In a recently published volume of tunes "for Scottish fiddlers", several traditional tunes have been included. However, each of them have been credited as "Traditional, arranged by....".
In a few cases, the arrangement is by a particular musician while the remainder have been credited to the author of the book.
From what I can see, very few of these arrangements are significantly different from what I or many other musicians would actually play in a session or a performance.
Of course, if a player has made a conscious effort to rearrange a particular tune, eg add a variation, compose an extra part etc, then I agree that he/she should receive some credit for this.
However, just transcribing a traditional tune and publishing it in a book is hardly your own "arrangement" even if one or two notes might differ. After all, there are several different settings of traditional tunes.
Of course, I can understand that it's another possible source of "royalties". However, would performers now be always expected to ensure that their version of a "traditional" tune doesn't have a copyrighted "arrangement" somewhere?
To an extent, credit is already given to other musicians on frequent occasions, i.e. "I learned this from the playing of......" .
So, is copyrighting arrangements just formalising this practice or, on the other hand, just being a "bit naughty"?
This act of disrespect has lead to the various performer's rights folks thinking they can ask for payment from musicians, including sessions, for the playing of tunes slike "Drowsy Maggie" and "The Blackthorn Stick"... The twits who do this argue that their 'arrangements' are their intellectual right, but this act of piracy on tradition muddies the 'rights' issue and has caused problems with tons of traditional tunes listed as 'compositions' by the various musicians who claim rights to the name and melody when they make a few adjustments and claim it's theirs... GRRRRR!!!
There will be those that will praise the musicians unions and performing rights folks, and while I concede they have helped some, I've personally found there is at least as much ignorance and damage resulting from their meddling and strong arm tactics ~ such as 'threats' and misinformation...
In a book, how could it hurt? Sometimes it's a source of irritation when you're looking up stuff through Harry Fox and every common session tune has had mechanical rights claimed by someone or somebody else, but it's yet to have been a problem for me.
Common sense should tell us that unless it is significantly different it isn't theirs but belongs remains in the public domain. 'Tradition' is the property of us all rather than of some one person who has chosen a particular grouping of instruments, set and order of chords, and/or sequence of rolls and other ornaments.
Alas, we, like any other pursuit of passion, are not short of our fat heads and raging ego maniacs...
A book, crediting a source for a 'version' of a tune, well, that isn't necessarily a royalty issue and could be seen as a mere courtesy. I like seeing and hearing different takes on a melody, but to claim that melody as if it was distinctly yours, because you have a slightly different twist on it, nah, I can't see that as anything but gall. Yes, take credit for the variation, but not the melody, which has been how some performing rights people, and musicians, can interpret it, so it seems...
To be fair, assuming I'm right as to the book in question, all the compositions are credited solely to the true composers. The traditional tunes are marked as Trad. arr. **. Not all the arrangements are by the author.
Copyright law, in terms of music, is driven by the vested financial interests of large recording companies. They don't care about the impact of their activities on the rights of people to participate freely in their own cultural heritage, and unfortunately our politicians are too ignorant or careless to protect the common interest from corporate lawyers. Traditions should always be in the public domain. Unfortunately I think that performers' rights groups are following the lead of record-company lawyers, which is a short-sighted strategy, since the artists they represent owe all their musical accomplishment to the very public domain they are undermining.
When the English author Thomas Hardy was a teenager he played fiddle and used to get asked to play at weddings and dances. His mother gave him strict instructions never to accept money for playing. She probably thought it was dishonest to take payment for what you don't own. Good advice, I reckon.
Bogman, we don't need a name, I can't see a problem in 'honesty' where tune collections are concerned. The bones of a melody written down once, or even several times through, is only one 'arrangement' of possibilities for that sequence of notes and chords. There is an honesty in giving credit to those composed and in assuming responsibility for those you've transcribed as you play them, or a semblance of that, which is all the dots or ABCs can do, a shadow of that potential life in the right hands. It is merely a guidance, like a map, not the actual geography and life that map guides you through. That I can respect.
The greater problem is not so much the printed versions but how people represent what they record. This seems to be where performing rights folks are picking up the titles, not from books but from recordings. I think it was here recently that I'd read that a publican was approached by the performing rights folks and asked to pay in order to allow there to be a session in his pub. I'm not surprised, having crossed paths with them before. How daft can they get?
