music, but the placement was lazy & repetitive! Kai music sounds great yet it was stolen.🙄
@@ZaCloud-Animations___she-hercan we say there's a difference between for example, using almost the same 3 seconds of another song while the actual rest of song sounds different, and stuff like Challengers from DBZ budokai where it's literally just an instrumental version of a real song, right?
One of my favorite examples of this is from Garou: Mark of the Wolves, where Rock Howard's theme, Spread the Wings, has part of Robert Miles' song Children in it, and it's pretty blatant too. It's likely why the song hasn't ever been reused for Rock in his later appearances, giving him new original themes instead.
Your videos are always good but I really enjoyed this one. I learned a lot and it was fun listening to all the similarities in the songs I thought I knew
One I’m really surprised you didn’t mention is the Mario Bros. game start jingle just straight up being Mozart’s Eine Kleine Nachtmusik. Although with a name like that…
Video Game OSTs having inspiration from existing songs is always a fascinating topic, and it's more than likely THE thing keeping MOTHER 3 from being released in the West. MOTHER 2 and 3 have SO many songs that take from existing songs, it's almost baffling how they got away with it all. I think it's something to do with international copyright laws, but man does it suck that MOTHER 3 will be stuck in Japan thanks to it. (Yes, there are other smaller factors as well, but it's likely that the music is the main thing keeping it in Japan)
Great job showing the samples back to back at the same tempo (8:25); really makes the connection clear to understand! Also noticed song you played at 13:32 is "Love Don't Wait" by Bobby Caldwell, not "What You Won't Do For Love."
I actually have seen already a lot of Sonic songs that are inspired or have the same melody as other songs, I have created a private playlist just for that actually, lol, some of those in the video I already knew, but I found some new ones too, cool! The ones that I already had on my playlist, here just to share, are these: Peter Piper (Run DMC) - Launch Base Zone (Sonic 3) (both melody and "Go!" samples) Americana (The Offspring) - Won't Stop, Just Go!/Green Forest (Sonic Adventure 2) Ghetto Red Hot (Super Cat, especifically the Hip Hop Mix) - Red Mountain (inside part)/Red Hot Skull (Sonic Adventure) Push The Feeling On (Nightcrawlers) - Reactive Factory/Work it Out (Sonic R) Step Daughter (Casiopea) - Bridge Zone (Sonic 1 GG and SMS)/Believe in Myself (Sonic Adventure) (that already sounds like Bridge Zone) Music Sounds Better With You (Stardust) - Dreams of an Absolution (Silver's theme, Sonic 06) I also got some tracks that are just samples used in Sonic Songs instead of melodies, like used in Sonic CD or Sonic Rush ("Work that Sucker to Death" and "Feeling Hot, hot, hot", just some examples) Also, I already knew some of the Nintendo ones too, and discovered some news as well, also pretty nice
Its so upsetting about budokai because it is THE MOST DRAGON BALL dragon ball soundtrack there ever was and i still go back to listen to it from time to time
@@HalfBreadOrderI believe they meant to say the game's respective sound font, so like if it's a Mario song, they use the instruments from the Mario game.
this video was such a rollercoaster of emotions for me, I've been listening to this songs for my whole life and never knew anything of this, I'm so glad I clicked on this video, excellent work my guy I'm totally suscribing
As someone who spends a lot of time watching random video essays, I really took "in conclusion.. why does everything always come back to sonic" way too much to heart
One similarity that I know between two games is a brief musical phrase in Sonic R's "Living in the City" which is also in Persona 3's "When Moon's Reaching Out Stars". You can find this in the former in the phrase "you have to keep the dream alive" and in the latter in the phrase "Wonder how look in your eyes". Not exact, but close enough for conedy
Forgive me if I'm wrong but this case may make sense due to how if I remember correctly Persona is made by SEGA. Which would explain that LOL! That is pretty cool act one and thanks for pointing that out!
One of my favorite games, Pikuniku, for its ending, uses a slower version of “Here comes the sun” my the Beatles. This is probably by favorite uses of the song ever. It makes the ending seem so wholesome, almost like the robots are leaving from the sky and opening it up to see the blue skies shine down
I think that the biggest takeaway here is that copyright, in particular music copyright, is a nightmare. also nothing is completely original. that too.
a few songs also fall under the same umbrella as "Hard Times" due to Masato Nakamura being both the composer for the first two sonic games, as well as part of a band called "Dreams Come True". the credits theme from sonic 2 is the same as a song called "Sweet Sweet Sweet" or "Sweet Dream" in english, which was updated for the credits of sonic 06 (featuring Akon, funnily enough)
This is my #1 fear with composing in my music side-hobby. My first album ended up having some of the worst, most melodically-unsatisfying songs I've ever heard because I was so paranoid with people accusing me of stealing other songs, and prioritizing originality over actually sounding good. I used a(n unadjusted, might I add,) clarinet as a bass in one of them, and the mix was awful. The song was mainly on string instruments, but somehow the layer that shares a name with the string category specialized to it was just _too_ cliché for me at the time of making it. Not complaining about the video itself though, it only proves my current opinion. Awesome video as always.
