The Game Composer’s Blog

NPR reads (and steals from) my blog!

… or they might, anyway. I was folding some laundry this afternoon listening to the local NPR station, KUOW, and I heard something awfully familar on their “The World” show.

(Oct. 15, 2008) “The second a caveman heard another caveman hitting a log with a stick in a compelling way, he copied it and added his own style. And so it has gone throughout history.” (from their “Pistolera” story)

Hey! (speaking of copying…) That’s really close to something I wrote a couple weeks ago on a blog post entitled “Cliches through the ages”:

(Sep. 30, 2008) “213,000 BC – Branch hit against tree: This brilliant invention of Kurpnar, a struggling composer of the era, was used at first only in the performance of Kurpnar’s unforgettable opera “Me Eat Bird I Hope”. It was received so well in that opera that he used it in the rest of his compositions until his death at the late age of 20. Other composers of the time of course saw the possibilities in using branch hit against tree and used it in their music as well. There were many years where you couldn’t walk by a forest without hearing improvisers banging away at their favorite trees. Needless to say, the trend didn’t last more than 15 years or so, after people got tired of listening to the same general sound again and again. All sorts of experimentation with branch and tree sizes yielded results that couldn’t save this particular cliché.”

Now, I’m not saying NPR is definitely made up of a bunch of dishonorable plagiarizing thieves but I’m struck by the similarities. And flattered that they’d steal from my blog. If they did.

Ok, it’s probably just a coincidence.

October 15, 2008 Posted by thegamecomposer | Ponderings, the blog | NPR, plagiarism | Leave a Comment