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I want to get a library that involves no books. I’m not fond of books. I want to have a portfolio/binder for each student where I can add pieces as they need it. Not illegal photocopies, not books, but authorized, 3-hole punched copies. To anybody’s knowledge, does Alfred or anybody else sell such licenses? Perhaps a yearly teacher’s fee, or something like that. I would also be interested in such license terms from Apple iPod. I will greatly appreciate any recommendations.

Thanks
Steve

Steve, that's a very interesting suggestion. I can see that the accounting and book work would be enormous, however, especially when working with more than one publisher. But I totally sympathize. Last night, as I was teaching a younger student, I was remembering a couple of really effective teaching tunes in an old series written by Walter Noona. I really want to use those pieces to help this student, but we're talking an out of print music publication.

Tell you what -- next time I'm at a big national conference, (this summer if I make it to the NCKP), I'll ask several of the publishers if they'll consider putting sheets up on the internet as downloadable pdf's, for a modest fee. Generally the presidents of the major publishing houses are there, or top people, who could make such a thing happen. I know that there are generics available already, I don't know if they are profitable operation.

John

Storm in a tea-cup ... has ANY piano teacher EVER been sued for “pirating” a piece of keyboard music?

We have a difficult enough job finding the right “carrot” to motivate progress in our pupils ... and represent such a well-meaning
and sincere fellowship ... that it would appear unnecessarily naive of us to even begin to imagine that we could be targeted by the legal
team of the surviving Beatles for spreading around some copies of “Yesterday”... and to think that Sir Paul McCartney has admitted to not being able to sight-read music.

From my corner ... I ignore the copyright niceties ... and issue copies without the slightest conscience ... however , as with the marvellous facility to download classics in .pdf format from the Sheet Music Archive ... it would be hugely beneficial if there was open access to all keyboard music on the Internet ... to advantage a wider study choice for the modern
generation.

Go for it Steve ... beg, borrow or steal the music and print it willy nilly for your chaps and chapesses! All in a very good cause.

Excuse me for just a minute ... there’s a policeman knocking on my front door!! ... "Good afternoon, Officer ... but why the handcuffs?"

Copyright is there to protect the careers/incomes of composers, songwriters and publishers. If we, as teachers, truly care about the future of music, we WANT to keep these people in business to insure OUR future as well. It is not JUST about "not getting caught." Maybe the laws are a bit different in South Africa...

There are some sites on the web that DO sell music to be printed off - and there are also some collections of music on CD-ROM which come with the rights to print as many copies as you like. Perhaps these would be good options for you to check out?

Also, if the music is truly out of print, you should be able to get permission to make copies of it if you contact the publisher.

I hope this is somewhat helpful... please, do not become one of those who have no regard for copyright law and teach their students to do the same!

Heidi

Check the Pianist Corner forum for a thread continually kept toward the top entitled "Sheet Music Websites" - a place where posters are suppose to post legitimate websites for sheet music on the internet. I haven't checked it much myself but you might find some websites to get sheet music from that list.

A perpetual dilemna for teachers and can seem like searching for a needle in a haystack: 1. To find decent sounding arrangements and literature 2. being at a student's appropriate skill level at the moment and 3. something the student knows or would enjoy. It's difficult to find written music that meets all three of those criteria.

A teacher tries so hard to keep a student's interest but how do you keep interest when you can't find music a student would most be interested in learning and at their skill level? A teacher may find the song a student wants to learn, for example, Little Mermaid, "I Want to be Where the People Are", but the arrangement even though at level 2 that the student is in is just a little too difficult for the student and in addition, the arrangement sounds horrible. So the student loses interest because even though they love the song, the arrangement sounds bad and the notes are too hard. On the other hand, you find an easier arrangement, but it still sounding terrible and the student is also "bored" with it because the skill level is "beneath them". Oh, to find the perfect arrangement at the perfect moment for a student's ability and something they love! If you're lucky, you may find one gem out of a $10 book and so the question comes, do you have the student or parents spend $10 for one piece of music? Do publishers do this on purpose to sell more books? Can anyone else relate? I do feel sorry for those writing the material as well, because I'm sure it's difficult to write music, for example, level 1 music of a familiar pop tune, for example, and have the arrangement sound nice without being able to add anything a student at the level would not have learned yet.