YOU should look- I mean listen to cruelty squad and the Quake musics, they both do this thing, squad more-so, where they make melodically unsatisfying song that you WANT to listen to, like, pharmakinetics, it just goes BEE-da-da-DE-DE be-DEE-BEE-de de BAAAAAAGERRRRGEEEEBEEEEE tunununun TUNUNUNUN *TUNUNUNUN* (10 seconds of silence) *BWANANANA* BWANANANA *BWAAAAAAAA* seriously, people say that making music is a gift? making tonally HARSH and dissonant skreeching that people WILLINGLY listen to is a bountiful BLESSING.
Mor Ardain's theme from Xenoblade 2 takes from 3 completely different songs. The most prominent is the chorus to Thriller, but you can also hear a bit of Dancing Queen and Crab Rave in there too.
This video is infuriating. Why the hell did Kenji Yamamoto lose his career *and* get his music removed from various _Dragon Ball_ games, but it was okay for Yuzo Koshiro, Robert Prince, and *Koji Kondo* to "take inspiration" from hits of a bygone time?! It's also worth mentioning that Masako Nakamura, who composed most or all of the songs for the first two _Sonic the Hedgehog_ games, is actually the musician for the Japanese band, "Dreams Come True", a fairly popular band from back then. Some of those songs either existed as vocal tracks or _got_ vocal versions, at some point. It's pretty cool.
Earthbound isn't surprising that game is full of references to popculture, but with all these others you are a walking playlist that can link song to other songs, the song encyclopedia
Another example of this is Vampire: The Masquerade - Bloodlines' menu theme is is extremely similar to Angel by Massive Attack. This is because during production they used the song as a placeholder menu theme and it fit the vibe of the game so well, the composer for the game was inspired by that song for the actual menu theme. This inspiration also carries over to the (as of now) unreleased sequel, which has had it's menu theme released on youtube.
if you ever feel like a failure, remember megalovania was the result of a 14 year old toby fox's failed attempt at recreating gadobadorrer from brandish II
9:54 Hi, weirdos. Here's another prank, but this one involves Ice Cube instead of Bubble. Just take the Ice Cube Recovery Center, and just carry over the edge of a cliff, maybe, with a tree, yeah, yeah, definitely, yeah. That's mandatory. And attach a spring from the tree to the Ice Cube Recovery Center, and then, melt Ice Cube. Melting kills her, right? (yeah) okay, good. Ice Cube is recreated, in the Ice Cube Recovery Center, she'll like weigh it down and the Ice Cube Recovery Center will tilt down off the cliff, and Ice Cube will fall out and she'll crash to the bottom of the cliff and Ice Cube is recreated in the Ice Cube Recovery Center, she'll like weigh it down and Ice Cube Recovery Center will tilt down off the cliff, and the cycle repeats! Yeah, isn't that cool? Pretty funny? (This program, was brought to you, by Blocky's Funny Doings International)
I learned a lot from this video and I'm a huge fan of the music content you've been making. It's very interesting to what songs some video game tracks used as inspiration.
This is a great video, because it not only brings attention to a very real problem that many people might not be aware of, but also explains how some examples of it have been overblown. It's nice to have that kind of nuance.
You missed out on the biggest Sonic example; Chaos 6's battle theme from Sonic Adventure straight up uses the Mission Impossible riff. It's not even REMOTELY subtle.
I'm starting that every videogame that has GODLY music is only because they borrowed from pop songs (wither popular or obscure), i mean Megaman and a personal favorite of mine did this too
The opening notes of Diamond and Pearl’s Route 209 daytime sounds like the chorus of Telephone Line from ELO. I think about it every time I hear either song “Oh, telephone line, give me some time, I’m living in twilight”
When it comes to sampling, Ratchet & Clank (2002) is well known for having used sampled bits in its soundtrack. And of course, Pokémon Diamond and Pearl's Route 209 and Green Day's Twentyone Guns quite famously ended up both sampling from the same track, although I dont recall the title of the track they were sampling from.
to be fair with that ed sheeran thing at 2:40, nobody and i mean NOBODY uses iii chords. i was taught in my music theory class to NEVER uses three chords
One of my worst fears is (eventually) making a song then finding out i unconsciously copied a melody or something from an existing song
SAME SO MUCH especially people not believing it's a coincidence
Fun fact: Every day you're slightly more likely to copy something, as new things are made every day.
