BMI, ASCAP, SESAC, oh my!

I don't perform in public any more, but the Richard Phillips vs BMI Story might be interesting to anyone who does. The licenses demanded by ASCAP or BMI (and also SESAC, I assume) can be a burden on, for instance, an open mike kind of establishment, or a lounge. But if you don't perform covers of copyrighted songs you can tell the owner that ASCAP and BMI cannot force them to get a license. Richard says,

...all my songs are copyrighted, without assistance from ASCAP or BMI. Itís easy to do. Just fill out a form, write a check for $30, and send a copy of the work to be copyrighted. These days the forms are available online at http://www.copyright.gov/forms. Form TX is for literary works, and Form SR is for sound recordings. I copyright an entire cassette or CD at a time rather than pay $30 every time I write a song. I specify for each track which of the following I am copyrighting: words, music, arrangement and/or performance. I state on my CD covers that my recordings are copyrighted in my name. All rights reserved. This means exactly what it says. As the exclusive owner of the copyright, I enjoy the exclusive right of public performance and, BMI notwithstanding, the exclusive right to profit from their performance

And...

I have carefully preserved over the years photocopies of nearly every traditional song in my repertoire, in order to prove their antiquity.

Finally, a successful conclusion:

More on Internet Radio

via MyDD, an interview with the founder of Pandora, Tim Westergren.

powered by ODEO

The new bill seems skewed towards ClearChannel, which is no surprise in the current political environment. Go to SaveNetRadio to fix this.

Added: You can find your Congress Person here. Most of them have email accounts, so drop a line saying that as an indie in their district you would appreciated their support for H.R. 2060, The Internet Radio Equality Act.

Contrasts...and stretched metaphors

The modern classical guitar is so much more expressive than the modern steel guitar, and the 12-string is even less expressive than a 6-string. The expressiveness of an instrument lies in the ability of the player to present contrasts in tone and loudness of the music. The double course strings of the 12-string don't seem to lend themselves to subtlety. In fact, most 12-string players just flail away at the instrument. But I think some attempt at expression might have a musical pay off.

12-string Repertoire

It rained yesterday, hard and all day. I cancelled out of the Saturday morning Sunshine Shop group ride with some feeling of relief and actually played the guitar and blogged a little. It's my first break in riding for about 3 or more weeks. This morning was cloudy but ok for riding, so I'm back in the saddle again - this morning was power workout...desiccated beef drink before the ride, 14 big-ring uphill sprints spread over the 20 mile ride, finished off with a protein drink. Mmmmmm. Oddly enough, I still have some energy left and find that that Allan Alexander has a new book of guitar transcriptions out, 8 Scarlatti Sonatas. You can hear them at SoundClick and can buy the CD and book here. I like the Longo 168 and am thinking of getting the book just for this one. It has a nice separation between the bass lines and the upper voice that might sound interesting if the lower voice could be fingered on the octave courses.

Speaking of music that has voices separated that might be a good 12-string fit, I listened to some of the pieces on the Complete Riverside recordings of Thelonious Monk. I particularly like his sparse version of the Ellington classic It Don't Mean A Thing If It Ain't Got That Swing. The floor bass even takes the melody for a few bars, and Monk's wonderfully off-tempo phrasing makes this version swing in a very cool, laid-back way. I might start messing with this unless the weather turns good for a long stretch.

More on Pandora

One of my favorite political blogs, MyDD, picks up on Pandora:

As powered by the Music Genome Project, Pandora is a freakishly innovative way to (1) connect listeners to new music and (2) promote popular major-label artists in the very same way as artists recording on GarageBand from home. Tim, a musician himself, has been building the Music Genome Project since 2000. The way it works is this. Each song that comes into the project is treated blindly, meaning that it matters little whether the artist is well known or not or what musical genre label with which they're usually tagged. Fifty or so actual humans -- many of them musicians -- sit down in an office in Oakland and evaluate each song, one by one. What they're listening for is any number of some 400 or so musical "genes." Once a song's genes are mapped, it's entered into the Pandora system.

And the paragraph for the artist:

In the interview, Tim talks about how he's been thrilled so far to pay SoundExchange fair rates for music -- it helps streamline the licensing process for digital broadcasters like Pandora. But the Copyright Royalty Board's recently announced royalty hikes will make it impossible for Pandora to continue operating, which will in turn prevent the public from reaping the benefits of the Music Genome Project. Our copyright regime is intended to encourage innovation. That's not me talking, that's the founding fathers in the United States Constitution: the goal is to "promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts."

The article is here.

Added in the evening:
Pretty good discussion going on about this at RMMGA.