Piano World Home Page Forums Our Most Popular Forums Pianist Corner - Non Classical Is it legal to sell advanced transcriptions of songs?

Cool! You put one up, and I'll put my second one in. Unfortunately we cannot attach music files or even pdfs in this cheap forum (seeing that "free" is the main theme now), so what I did was use a (free) third party service www.sendspace.com as a place to upload and put the link in the forum. Perhaps our creator Stephen can think of a better way.

mmmm, I bugged the freeforums.org people about being able to attach
teeny midi files, but no word back yet...

So there's that http://sendspace.com or http://box.net/ ...

Thank you so much for the kind welcome. Please forgive me but I won't be able to do this until next week when I can get back to my computer with the files. I hope my examples won't be considered too rudimentary but I'm really interested in reviewing the work of some really gifted ears that have been applied to perhaps familiar music.

Along this line: I was just thinking that it would really be nice for users to provide an mp3 file of the music that was transcribed or at least to hear where the music was originally derived from. I like reading along with the sheet music as I'm hearing the audio file even if the music would be too difficult for me to ever play.

It also means that I, as the composer, am potentially denied the opportunity to market a transcription myself, or have someone do it on my behalf, as part of my business.

At least, that's how the law views it.

The ethics of the situation are complicated, and can be argued either way. I'm not going to make moral pronouncements -- if there is such a thing as a moral high ground, I doubt it's anywhere near where I'm sitting.

When I said 'If you can't be good, be careful', perhaps what I should have said is 'Be aware that you're openly discussing an unlawful joint enterprise on a public forum'.

What ever miniscule loss in revenue to the composer due to people trading transcriptions, if any at all, is nothing compared to the huge loss of profit the composer already experiences from the mass of people exchanging mp3s and the existence of videos of the songs on youtube. And remember, there are already free music sheets of the songs out there like sheetmusictrade, sheetzbox, etc... There people are gettting the music sheets (though rudimentary level) by the handful.

Anyway, as we are on a new page now, here is the link to the forum again, for people wanting to trade advanced transcriptions of radio hits:

http://poptranscription.freeforums.org/

Thanks to StephenHazel for creating it. My second song will be uploaded soon.

Because you don't own the right to distribute the score. It's not yours to give away. All the rationalization about what you or someone else would do really doesn't matter. Do you have a legal right to give someone else the sheet music to a song that someone else owns the rights too?

If advanced arrangements of songs don't exist, and transcribers cannot sell them or even give them away for free, then how can people get advanced transcriptions of the songs they like? I will be 80 years old before I can transcribe every song I like. And a lot of people cannot transcribe or can't make the time to.

If the transcribers feel the need to operate legally, they simply obtain licenses before distribution.

At this point, you're only arguing the ethics of an already established regulation. Whether or not you agree with the law in no way changes the fact that ignoring it is illegal.

You'd be just as fine selling your transcriptions as you had originally intended.

This topic makes me wonder which I always have about Wedding Singers or Garage Bands that do covers. How about the band or singer at the local Holiday Inn or the local fair or restaurant or nursing home or the busqer(sp?) who earns income from the latest pop and rock and etc songs or playing any music copyrighted over the last 50 or so years?

In the USA, if a venue such as a restaurant or bar is hosting music, the venue has to buy a yearly license from an outfit like ASCAP, which allows the bands/performers to play any music that might be copyrighted.

Buskers and nursing homes and Wedding performers are not on the radar screen as far as I know.

So there are daily reports of which exact songs were played in every restaurant and bar across the USA so ASCAP can pay the right author?

I wonder how that works...

Good question . . . this is all I could find, which does not directly answer your question, unfortuntely:



From Wikipedia

The school I teach at plays a radio hit every morning over the PA system before class, and it does it without paying the artists. How could I work at such a corrupt place?

Radio stations, I believe, do turn in their playlists.

A nonprofit that rents its space to folk dancers here in NM was "caught" by, I believe, BMI and they now pay fees. The folkdancers use cds they personally own, but since the dances are open to the public legally the fees are owed. The playlists aren't turned in. I don't know how the fee company splits those royalties, since they're pretty obscure. Perhaps there's a category of obscure music that gets distributed by pro-rating of some kind.

I have no idea whether the various kinds of senior venues I play at should have a license - is the locked Alzheimer's unit a private residence or a public place? I don't know how the law is written. I don't know whether they, or the national corporation that owns them in some cases, have a license. But I can certainly envision a couple of them legally needing one. And again, it hasn't got to do with whether the performer is paid or not.

