Joe Satriani Tries to Cash in on Coldplay

Joe is apparently suing Coldplay over their song Viva La Vida for copying the melodic, rhythm and structure of his song If I Could Fly.



Joe has been in the limelight a lot lately, he has a song or 2 in either Rock Band or Guitar Hero or both that are getting kids attention the world over. I guess one of the good things is that those games can expose people to other artists they wouldn't have known otherwise. Joe plays in an instrumental guitar niche that, since it doesn't grace the airwaves next to Britney Spears, doesn't get much attention. People are discovering his music and saying "omg who is this guy"? meh For those who don't know, Joe has influenced a whole generation of guitarists and was even the great Steve Vai's teacher.

More media attention:

- The 8 year old phenomenon that's blowing everyone away credits hearing Joe Satriani when he was first inspired to start playing:

8 Year Old Phenom

- Joe was also on youtube live recently playing along with the guitar hero/rock band (whichever) winner. Of course that kid was playing his guitar hero guitar along while Joe played the real thing. *rolls eyes hard.. passes out Does anyone sense my musician snobbery? Hopefully so. :)

Guitar Hero Kid Rocking with Joe

Is it because of all this attention that Joe is getting that now people are pressing him to sue Coldplay about a song that they released many months ago and a song he released 4 years ago? Why wouldn't he have done this earlier?

I think the problem is that they wrote a song that shares similar chord structures with 100 other songs. I mean seriously, in pop music, not classical or jazz of course, but in pop music including rock or country there are probably only a combination of xx chord changes and not xxxxxxx so the chances of stumbling on the same structure is going to be happening all the time. Find any song you like and I bet we could find 20 others that are very similar in structure. I really think Coldplay is for real, as real as pop can get anyway, and they actually respect Satriani, I can't see them saying "hey lets steal his song and no one will notice because we're the biggest band in the world."

Having said that, they certainly could have been very influenced subconsciously and not noticed it. I'm sure any song I write could be pegged for another if you looked hard enough.

What do you think?

Music theory wise this guy breaks the chord structure and scales down analytically and shows they are very similar and he is thinking Joe may win the case. Lets face it, it's good publicity for an amazing guitarist who deserves much more notoriety but plays in a niche several degrees re outside of top 40, or top 100, or... well you know what I mean.

Comparison using music theory

Joe's original tune worth hearing often: Joe rocking the song If I could Fly