Seriously, don't worry about it. That's how music is created. No one "invented" anything. Unless you recreate the exact same song (melody, rythm, harmony, etc), you are making new music like every other human ever. People that say you are "copying" music because your song resemble another is simply ignorant on the topic.
@@FuranA7x someone had to have invented it at some point in history.
@@Blanktester685 Yes, but even if you create a "similar" song, you are creating something new.
As an illustrator, I can relate. Artists take the best bits of things we love from other artists and turn them into ingredients for our own art. Hopefully, with enough ingredients from enough sources we can create a fresh dish, with hints of what made it, but having a taste all its own. That’s all of art in a nutshell.
@Don't Read My Profile Picture ok
Definitely. Nothing people create is ever truly, wholly "original". We all take inspiration from something, and that's the whole point, to then meld it into something of your own creation.
@Don't Read My Profile Picture okay, I won't. Thanks for warning me to not look at your account.
Once I made a character that looks too much like Bill cipher, because he had giant eyes and literally had powers to end the universe
@@cheesyanimationstudios6023 I once made a character that had black hair with red streaks, and a long lost love named Maria. It took my friend pointing out that I had just created a human Shadow the Hedgehog for me to realize what I had done! 😂
I’m just loving the reoccurring gag of alax entering the room in different weird ass ways everytime.
I do love that too but I’d be lying if I said I didn’t miss:
WOW WAHOO GUH-HUH HOO HA HOO HUH COME ON BEEUTCH ITS SONIC SPEED
@@HDGamerofficial IT'S SONIC SPEED solos
In this one it seems like just an hawaian shirt...
Not a direct reference to something.
@@ЛеонидЗурнаджи it was instant transmission
Let's be real: the idea that a chord progression or basic rhythm can be "stolen" is an invention of record labels who would copyright whole instruments if they could.
Or basically, COPYRIGHT IS A BITCH
Eventually we're gonna run out of cord progressions and every new song will be copyright striked
Brands have already copyrighted literal colours so the copyright industry is clearly doomed
@@justsomewheel9379honestly it just shows that copyright in it's current form need sto be scaled back a fuck ton to avoid this kinda shit from happening and preventing the greedy masters of entertainment from hogging everything to themselves
And that's why the Marvin Gaye estate should kill themselves.
@@justsomewheel9379That’s just not true though, there’s so much more that goes into making a song than just the chord progression and besides even if you have the same progression your song can still sound completely different
Japanese city pop being the inspiration for the songs I grew up with explains why I get "nostalgia I never had" from them, being not alive when those songs came out
Yeah, as it turns out, most of these "genius" Japanese video games composers of the 80s and 90s, heavily plagiarized popular Japanese songs at the time, in addition to West Pop, Funk, Jazz, etc...
@@Johnnybomb1heavily inspired =/= plagiarized
And japanese City Pop was copying American pop music, particularly AOR and Westcoast Pop records
I always like it when you talk about video game music or music in general in the channel, even if I comprehend nothing about music, the video still feels very informational while keeping the comedy top notch
222 👍
2nd 💬
I love it when people reference old YTPs
Same!!!
I quote cs188, DaThings, and even my own YTPs way too often irl
my boy
All toasters toast toast
ive gotten saying "die" in a CDI ganon voice down to a science
I feel like it's a common language that instantly connects so many of us lmao
i love how ever since he found that clip of dk falling off the minecart and posted it on twitter he’s had it in every video since his return
What? That can't be!
Honestly, I think its cool that there is so much video game music that is "stolen" from real world songs. In a way, its just a neat little reminder that everything we make intentionally or not is still inspired by our surroundings. I just think thats neat.
Finding out the entire sonic 1 soundtrack was a whole bunch of songs I didn’t know was heartbreaking to me
He skipped the regular boss, Scrap Brain Zone, and special stage music.
@@caucasoidape8838oh also green hill zone, game over, zone clear, title, ending, & credits. But otherwise…
I feel you buddy, i'm honestly really depressed right now because I found the same about another franchise I really love
@@caucasoidape8838Scrap Brain Zone sounds similar to the Blade Runner end titles by Vangelis.
I clicked because Sonic being a Smooth Criminal.
I am shocked, SHOCKED, that despite having Spamton in the thumbnail, you didn't mention that the main beat for NOW'S YOUR CHANCE TO BE A is virtually identical to the one seen in the Vile/Sigma Fortress Boss theme from Megaman X.