* I think it would be fantastic if publishers would have it so teachers could buy individual pieces on the internet out of their books including individual pieces from method books or supplemental books that go with methods. For example, if a teacher used Faber and Faber but there was a piece here in there in Alfred's method books that the teacher really liked, they could buy these pieces individually as supplementary material. Does anyone know if this is already being done? There's some books I would use a favorite piece or two from but I won't have a student buy a whole book for one piece so I don't use them. The flip side to the idea of buying individual music is that if a publisher charged $4.95 for one piece, then you may as well buy the whole book as many books are only $5.95 to $7.95. John, if you talk to some of the representatives from the publishing companies feel free to give them a copy of this post or this paragraph. I've often thought of writing to them about it.

What I do currently is try to search for books in which the entire book is a gem and try to find them for each level. I look for books where the majority of pieces in the book have decent sounding arrangements or pieces I feel a student would enjoy. Then I keep one copy of each of these myself. I then either recommend out of these books of "teacher favorites" if I know a student would enjoy a particular one or else I can have them look it over to see if it's something they would be interested in. Sometimes I might let them borrow it and if they become interested in learning more than a couple pieces from the book, they can get a personal copy. So in short, I've started collecting books that meet my criteria and won't buy books much anymore if there are only one or two pieces of interest. That way students are more guaranteed books of several enjoyable pieces.

I do think publishers are doing better in most recent years of coming out with better and better books and materials of what teachers are looking for and students would enjoy. So there are more and better choices of music and books out there at each students level than there used to be.

Sorry for my rampage.


When it comes to making copies, I believe there are copyright rules where one copy can be made for personal or educational purposes. I sometimes although rarely make one copy of a piece if it has something specific I want to teach, like studying the chords or chord progressions in the piece or some theory aspect and only if I own the book myself. I loan the copy only and make sure I get it back after the student learns the piece. I don't do this a whole lot, however, because almost everytime students won't learn the pieces from materials I have loaned. I think there's something about owning the book oneself that motivates interest to learn the music. Who wants to learn a loaned piece that you can't keep? I've also tried writing my own simple arrangements on notation software, but students usually don't seem too interested in these either. They really seem most interested in music in a book or in sheet music form. I don't think students are thrilled about learning from copies actually. They seem most motivated when they own the book or sheet music themselves. Anyone else have an opinion on that?

The reason I follow copyright rules is to set an example to kids to follow rules and laws and the importance of doing so. By infringing on copyrights, doesn't it send a message to kids, "it's o.k. to bend (or break) the rules"? In college in a music degree program, this is taken very seriously and ingrained in students. When I was in college in a music degree program, you were expected to buy whatever music books necessary to learn the pieces assigned even if you were only learning one piece in the whole book. As long as you owned the book, you could make a personal copy for the purposes of bring back and forth to the lesson and having the instructor mark on it. Also, it wasn't good enough to learn a Bach 2 Pt. Invention from a book of compiled literature (a book with a mixture of composers), it absolutely had to be a book strictly of Bach 2 Pt. Inventions and also certain editions were strongly recommended. Even though I only learned one piece from each book in college I had to buy, it was good, however, because now I have a nice collection of piano literature I would not otherwise have had.

Best option: Have students using and buying books that are going to help them build a nice music collection over time.

Sorry again for the length. I got to rambling as usual :rolleyes: .

Here is some info put out by MTNA on the issue of copyright infringement:

http://www.mtna.org/Resources/CopyrightInformation/tabid/315/Default.aspx

Thanks John and everybody.

John's comment: "[at next conference] I'll ask several of the publishers if they'll consider putting sheets up on the internet as downloadable pdf's, for a modest fee."
Thank you. Thank you very much. If other teachers here think this idea is good, perhaps we could also petition (somehow?) to a publisher's PR guy. They might be interested. Where would we start?

Sarabande's comment: "I don't think students are thrilled about learning from copies actually. They seem most motivated when they own the book or sheet music themselves. Anyone else have an opinion on that?" I'd like to hear more opinions on that, too...