And I'd guess that your school, or school district, legally should have one. But I don't know all the ins and outs of the law. C'est la vie

Is it a nuisance? Why, yes it is. Does it cover fairly innocent uses of music? Why, yes it does. But many laws do the same. It's simply not possible to legislate for every individual situation, so in some ways laws will be overly broad. C'est la vie.

Didn't the Girl Scouts win? I'll have to look that up.

Cathy

That explains ASCAP in general.
But not the mechanism for paying each original artist.
Just wondering if the songs are actually tracked.
Or if it's a "oh we've done some statistical business calculations and we KNOW we got it right - here Mr. Springsteen" sort of thing.

Well, anyways, this is copyright of performance.
Which is different than copyright of sheet music, i think?

So although ASCAP is taking care of performance rights,
it's not keeping track of the musicians that may have stolen
their sheets.

What bugs me is when a song has no sheet music available
and =I= don't have decent transcribing skills.
So I guess transcribing is something to DEFINItely look into.
Well, time to hit google.
If any of ya have good tips on transcribing, this would be
a great thread to list em in

Ah. From what I can tell, the Girl Scouts pay a nominal fee of $1/year. So ASCAP has served notice they are legally due fees, but saved public face

There are several forms of rights - copyright, performance, and mechanical for three. The mechanical is for making cds of your own performance, etc. I think there's a "you have to let me make a cd of my performance" clause once any one at all has been allowed to do so.

Again, some venues do turn in playlists. And some are probably statistical.

Cathy

There is no transcribing forum. I personally had to get ear training to learn how to transcribe. EarMaster allowed me to recognize chords, and most of the radio hits out there consist almost entirely of major, minor, and 7th chords (but you still have to learn the other chords, because they do pop up every now and then). Don't always trust the guitar tabs out there, sometimes they are inaccurate and you will often see different "chord experts" giving slightly different answers.

Once you get the melody and its rhthym correct (I use an mp3 slowing device for fast songs), then the chords pretty much complete the transcription. Any bass melody is often just broken chords. Chords attached to the melody are usually just echoes of the current chord until the next chord change. Many songs we like share the same chord progressions. A good thing is that our voice tends to be good at transcribing melodies. Sing the melody and then play chords as you sing. You can get the correct chords that way too because if the chords match your singing, it is often correct. With practise you will be able to play the correct chords on your first guess as you sing.

The main challenge for me is instrumental melodies in the bass that is not a broken chord. They are sometimes really hard to hear because of higher, different melodies going on at the same time. I'm searching for a good program that makes the bass stand out, but so far the ones I've tried are not doing as well a job as I want. So sometimes I just make up the bass melody that seems to fit the upper melody. Some composing skills are required in transcribing as well. When you look at some advanced transcriptions, you will often find instrumental melodies that actually don't exist in the real song, but they do make it sound better for piano solo.

Math Teacher this transcribing and arrangements for piano solo is a good idea because of course just the variety of music that isn't in piano solo arrangements because they only make a few piano solo books. Sounds like its not difficult to stay in legal copyright lane.

I guess I'm a little off topic.

Rocket and all thanks. Nursing homes, restaurants, weddings, funerals, churches and just all the places you see live modern music I have wondered about.

Busker...busque is to look.

Question: Would you think a transcription would be a copyright violation if there is no sheet music available for the recording? I really like the idea of a transcriber's website for music we've heard and love but knew there was no sheet music available anywhere? Check out the website. You might like it.

http://poptranscription.freeforums.org/

There are my transcriptions or adaptations for:

"Brooks Was Here" from the movie "Shawshank Redemption"

"MacArthur Park" instrumental allegro interlude from a totally ridiculous song by Richard Harris about leaving a cake out in the rain.

Love theme from the movie "Spartacus" which I changed the time signature from 3/4 to mostly 4/4.

Think about it this way:

There are no plans published for how to build a Ferrari. Does that mean (since those plans are missing) that Ferrari is not allowed to come after you for publishing them yourself?

Anything the publisher could have done (like publishing an advanced arrangement) but chose not to do, it's still their right to stop you from doing it. They want two things: money, AND full control. (Myself, I believe they deserve the money and the control, but not for nearly as many years as they have it now.)

Now, seriously, ARE they going to come after you? I have no idea.