I second this
[Big Shot!]
Ironically Spamton in the thumbnail catched my attention first to click this video
The Devil boss music in Cuphead is inspired by the Sigma fight in Mega Man X.
Similar segment of the song, but not enough to be a full copy.
I love this sort of musical nonsense. Its so cool seeing songs that define so many fun memories and there are the cases where it's blantant plagarism, but the others feel more like these composers are putting bits of the music they grew up with, into these games and giving them a new sort of identity and something future generations can take inspiration from.
The clip of DK falling never fails to get a laugh out of me no matter how many times I see it
_Super Mario World’s_ copying of “Green, Green” was unintentional, and Koji Kondo wasn’t aware he was doing it until after the fact.
yeah i know
Instead of green green
Bullshit, given the fact that others were also stolen how can this be not, I think all were stolen intentionally. How are you gonna defend the other songs of mario, huh?
Y'know, game music taking heavy inspiration from other tunes, can kind of feel like a cool little easter egg and perhaps even give some insight into the composer's music taste.
Exactly
Thank you for mentioning Yamamoto. I discovered Stratovarius indirectly because of Budokai. I fell in love with Hunting High and Low in my teen years and it always felt super familiar to me. It wasn't until I heard about Yamamoto's plagarism scandal that I went through and found out that not only was that track stolen for Budokai, but 2 more songs from the same album were also stolen for Budokai. Finding out was somehow felt rewarding and hollow at the same time.
it aggravates me that alax only focused on September in the video lmao
@@MastaGambit The ending tho.
Apparently music is literally the main thing holding back Mother 3 from being localized; not dissimilar to how rarely Sonic 3 got rereleased (or its music referenced).
And that's because one of the causes for it is the same. Japan can get away with ITS Mother 3 rereleases because the copyright laws on music are much more lenient apparently, but the game has several key compositions taken from western pop culture; INCLUDING the man, MJ himself, with M3's Natural Killer Robot sounding like the hit title Beat It (one of my personal childhood favorite).
And that's without counting all the other songs it likely "stole" from (we don't know if it's an actual steal for any of them but apparently there's strong similarities). The Mother/EarthBound series in general did that quite a lot, but because the first two games were in an era where you couldn't really tell whether it was direct samplings or just inspirations, they're given more of a pass because most of them are transformative shorter snippets. Mother 3 does not have that luxury, as it does it for several kinds of songs, short or not, transformed or not, with NKR being the icing on the cake (it's a battle theme for a boss fight; it's clearly neither short nor transformative).
I love how despite having less than 100k views (not even 90k) feels like everyone watched the same video, kind of tells how small and concentrated the community actually is for it to seemingly feel like everyone knows about this now.
Yea, just saw a video about this on “Moon Channel”’s account. Crazy bruh I thought it was the other suspicious things about the game
A large portion of Sanctuary Guardian from Mother 2 sounds incredibly similar to the intro theme of Fresh Prince of Bel-Air
Thanks to Koji Kondo "borrowing" a few notes, I now enjoy listening to Japanese jazz-fusion.
That's how I got started with T-Square. The Adventures album and the New-S album are full of video game inspirations.
@@scottythegreat1 Truth is another great album of theirs.
Casiopea is amazing
I love your coverage of such a wide variety of music genres and groups, I'd love to see this formatt of video on the channel more frequently
12:16 to be fair every rockabilly song in a video game sounds like this
One example I really like is the Touhou Project series. A lot of the songs ZUN makes, especially the older ones, sound like they are nods to other songs. My favorite example the theme of Momiji Inubashiri(the awoo meme girl) and how it sounds just like a song called Song in Blue! There's a lot of other similar examples in the series and I really recommend you check them out!
I always wondered why he managed to make so many different melodies. I guess that's why.
Remilia's theme
@@somefries3101 Context?
@@yuikitsuneko beethoven
Song in blue for a primarily red-colored character
i knew about green greens , sonic 3 and dooms music but just seeing the expanse of it across the entire video game library is astounding
however songs like these are the reason that sillva gunner exists
then silvagunner steals music:
The fact is, you can’t base a plagiarism argument on three notes, a popular cord progression nor a common drum beat. Artist don’t create out of nothing, we have influences and the creation process usually come down to mixing multiple already existing ideas and influence to create something fresher. Thanks for having a nuanced opinion 🙏
for the sonic 1 stuff. I remember hearing the composer was a pop musician and he liked adding a pop style opening to the songs. which is why they sound like that and why the sonic soundtrack is so memorable.
I prefer Sonic 1 and 2 music over what came later.
