im a bit worried about my gcse compositions. Ok, they are very good i feel, and i showed them to someone who said they are beyond gcse etc etc. im not worried about that.

Its just i played part of something im working on today and my school music teacher said i was copying it from bach and that i was plaguarising. the other music teacher said the same, even though im not, it just happens i compose in quite a traditional baroque/classical style.

Im worried that if they think im plaguirising, then will the edexcel examiners?

If you haven't plagiarised then you have nothing to worry about: the examiners can't disqualify you without proof (i.e. without finding the bit of Bach that you copied) and if you didn't copy they'll never do that. One thing to be careful of is whether you've subconsciously copied a piece that you've heard without realising, this is unlikely though. If your teacher accuses you of plagiarism ask precisely which piece (s)he thinks you've plagiarised, if (s)he can't tell you then you're just composing 'in the style of Bach' and to be honest, without any substance to back her claims she shouldn't really be accusing you....

you'd be best to check that you haven't heard the piece before! and anyway, it's good practise for A level (we have to compose very stylistically, it doesn't really feel much like composition because you have to find loads of features and then copy them into your own music )

Post it up on here and let us have a listen!:) I did OCR music so i don't know what Edexcel people are like but my comps were meant to be based on stuff, and as a result bits of it had exactly the same rhythm but different notes, i didnt get marked down for it...

thanks guys. AP my music teacher said that, but i dont really listen to a lot of bach or that style. The only thing i really copy a lot of is that my music is contrapuntal and often one not at a time in each hand, so sounds a lot like bach...just not as good! CPPF im just installing sibelius some time in the next few days, then ill put some stuff up!

One of my recorder pupils a few years ago, who was doing A level music at the time, brought me her composition to show me - when she played it I realised straight away that a whole chunk of it was just about note-for-note from a Handel recorder sonata which she had played some years previously!

She genuinely hadn't realised that it was taken from something else, and was really pleased that she'd brought it to me before giving her composition in, so that she had time to change it!

My daughter is doing GCSE music. She has realised (later on) that with some of her compositions she has unwittingly "pinched" bits of music from various sources. As she plays clarinet James Rae is a popular source!
I'd say check out your composition more carefully before finalising it. Good luck with your GCSE.

Well lots of songs sound similar don't they? I mean if you know that song "If God Were One of Us" or something has a really similar chord sequence to "Behind Those Hazel Eyes". If you know you haven't copied then it can't be plagiarised.

ahhh kelly clarkson! hehe

Oooooohh. Yeah but you know what I mean, I think. And I know it's not Crimbo but Hark the Herald Angels Sing and Once In Royal David's City sound quite similar to me.