P.S. (an update from Apple)- it's up to the individual publishers.

Do publishers give out sample copies of books or sample pieces (one or two from a book) to teachers to see what they are like before buying? All to often I've tried a book on a student only to find it wasn't worth buying. Either the arrangements aren't very good or students decide they don't like the style of the music, or the pieces. Then I feel bad if I've asked a parent buy a book and I realize it wasn't that great of a choice on my part to begin with.

Now if I see an interesting book I haven't tried before, I buy a copy and ask a student to be my "charter" student and try it free of charge (and keep it if they learn several pieces from it) and give me their opinions before using with more students. That way if I'm not sure about it, I haven't had the parents waste their money. I'm getting better now at telling if a book has decent arrangements just by looking at it than I used to be .

Yes, they do, and if you're not on their mailing list, you can contact them via internet and ask to be added.

For the most part, publishers hand out free copies of music at conferences - big time at the two pedagogy conferences. I usually come back with enough FREE new music to underwrite the basic conference cost!

I don't know about students in general, but my son has no problems working from pdf files or plain copies.

We're also moving toward a world of "design your own" books. I can easily imagine publishing houses permitting teachers to create their own books of pieces individually tailored for each student from a selection that the publisher owns.

Just a random thought but the music industry has already moved to selling by the song (and via simple download). The delivery system is free. Doesn't seem like a stretch for sheet music to follow. The content more than the form I would think matters most too.

My sons barely know what the word "album" means.

Seems like there should be a better way for teachers to decide what to teach students-other than having students have to pay for that freedom of choice through having to purchase lots of unused content (or fancy editions that can be a hassle to order).

It really isn't a problem to choose several repertory books for students and add several books from individual composers. You might try to teach two from one book, but you really shouldn't worry if they only learn one.

The pleasure received from one piece is worth $10, don't you think Sarabande?

Piano teachers are such small fish compared to the Eastern giant whales who pirate billions of dollars of the latest movies, music, trade secrets, etc .

Get real chaps ... your fuddy-duddy little piano teaching empire doesn’t amount to a hill of beans to the outside world ... the profession is a minuscule minority ... nobody’s heard of us ... we don’t even begin to show on the copyright radar.

As explained by sarabande ... what is important as piano teachers is to know in a flash what piece of music is most appropriate to maintain
pupil progress ... and to access the music without delay.

By the way ... the magistrate has advised that my case for infringing the copyright law comes up next Thursday ... thinking of using the services
of Johnnie Cochran!!

btb, two points:

The whole piano world is a small, niche business. The publishing houses, at least in the USA, for piano music are mostly small, family owned operations. FJH, Kjos, Alfred, Harris, etc. My guess is that even the premier publishers like Henle, Schott, etc, are relatively small businesses.

Most of my students have family income far above mine. I have no problem ordering them whole volumes for one selection. Life is full of choices, including economic ones. I most certainly am not going to screw my colleagues in the publishing end of the business, and my future source of printed music, to save tightwad parents a few bucks.

I would disagree. The topic of copyright and ASCAP fees has come up at each Convention I've attended the past few years. At our last Convention the state made a big issue of performing a composer's work in public in recitals. We now have to send copies of our branch and studio recital programs to the state office so that they can send them to ASCAP and the composers can get their royalties. Not only are we not allowed to make copies of music, but we cannot perform them in public without infringing on someone's copyright.

D3 - What state is this? Heaven forbid our state gets word of this!

Big brother is watching ... but who in the US is daft enough to actually want to attend run-of-the-mill Conventions and be obliged (presumably through the rip-off of some membership fee)... to pay lip service to a copyright embargo ... at the cost of meeting the ever-present need to feed
the appropriate musical fare to the pupil.

By the way ... the Magistrate has let me off with
a stern warning ... but, sub judice ... has privately asked me ... if I would teach his 10 year old son how to play the piano!

ok.... whatever....


John, it's MTAC (California). If you go to their website www.mtac.org and click on 'newsletters', it's in the September issue.

Thanks