@@caucasoidape8838 you clearly have never heard the Sonic 3k ost
Dreams Come True was a popular J-pop band and they did the soundtrack for Sonic 1 and 2. Green Hill Zone was based on one of their songs called Sweet Sweet Sweet.
That was michael jackson
I've been studying music for the past 2 years so far because I love video game music. Accidentally plagiarising music is something that scares me sooo much. I once had a song idea that I let sit in my head for a while, until I wrote it down and immediately realised I was literally copying the melody to "The Clock Tower" from dead cell without even remembering that's where it came from. I really wanna make some bops but I have so many inspirations I'm a bit scared of just straight up ripping off a song.
A recent example of this I personally really like is the similarities between the intros to, orb of dreamers from 2008’s Littlebigplanet. And chirp from 2011’s Minecraft. There was some talk about c418, the composer of Minecraft plagiarizing from ( I believe his name was Daniel Pemberton ) the composer of lbp. But the truth is that they both just ripped a sound loop from apple’s garage band app and called it a day. lol
As someone who adores both series, and came to the conclusion that one copied the other long before I ever heard anything online about it, that’s a very funny end to that story.
I think the loop might come from the mellotron
0:14 I can now confirm that this is now the "thanks 5 watching" of Alax's new era of content
13:21:My same reaction, I listened to that many times. I can’t believe that I did not make that connection.
It's so cool to me that the actual main drum groove from the original Knuckles theme is hidden inside the final version of Blood On The Dancefloor, in the chorus. It's used more as an accent in the final track but for Knux, it's the entire song base. It's cool to see it utilised in different ways based on the context
8:56 The part where he collapsed absolutely made me laugh xD
please keep making videos like this I need to inject them straight into my mind like it's chicken soup. Which means it's time for me to go on a rant (well, at the end of the video, you asked for it). Here is some of what I can offer in this regards:
I can tell you while K.K. Slider's songs obviously have inspiration because they're meant to represent different genres as a whole, probably like half of them are blatantly inspired by or directly quoting a famous song from that genre. Toru Minegishi and Kazumi Totaka well knew what they were doing. Some examples:
- K.K. Faire and Tancha Mebushi (Okinawan folk song)
- K.K. Condor and Carnavalito (Chilean folk song, these are basically the exact same)
- Rockin' K.K. and "Johnny B. Goode", again
- Steep Hill and "Ichigo Hakusho o Mōichido"/"The Strawberry Statement Once Again" (Japanese folk rock song by BanBan)
- K.K. Moody (aka K.K. Bolero) and "Sabor a Mí" (bolero by Álvaro Carillo)
- K.K. Chorinho and "Tico Tico no Fubá" (choro by Zequinha de Abreu, these are also near identical)
- Hazure02 (invalid song #2) and "Sparkle" (city pop by Tatsuro Yamashita)
Not to mention lots of other general references, like "Two Days Ago" and the Beatles.
Aside from that I also like how Mario Maker's edit themes get a bit cheeky, SMB1 Underground resembles "Take Five" (even though it's in 6/4) and SMB1 Underwater quotes Juventino Rosa's waltz "Sobre las Olas" so well I can't help but wonder if it originally inspired Kondo, especially given the meaning…
this is easily like
top 5 RelaxAlax videos, your love and attention to these sorta things is INFECTIOUS. Defs would be interested in hearing you talk about connecting details like this
surprised that you didn't mention pretty much the entire mother 3 ost considering people theorize that its why it wasn't ported
12:51 HOW DARE YOU! RUIN THE MARBLE ZONE THEME FOR ME! WHHYYYYYYYY!?
8:12 Nichojou mentioned!!
I was thinking about that exactly. That was my introduction to that song. I love you Alax.
I also loooove this kind of videos talking about music inspiration and crossrefferencing and all that.
I'm so happy to have you back Alax
I think my favorite example of really weird blantant style rip-offs is Mujoe’s theme in the Bomberman Jetters anime. It’s very similar to a certain comedy show about nothing.
Loving this regular content, man. Keep it coming. 🎉
13:32 The name of the song is “Love Won’t Wait”, earlier in the same album.
There’s really no such thing as plagiarism in music. Its one of the things that people in the popular eye get horribly wrong
Um, no, there is. 😐
Sometimes it's just overextended.
Except when it was the guy who did the soundtrack for Dragon Ball Z Kai. That guy was an out-and-out thief.
@@the-NightStar It was cool when the US dub had to finally use the 1989 Shunsuke Kikuchi music, but the placement was lazy & repetitive! Kai music sounds great yet it was stolen.🙄
@@ZaCloud-Animations___she-hercan we say there's a difference between for example, using almost the same 3 seconds of another song while the actual rest of song sounds different, and stuff like Challengers from DBZ budokai where it's literally just an instrumental version of a real song, right?
