Cool! I enjoy seeing all the weird ways that people come up with for making "unexpected" sounds from instruments, particularly electric guitars. Videos of Joe Satriani concerts are fun also -- he incorporates a lot of stuff like this into songs.

Though I'm no stranger to rock and roll, I was unable to recognize all the riffs, so I copy/pasted the below list from the Brodie Cumming web site for reference:

1 Stairway To Heaven - Led Zeppelin
2 Smoke on the Water - Deep Purple
3 Sweet Child O' Mine - Guns & Roses
4 Wanted Dead Or Alive - Bon Jovi
5 Layla - Eric Clapton
6 Black Magic Woman - Santana
7 No More Mr. Nice Guy - Alice Cooper
8 Beat It - Michael Jackson
9 Crazy Train - Ozzy Osbourne
10 Dr. Feelgood - Motely Crue
11 Smells Like Teen Spirit - Nirvana
12 Sweet Home Alabama - Lynyrd Skynyrd
13 Cowboys From Hell - Pantera
14 Enter Sandman - Metallica
15 Mister Sandman - Chet Atkins
16 One Step Closer - Linkin Park
17 Back In Black - AC/DC
18 Purple Haze - Jimi Hendrix
19 Black Dog - Led Zeppelin
20 Crazy On You - Heart
21 Immigrant Song - Led Zeppelin
22 Bulls On Parade - Rage Against the Machine
23 Unchained - Van Halen
24 Bad To The Bone - George Thorogood
25 Johnny B. Goode - Chuck Berry
26 Surfing with the Alien - Joe Satriani
27 Money For Nothing - Dire Straits
28 Cult Of Personality - Living Colour
29 Start Me Up - Rolling Stones
30 Sunshine of your Love - Cream
31 Runnin' with the Devil - Van Halen
32 Hells Bells - AC/DC
33 Foxy Lady - Jimi Hendrix
34 Frankenstein - The Edgar Winter Group
35 Aqualung - Jethro Tull
36 In-A-Gadda-Da-Vida - Iron Butterfly
37 Carry On Wayward Son - Kansas
38 (Don't Fear) The Reaper - Blue Oyster Cult
39 Cemetary Gates - Pantera
40 Ain't Talkin' 'Bout Love - Van Halen
41 Walk This Way - Aerosmith
42 Tonight 'm Gonna Rock You (Tonight) - Spinal Tap
43 Life in the Fast Lane - Eagles
44 Come As You Are - Nirvana
45 Zero - Smashing Pumpkins
46 Nothin' But A Good Time - Poison
47 Round n Round - Ratt
48 It's Not Love - Dokken
49 Rock and Roll, Hoochie Koo - Rick Derringer
50 Norwegian Wood - Beatles
51 Under The Bridge - Red Hot Chili Peppers
52 Kashmir - Led Zeppelin
53 Train Kept A-Rolling - The Yardbirds
54 Blackbird - Beatles
55 Eye of the Tiger - Survivor
56 All Along the Watchtower - Jimi Hendrix
57 Brown Eyed Girl - Van Morrison
58 Ace Of Spades - Motorhead
59 Breaking The Law - Judas Priest
60 King of the Hill Theme - Brian David Blush/Roger Meade Clyne
61 All Right Now - Free
62 Are You Gonna Go My Way - Lenny Kravitz
63 When I Come Around - Green Day
64 Trilogy Suite Op.5 - Yngwie Malmsteen
65 Born To Run - Bruce Springsteen
66 Pretty Woman - Roy Orbison
67 Day Tripper - Beatles
68 Panama - Van Halen
69 Born To Be Wild - Steppenwolf
70 More Than A Feeling - Boston
71 Cat Scratch Fever - Ted Nugent
72 Bark At The Moon - Ozzy Osbourne
73 Hair Of The Dog - Nazareth
74 No More Tears - Ozzy Osbourne
75 Just A Girl - No Doubt
76 Iron Man - Black Sabbath
77 Sweet Emotion - Aerosmith
78 Pride And Joy - Stevie Ray Vaughn
79 Sharp Dressed Man - ZZ Top
80 Machine Head - Bush
81 Black Or White - Michael Jackson
82 Sultans Of Swing - Dire Straits
83 Hey Joe - Jimi Hendrix
84 Whole Lotta Love - Led Zeppelin
85 10 Years Gone - Led Zeppelin
86 Wild Thing - The Troggs
87 Owner Of A Lonely Heart - Yes
88 Magic Carpet Ride - Steppenwolf
89 I Love Rock N ' Roll - Joan Jett & the Blackhearts
90 Brown Sugar - Rolling Stones
91 La Bamba - Los Lobos
92 China Grove - Doobie Brothers
93 You Really Got Me - Van Halen
94 Wipe Out - The Surfaris
95 House Of The Rising Sun - The Animals
96 Dust In The Wind - Kansas
97 Rhiannon - Fleetwood Mac
98 Susie Q - Creedence Clearwater Revival
99 Voodoo Child - Jimi Hendrix
100 Eruption - Van Halen

