How Closely Can You Recreate the Sound of a Copyrighted Work

[Terr]

I have tried to license the Jaws theme from Universal for an IPad game I am writing. They rejected my license application.

So I looked around - and I found Dvorak's 9th symphony, 4th movement (which is not under copyright) - see here for example: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Eo1KHr-b-CA

Listen to the first few notes - sounds like Jaws, right? So I took the MIDI version of this, sampled it, repeated a couple of notes, changed tempo and pitch and came up with this:

Shark Sound

Question: if I include this sound in my game (and play it when the shark shows up), does it in any way violate Universal's copyright on Jaws theme?

[KenjaminK]

Yours is still too close. You have to use a major second interval beside E to F or F to F# because those are the ones used in Jaws. You also can't speed up in too similar of a fashion so as to too closely mimic their suspense effect there. Considering your app is also shark themed, I would find another way to increase suspense, possibly just sustaining the two notes in dissonance rather than alternating them faster? I would recommend maybe A to A# or C to C# and then you could probably just switch to sustaining them if the player loses because then it wouldn't be annoying while playing, yet still suspenseful enough.

[Browne]

Keep experimenting and you'll come up with something more original. There's a fine line between drawing inspiration from someone and plagiarizing them. As it stands right now, you would be plagiarizing.