@@ironmaster6496 Absolutely. Pretty much exemplifies my point.
One of my favorite examples of this is from Garou: Mark of the Wolves, where Rock Howard's theme, Spread the Wings, has part of Robert Miles' song Children in it, and it's pretty blatant too. It's likely why the song hasn't ever been reused for Rock in his later appearances, giving him new original themes instead.
Your videos are always good but I really enjoyed this one. I learned a lot and it was fun listening to all the similarities in the songs I thought I knew
👍
One I’m really surprised you didn’t mention is the Mario Bros. game start jingle just straight up being Mozart’s Eine Kleine Nachtmusik. Although with a name like that…
I mean that one's just _supposed_ to be that piece, it's not even a nod or anything.
The composer making that jingle and showing it to quality assurance like: "Keep it down, so I can win the loot!" (/ref)
10:08 An AD cut off the fart with reverb which made it funnier
2:50 There is actually a key called H here in Germany; it replaces the B note.
And your Bb is our B.
who knew that 2008 and 2023 mixed so well together
Didn't think I would find you here
Video Game OSTs having inspiration from existing songs is always a fascinating topic, and it's more than likely THE thing keeping MOTHER 3 from being released in the West. MOTHER 2 and 3 have SO many songs that take from existing songs, it's almost baffling how they got away with it all. I think it's something to do with international copyright laws, but man does it suck that MOTHER 3 will be stuck in Japan thanks to it. (Yes, there are other smaller factors as well, but it's likely that the music is the main thing keeping it in Japan)
Great job showing the samples back to back at the same tempo (8:25); really makes the connection clear to understand! Also noticed song you played at 13:32 is "Love Don't Wait" by Bobby Caldwell, not "What You Won't Do For Love."
Thats “Love Won’t Wait”*
THANK YOU! I was trying to figure out why I couldn't find the part he referenced.
Local man finds out nothing is original
New title: "Video Game Music Inspirations", but I guess it's more "RUclips" to say they "stole" music lol
This. The stupidly quirky le ecks dee humor killed the video for me after 15 seconds. The algorithm is genuinely killing YT.
I actually have seen already a lot of Sonic songs that are inspired or have the same melody as other songs, I have created a private playlist just for that actually, lol, some of those in the video I already knew, but I found some new ones too, cool!
The ones that I already had on my playlist, here just to share, are these:
Peter Piper (Run DMC) - Launch Base Zone (Sonic 3) (both melody and "Go!" samples)
Americana (The Offspring) - Won't Stop, Just Go!/Green Forest (Sonic Adventure 2)
Ghetto Red Hot (Super Cat, especifically the Hip Hop Mix) - Red Mountain (inside part)/Red Hot Skull (Sonic Adventure)
Push The Feeling On (Nightcrawlers) - Reactive Factory/Work it Out (Sonic R)
Step Daughter (Casiopea) - Bridge Zone (Sonic 1 GG and SMS)/Believe in Myself (Sonic Adventure) (that already sounds like Bridge Zone)
Music Sounds Better With You (Stardust) - Dreams of an Absolution (Silver's theme, Sonic 06)
I also got some tracks that are just samples used in Sonic Songs instead of melodies, like used in Sonic CD or Sonic Rush ("Work that Sucker to Death" and "Feeling Hot, hot, hot", just some examples)
Also, I already knew some of the Nintendo ones too, and discovered some news as well, also pretty nice
Its so upsetting about budokai because it is THE MOST DRAGON BALL dragon ball soundtrack there ever was and i still go back to listen to it from time to time
14:00
Oh boy!
Now we’re into Sonic and Michael Jackson.
new thumb-man vid!!11!!!
i love how you recreate the songs with the respect game’s soundfont it’s super duper charming
?
@@HalfBreadOrderI believe they meant to say the game's respective sound font, so like if it's a Mario song, they use the instruments from the Mario game.
this video was such a rollercoaster of emotions for me, I've been listening to this songs for my whole life and never knew anything of this, I'm so glad I clicked on this video, excellent work my guy I'm totally suscribing
As someone who spends a lot of time watching random video essays, I really took "in conclusion.. why does everything always come back to sonic" way too much to heart
This may be my favorite video of yours. My mind has been completely blown away by everything you showed
1:13 "WA-HAT?" that was my reaction
One similarity that I know between two games is a brief musical phrase in Sonic R's "Living in the City" which is also in Persona 3's "When Moon's Reaching Out Stars". You can find this in the former in the phrase "you have to keep the dream alive" and in the latter in the phrase "Wonder how look in your eyes". Not exact, but close enough for conedy
Forgive me if I'm wrong but this case may make sense due to how if I remember correctly Persona is made by SEGA. Which would explain that LOL! That is pretty cool act one and thanks for pointing that out!
