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It's time for original music


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Cavies were all original music from 00-03, right? If those shows were to be performed this year, Flo could theoretically show them any time they wanted, correct?

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1 hour ago, ouooga said:

Cavies were all original music from 00-03, right? If those shows were to be performed this year, Flo could theoretically show them any time they wanted, correct?

 

Nope. They still need to secure rights from the publisher, which may be Rich Saucedo himself, or whoever published his music at the time.

Edited by Kamarag
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40 minutes ago, Kamarag said:

Nope. They still need to secure rights from the publisher, which may be Rich Saucedo himself, or whoever published his music at the time.

No trolling then, wouldn't it be assumed that a Saucedo (or any publisher) would automatically release the rights to the corps? Isn't that exactly what drill designers do, since their artistic work is being written exclusively for XYZ corps?

I guess I've always viewed original drill and original music the same, but I'm not sure if that's the case. It's been a long time since my IP classes in college.

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5 hours ago, kdaddy said:

Drum corps arranging today is so much more about creating mood than arranging existing music that the line between "original music" and "arranged music" is pretty blurred. Not from a legal perspective but from a listener's perspective.

Kdaddy beat me to it - drum corps music today is pretty much original music anyway.  More often than not, you are lucky if you hear more than a few bars of any of the pieces listed in a corps’ repertoire.  

What the corps are currently putting out is the arrangers’ ideas that are influenced by the rep.

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On 7/11/2018 at 11:44 AM, ouooga said:

No trolling then, wouldn't it be assumed that a Saucedo (or any publisher) would automatically release the rights to the corps? Isn't that exactly what drill designers do, since their artistic work is being written exclusively for XYZ corps?

I guess I've always viewed original drill and original music the same, but I'm not sure if that's the case. It's been a long time since my IP classes in college.

Unless youre talking about iconic drill moves from the BIG names in the activity, drill has no resale value. It's specific to the group performing it and typically, the music being played. Music can more easily be transerred to different performance settings.

 

The Saucedo situation would depend on the agreement between the composer and the commisioning organization. Just because it was written for the Cavaliers doesn't necessarily mean they retain the rights.

Edited by jpaul
typo
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1 hour ago, jpaul said:

Unless youre talking about iconic drill moves from the BIG names in the ctivity, drill has no resale value. It's specific to the group performing it and typically, the music being played. Music can more easily be transerred to different performance settings.

  

 The Saucedo situation would depend on the agreement between the composer and the commisioning organization. Just because it was written for the Cavaliers doesn't necessarily mean they retain the rights.

I guess that's my point then. The agreement should be for full rights, just like how drill works. I get it, the costs are different and the effort is different, but we're talking about an activity where most staff members make less than $2k for their 90-day commitment. Everyone volunteers their talents in this art to a point.

Also drill is definitely resellable. Aren't there tons of Band in a Box programs out there, with pre-programmed scalable drill? How is a line that contorts into a box in 16 counts performed by 64 horns (no copyright problems) so different from a 16 count 8th note run performed by the same 64 horns? The argument I'm making is obviously for drill to be protected under IP law better, but for the purpose of the activity I'd rather see arrangers going the open source drill route.

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2 hours ago, Quad Aces said:

Kdaddy beat me to it - drum corps music today is pretty much original music anyway.  More often than not, you are lucky if you hear more than a few bars of any of the pieces listed in a corps’ repertoire.  

What the corps are currently putting out is the arrangers’ ideas that are influenced by the rep.

This was the original reason this idea came to mind. If corps aren't playing full pieces anyways, when only 20 seconds of a 3-minute piece is recognizable, why spend the money? Especially with so little return?

As someone who is not an arranger, honestly, is that much harder to write a piece in the style of swing v. just arranging Swing Swing Swing for drum corps?

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There's some massive generalization going on here.  Not every corps plays 20-second clips.  Heck, look at the top of the standings right now for Vanguard - if you've heard the source music, those are some pretty straightforward and faithful arrangements. 

Down nearer the bottom of the DCI pyramid, we found last year that the Kanye stuff we wanted to play was fairly easy and straightforward to get permissions for.  Not so the Hindemith. 

But as Kamarag says, even a corps composer has a legal right to his own work, unless he signs it away.  And I'm willing to bet the number of composers willing to do that is going to be incredibly small. 

Mike

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2 hours ago, ouooga said:

I guess that's my point then. The agreement should be for full rights, just like how drill works.

 

You're certainly not the first person to suggest that idea, but without being too verbose on how the law works, music and drill are not the same. When composers are freelance, they certainly can assign rights to the corps they write for, but it's not in their best interests to do so. Additionally, the composer may have a contract with a publisher (and many do) that would preclude assigning rights to the commissioning organization. Traditionally, commissioned works never include publication rights.

Additionally, it's not really valid to compare music and drill. Drill isn't subject to copyright in the same way music is. While a drill writer could conceivably copyright the actual drill sheets he/she produces, the actual dots moving on the field wouldn't be subject to that copyright. It's kind of like how recipe publication and copyright works.

 

Edited by Kamarag
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On 7/11/2018 at 9:18 AM, JAZZER said:

I agree. 

I think back to how Bloo would have these tasty arrangements of jazz charts that really were amazing creations; yet because of the prominent melodic content-the listener always had solid recognition of both the form of the chart as well as the overall aesthetic motif. [Liking how much of this has remained for them]

As you shared, many of today's arrangements [equally creative & wonderful] are designed imo in such a comparatively different idiomatic style.

I can appreciate both, especially when the entire ensemble brings it, but surely notice distinction of what you mentioned.

 

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