1. Joe Satriani - Flying in a Blue Dream
2. Pearl Jam - Smile
3. Sneaker Pimps - The Fuel
4. REM - Crush with Eyeliner
5. Lovetree - Mountaineer
6. Blues Traveler - The Gunfighter
7. Rush - What You're Doing
8. Skillet - You Are My Hope
9. Burlap to Cashmere - Basic Instructions
10. Supreme Beings of Leisure - Last Girl on Earth

Man, I need to update this library. Too much Pandora has allowed it to... rust.

serbian, actually. from Belgrade. here's their Facebook group
S.A.R.S.=freshly amputated hand of Satriani (in serbian: sveže amputirana ruka satriania)

Lets look at what Satriani claims that Coldplay has plagiarized.

The chords: The chords are mostly the same, but the last chord is different. The chord progression is also a very logical and common one and I think you can find many songs with similar chords.

The melody: The melody follows the well established musical principle of guide tones which is a logical melody to apply to the chords. The only similaritys are in the first short phrase, the rest can be atributed to guide tones. Furthermore, Satrianis phrasing is very different and ends up sounding very different. The first song that came to my mind when I heard Viva La Vida was this song which is much better match than Satriani's:



As for Chuck Berry vs. Beach Boys, the whole song was almost exactly the same in terms of melody and chords. Satriani's claim is based on only one phrase of a melody and some random chords...

>> ^rottenseed:
hmmm...so that's what that looks like. I can check that off of my list.
List of things to see:
Dark matter
Tahiti
Spain
the Pyramids
Stonehenge
A man rubbing a popsicle on his head through an infrared lens
A potato chip that can play Joe Satriani
An Octopuss' garden (preferably under the sea)


actually, you can see number #9 on your list at the channel islands. a site called octopuss' garden can be dived by boat. No kidding. I was there last year.

hmmm...so that's what that looks like. I can check that off of my list.

List of things to see:
Dark matter
Tahiti
Spain
the Pyramids
Stonehenge
A man rubbing a popsicle on his head through an infrared lens
A potato chip that can play Joe Satriani
An Octopuss' garden (preferably under the sea)

>> ^HadouKen24:
If we were to make this a big deal, we'd have to get rid of Weird Al Yankovic.

Actually, Weird Al and similar parody artists are explicitly protected. Coolio tried to sue Weird Al for Amish Paradise and lost because parody was ruled to be sufficiently different from the original work.

Satriani sues Coldplay
http://www.videosift.com/video/Cold-Play-Did-They-Rip-off-Satriani-Lyrics

Weird Al is very conscious of copyright infringement. He seeks permission from every artist he parodies. If he doesn't get the permission, he doesn't do the song. And parody and satire sit slightly apart when it comes to copyright. And I doubt that Coldplay were attempting to spoof Satriani.

In reply to this comment by HadouKen24:
Even if Coldplay did "rip it off," so what?

Creative works are creative even if they borrow from other sources. What makes them creative is how they use those sources. Whether or not you think Coldplay is a very good band or very original, their use of the melody constitutes a new work, a new take on an old idea.

If we were to make this a big deal, we'd have to get rid of Weird Al Yankovic. A whole lot of classical music is right out; they borrowed from each other all the time, riffing on each others' themes. DJ's would be out of work. They practice their craft by remixing and juxtaposing the very recordings done by other musical artists.

Come on, people. Let's not squash what little culture America has.

>> ^SSIops:
I think the melody derived more from inspiration than blatant ripoff. It is possible that the two of them could have came up with the same sound by themselves, but that is rather doubtful. If this guy can sue Coldplay for plagiarism, then the Beatles should be able to sue Vanilla Ice for "Ice, ice, baby" ripping sound from "Under pressure".


Under Pressure was written and performed by David Bowie and Queen. Not the Beatles

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Under_Pressure

>> ^rottenseed:
also, the Verve's "Bittersweet Symphony" was a rip off of Rolling Stone's "The Last Time"
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q9QgpXhezIc


Quoted from: http://www.8notes.com/biographies/verve.asp

"The single was also very popular in the US, topping the charts at #12 (their highest position ever in the Billboards). The song, which borrows a looped sample of a symphonic recording of the Rolling Stones' 'The Last Time', was the soundtrack for many in the summer of 1997 and is considered one of the finest songs ever written."

So it seems it was an intentional rip off since it was sampled.

This is more of a blatant melody rip-off of Sat's music.

But like others have said, you can do look all day long and find hundreds of songs that have the same melody lines. These days it's pretty hard to not unintentionally rip some person or another off. Zepplin, for years has been accused of ripping off old blues artists for some of their material.

>> ^jdbates:
Definitely brings into question their creativity!


Was there a question that they had any before this?

Coldplay is one word. Please change the tags or title so people can find this in a search, and also to avoid dupes.
It's kind of an ugly attention-grab by Satriani, but I still dig his far out sound and hope he gets compensated in some way.