@@azurestone I don't think atlus had been aquired by sega yet at that point.
“What do they want to do? Create a new key called H?” Germany: *looks off to the side*
Ever since I found out Budokai’s ost was full of plagiarized music my whole world was changed.
7:12
Now I just wanna hear the two mixed together
One of my favorite games, Pikuniku, for its ending, uses a slower version of “Here comes the sun” my the Beatles. This is probably by favorite uses of the song ever. It makes the ending seem so wholesome, almost like the robots are leaving from the sky and opening it up to see the blue skies shine down
I need to replay that game
YES THIS ONE
Glad I wasn't the only one who noticed it
1:00
"The Only time a month was copied was when Augustus Caesar copied July"
I think that the biggest takeaway here is that copyright, in particular music copyright, is a nightmare.
also nothing is completely original. that too.
and fuck metalica.
the "songs videogames stole" playlist probably goes crazy. someone make that.
a few songs also fall under the same umbrella as "Hard Times" due to Masato Nakamura being both the composer for the first two sonic games, as well as part of a band called "Dreams Come True". the credits theme from sonic 2 is the same as a song called "Sweet Sweet Sweet" or "Sweet Dream" in english, which was updated for the credits of sonic 06 (featuring Akon, funnily enough)
It sucks that Sonic Team can't use the title, or zone complete music that the first two games had.
@@caucasoidape8838, or basically any music from Sonic 1 and 2 except the drowning theme since it was created by an in-house sound designer from Sega.
This is my #1 fear with composing in my music side-hobby. My first album ended up having some of the worst, most melodically-unsatisfying songs I've ever heard because I was so paranoid with people accusing me of stealing other songs, and prioritizing originality over actually sounding good.
I used a(n unadjusted, might I add,) clarinet as a bass in one of them, and the mix was awful. The song was mainly on string instruments, but somehow the layer that shares a name with the string category specialized to it was just _too_ cliché for me at the time of making it.
Not complaining about the video itself though, it only proves my current opinion. Awesome video as always.
YOU should look- I mean listen to cruelty squad and the Quake musics, they both do this thing, squad more-so, where they make melodically unsatisfying song that you WANT to listen to, like, pharmakinetics, it just goes BEE-da-da-DE-DE be-DEE-BEE-de de BAAAAAAGERRRRGEEEEBEEEEE tunununun TUNUNUNUN *TUNUNUNUN*
(10 seconds of silence)
*BWANANANA* BWANANANA *BWAAAAAAAA*
seriously, people say that making music is a gift? making tonally HARSH and dissonant skreeching that people WILLINGLY listen to is a bountiful BLESSING.
Mor Ardain's theme from Xenoblade 2 takes from 3 completely different songs. The most prominent is the chorus to Thriller, but you can also hear a bit of Dancing Queen and Crab Rave in there too.
This video is infuriating. Why the hell did Kenji Yamamoto lose his career *and* get his music removed from various _Dragon Ball_ games, but it was okay for Yuzo Koshiro, Robert Prince, and *Koji Kondo* to "take inspiration" from hits of a bygone time?!
It's also worth mentioning that Masako Nakamura, who composed most or all of the songs for the first two _Sonic the Hedgehog_ games, is actually the musician for the Japanese band, "Dreams Come True", a fairly popular band from back then. Some of those songs either existed as vocal tracks or _got_ vocal versions, at some point. It's pretty cool.
Earthbound isn't surprising that game is full of references to popculture, but with all these others you are a walking playlist that can link song to other songs, the song encyclopedia
Taking "inspirations" is a thing every composers tend to do and i think it quite beneficial when you need some help to get more creative.
And some people think that's plagiarism.
11:11 another great example is how the original lavender town on 1.75 speed matches gaster's theme
Probaly intetional toby fox interpolates song alot
Another example of this is Vampire: The Masquerade - Bloodlines' menu theme is is extremely similar to Angel by Massive Attack. This is because during production they used the song as a placeholder menu theme and it fit the vibe of the game so well, the composer for the game was inspired by that song for the actual menu theme. This inspiration also carries over to the (as of now) unreleased sequel, which has had it's menu theme released on youtube.
Loved it when he showed examples of Toby copying /being inspired by other songs, and they sounded literally nothing alike
This type of thing just makes me excited to find new songs. The plagiarized DBZ music deserve to get the book thrown at them.
