 The Clarinet BBoard
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Author: tictactux ★2017
Date: 2006-05-12 19:59
Recently I needed a sheet score of some piece. I had the choice between reverse-engineering a MIDI file and (legally) buying downloadable sheet music. Just for kicks I decided for the latter, 3$ didn't seem that expensive.
Well. The downloaded sheet roughly resembles what comes out of the speaker but has at least five fatal errors in it (total length 34 bars) - even a musical layperson would hear that - which I find unacceptable.
Reverse-engineering the MIDI file yielded the expected result (but of course would have required some fine-tuning). To make a long story short I ended up re-setting the whole piece in Lilypond which gave me impeccable output and an 1:1 MIDI file of the printed score.
I thought buying sheet music from an 'official' source guaranteed for a certain level of quality and correctness, but now I'm not that sure any more.
And I wouldn't be surprised if people chose to reverse-engineer publicly available MIDI music back into scores. (what's the legal aspect of this?). Maybe the industries should employ more craftspeople and less lawyers...
What's your experience?
--
Ben
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Author: Mark Charette
Date: 2006-05-12 23:32
tictactux wrote:
> And I wouldn't be surprised if people chose to reverse-engineer
> publicly available MIDI music back into scores. (what's the
> legal aspect of this?).
Disclaimer: IANAL (I Am Not A Lawyer)
It's an interesting problem; while the sequencing of the MIDI file might be copyrighted, the music upon which it is based, if public domain, is not. Therefore you're not reverse engineering the MIDI sequencing per se, which has to do with velocity, overlap, channel, etc., but are extracting the base notes, which are copyrightable.
If the MIDI file is of copyrighted music then of course the notes upon which it is based are under the copyright and the MIDI file must be under license - or it's in violation of the copyright law. Reverse engineering the MIDI file, whether or not the MIDI file is licenced, would be breaking the applicable copyright.
In the USA I'm not even sure the sequencing is copyrightable by extension of the Feist decision.
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Author: David Peacham
Date: 2006-05-13 06:10
Let us suppose the music is out of copyright - a Brahms sonata, say. If I don't want to pay money for the sheet music, I have the following options:
1. Photocopy a published edition. This is breach of copyright: of the publisher's copyright, not Brahms's copyright.
2. Copy a published edition by hand, extracting the music as Brahms wrote it, but ignoring editorial additions and typographical features put in by the publisher. I believe I'm right in saying this is legal.
3. Listen to a live performance and write down what I hear. (A difficult task, I know!) I believe I'm right in saying this is legal, assuming I don't reproduce any substantial creative additions (ornaments, cadenzas) introduced by the performers or the edition they are using; this is unlikely to be a problem in the case of Brahms.
4. Listen to a recorded performance (a published recording, not a surreptitious recording of a live performance) and write down what I hear. I believe this to be substantially the same as (3).
5. Listen to a MIDI and write down what I hear. This would seem to be equivalent to (3) and (4).
6. Use technological means, rather than my ears, to convert the MIDI to a score. Is the equivalent of (1), in that it has been achieved by technology rather than by manual labour? Or is it the equivalent of (2), (3), (4) and (5), in that what I am writing down is Brahms's contribution, not that of the performer or publisher?
Like Mark C, IANAL, but it seems to me that (6) must be perfectly legal.
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If there are so many people on this board unwilling or unable to have a civil and balanced discussion about important issues, then I shan't bother to post here any more.
To the great relief of many of you, no doubt.
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Author: tictactux ★2017
Date: 2006-05-13 08:10
Another interesting extension to the copyright problem is analogous to fonts. The font type "Helvetica" is copyrighted and licensed to a number of companies. I can - perfectly legally - come and copy (not a binary copy but a "look and feel" copy) that font, change a curve here and a corner there and presto! It's my own work and I can copyright that and even sell it under a different name.
In that light I could copy a Brahms sonata by hand, tweak the timing a bit here, the dynamics a bit there et voilà I have my own Brahms sonata which would even be copyrightable. The problem is that this way we soon see hundreds of slightly different Brahms sonatas. Which one was "Brahms' own"?
But when I buy official sheet music where the author's copyright hasn't expired yet, can I expect an error-free version for my money? Or is it normal that a piece with piano accompaniment looks and sounds different than the very same piece without accompaniment score?
--
Ben
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Author: Mark Charette
Date: 2006-05-13 14:25
tictactux wrote:
> But when I buy official sheet music where the author's
> copyright hasn't expired yet, can I expect an error-free
> version for my money?
hah! There have been errors handed down for literally centuries. And if the author isn't the composer, what makes it then "official" ...
Now, without an incredible amout of study, how do you determine an "error"? Often times the composer's autograph has errors in it, along with the 1st, 2nd, and maybe even 3rd editions of the music. People make faithful copies later of EACH of these versions and call them "authentic", and editors change them yet again over time.
We have publishers today that claim "Urtext" on their covers, even of k622. The word is more of a publishing term now rather than its earlier meaning.
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Author: Mark Charette
Date: 2006-05-13 14:35
David Peacham wrote:
> Like Mark C, IANAL, but it seems to me that (6) must be
> perfectly legal.
If (6) is an arrangement or has editorial content (notes altered for whatever reason, etc.) then of course it is a copyrighted work. (In the US - not just copyrightable, but copyrighted automatically - the essential difference between registration of a work and non-registration of a work is in the recovery of damages in court, not in the enforceability of the copyright).
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Author: tictactux ★2017
Date: 2006-05-13 15:49
Now, without an incredible amout of study, how do you determine an "error"?
By comparing the "solo" score with the "piano" score (same editor, same company, nota bene). And the error is so blatantly obvious even a deaf person would hear it.
(Bear in mind that it's a simple piece, not a symphony...)
Compare http://tinyurl.com/gu5dq with the soprano voice of http://tinyurl.com/fhzua...and for that I paid 2 dollars. But with a quality like this I won't bother to try again. <sigh>
--
Ben
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Author: Mark Charette
Date: 2006-05-13 16:29
tictactux wrote:
> Now, without an incredible amout of study, how do you
> determine an "error"?
> By comparing the "solo" score with the "piano" score (same
> editor, same company, nota bene).
True, but that's just a mechanical extraction error (and pretty common even in texts that have been around a LONG time without anyone ever correcting them).
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