Gosh the edit at 0:34 is AMAZING, that slapped
The Mario underground theme led to me finding one of my new favorite albums
A great question is how did you find all these songs. Like this is an impressive amount of research.
if you ever feel like a failure, remember megalovania was the result of a 14 year old toby fox's failed attempt at recreating gadobadorrer from brandish II
Finding out that last dbz song is a copy is a blow to my soul
11:20 On the subject, compare Final Fantasy's "Who Are You?" to "Gaster's Theme" and "ANOTHER HIM".
9:54 Hi, weirdos. Here's another prank, but this one involves Ice Cube instead of Bubble. Just take the Ice Cube Recovery Center, and just carry over the edge of a cliff, maybe, with a tree, yeah, yeah, definitely, yeah. That's mandatory. And attach a spring from the tree to the Ice Cube Recovery Center, and then, melt Ice Cube. Melting kills her, right? (yeah) okay, good. Ice Cube is recreated, in the Ice Cube Recovery Center, she'll like weigh it down and the Ice Cube Recovery Center will tilt down off the cliff, and Ice Cube will fall out and she'll crash to the bottom of the cliff and Ice Cube is recreated in the Ice Cube Recovery Center, she'll like weigh it down and Ice Cube Recovery Center will tilt down off the cliff, and the cycle repeats! Yeah, isn't that cool? Pretty funny? (This program, was brought to you, by Blocky's Funny Doings International)
blocky = spamton
i knew i recognized from somewhere
Knew that i recognised it
BFDI fans unite!
BFDI!!!!!
I learned a lot from this video and I'm a huge fan of the music content you've been making. It's very interesting to what songs some video game tracks used as inspiration.
This is a great video, because it not only brings attention to a very real problem that many people might not be aware of, but also explains how some examples of it have been overblown. It's nice to have that kind of nuance.
You missed out on the biggest Sonic example; Chaos 6's battle theme from Sonic Adventure straight up uses the Mission Impossible riff. It's not even REMOTELY subtle.
There’s a reason why Sonic music always hits.
I'm starting that every videogame that has GODLY music is only because they borrowed from pop songs (wither popular or obscure), i mean Megaman and a personal favorite of mine did this too
@@ironmaster6496Not every but fun fact, there's a chord progression of Seek and Destroy and the Flashman theme in Sonic 06's town mission 4 theme.
The opening notes of Diamond and Pearl’s Route 209 daytime sounds like the chorus of Telephone Line from ELO. I think about it every time I hear either song
“Oh, telephone line, give me some time, I’m living in twilight”
I thought it sounded like All The Young Dudes from Mott the Hoople!
@@dannyhargreaves1326 oh yeah I hear it. Nice!
3:00 this was so clean tho
the case of the dragonball composer is absolutely hillarious, i listened to the legit songs whilst playing the game and it kinda blended together
10:01 this part was in Henry Stickmin series somewhere too one of the endings I think
And now I suddenly hear Ghost Inmate when I listen to this. I cannot believe it was influenced/plagiarized
@@ChannelIsNotInUseIt was actually remixed by 3lation on Newgrounds and RUclips
When it comes to sampling, Ratchet & Clank (2002) is well known for having used sampled bits in its soundtrack.
And of course, Pokémon Diamond and Pearl's Route 209 and Green Day's Twentyone Guns quite famously ended up both sampling from the same track, although I dont recall the title of the track they were sampling from.
Telephone line by ELO, both pokemon and green day effectively just took the chorus progression
brooo why did you spell it like that 😭 it's just 21 Guns
4:32 Is so inspiring i am going to make a whole paragraph on it
Toby Fox stealing musical motifs is proof that he's the spirit of Spamton.
Toby has two forms.
1) Dog
2) [[Big Shot]]
He didn't steal.
@@Diogo85 Does Spamton steal?
@@TheAdvertisement I haven't played Snowgrave route so I wouldn't know.
@@Diogo85 💀
People always give Toby the excuse of ‘making a reference’ which makes no sense. He doesn’t need an excuse as what he’s doing isn’t even wrong.
14:53 Hard Times is un ironically one of my favorite songs
to be fair with that ed sheeran thing at 2:40, nobody and i mean NOBODY uses iii chords. i was taught in my music theory class to NEVER uses three chords
Speaking of Zelda can we talk about how the dungeon theme in Zelda 2 is heavily inspired by Looks that kill by Motley Crue?
12:58
Is this gonna explain why it always sounded so familia- o... okay then. I definitely never heard that before... Back to the drawing board then
the iron man clip left me BAMBOOZLED.
edit: THERE WAS A SECOND IN THE END?????
I love how you edited the music in all of their soundfonts, that must've taken a long time and it shows!