How about just writing "Transcribed by X", with the possible addition of "from the playing of Y"? The term "arranged by" has a legal meaning in music copyright law, a definition which really doesn't have any justifiable purpose in the transmission of traditional music; its use involves claiming ownership of something, when in reality you're participating in something which no-one owns.
My greatest respect for the music is twofold.
We will always have tunes which are in the public domain & this is a keystone in the tradition.
We also have composers & I will do everything I can to credit them by name.
Even though I have been accused of not crediting transcribers & arrangers I in fact do. That is important to me as well. It is the players & composers who have earned my respect.
Many transcribers & arrangers are grand people. Having said that ~ they are a mixed bag of nuts.
It was a different time, but O'Neill simply put his source's name, like Cronin, Touhey, etc at the top right of the tune. I've had someone claim that this meant the person actually wrote the tune -- in some cases that might be true, but overall almost certainly not.
How does jurisprudence work in Ireland, Scotland, England or intra-nationally? Does there have to be a landmark court case to settle it? From what I've gathered on this board the performer's rights people are far more aggressive across the pond than here in the States. I can just imagine the reaction someone would get if they come to a session to say you couldn't play The Humours of Ennistymon because it was copyrighted.
I haven't yet heard of buskers being held up by PRS people and told to disgorge their takings for singing Beatles songs, or whatever. It may well have happened, but not before my eyes in my neck of the woods anyway.
Trouble is, they'd pick on the good ones, who make more money, and leave the appalling ones in peace.
Though there might be a sort of Jesuit cell in the PRS, of sensitive intellectual types whose agenda is at variance with their bosses, who spirit the good buskers away to South America and get the appalling ones built into air terminals or something.
"To be fair, assuming I'm right as to the book in question, all the compositions are credited solely to the true composers. The traditional tunes are marked as Trad. arr. **. Not all the arrangements are by the author."
Bogman, I didn't say otherwise.
However, the majority of the *traditional* tunes do appear to be credited to the author although, as I said, some are also original compositions or arranged by other named musicians.
It's a green book (Vol 3).
Vols One and Two were black and purple and also contained traditional tunes with no named composer. However, it's only in Vol 3 that every published tune is an "arrangement".
Jon, you just have said otherwise..."However, the majority of the *traditional* tunes do appear to be credited to the author although, as I said, some are also original compositions or arranged by other named musicians."
The traditional tunes are not credited to the author, only some of the arrangements. Other trad tunes have arrangement credits to other musicians. e.g. Trad. arr. Jerry Holland. They are credited as trad.
Ok. There's obviously some confusion for which I apologise.
I meant that the majority of traditional tunes (By this I mean ... those which aren't stated to be original compositions) are credited as being *Arranged* by the author of the book. In some cases though, the arrangements are credited to other musicians.
I had thought it was fairly clear that I was talking about "arangements" of tunes rather than their composition. Sorry for any confusion.
Could it just be to discourage wholesale ripping off of the tunes into another publication, without having to put in any effort finding 'good' versions and transcribing them. Someone could take the 'top' 1000 tunes off the database here, pay some kid in a developing country peanuts to copy them from various tunes books (maybe pay another kid to check them) and publish '1000 Favourite Session Tunes.'
At least saying something gives a chance for the orignal publishers to argue the case on the basis that a group of tunes are tone for note the same as in another publication.
Its not new. Anthony Sullivan's "Session tunes" boooks were published in the 1980s and at the bottom of the index page it says "All titles traditional. Arranged by Anthony Sullivan". Putting it at the top of each tune is just putting it where it normally is on sheet music.
Ever wondered why there is no copyright date on things like 'Allans Irish Fiddler' ?
"Trad. Arr." was one of the most prolific songwriters on folk albums of the sixties.
It was explained to me at the time that it was because that meant at least someone would get a royalty.
However, I'm unaware of anyone copying a particular arrangement (which seemed quite common to me) acknowledging it to the extent of "trad. arr. Martin Carthy" or whatever so that the Trad Arr person got anything
My conclusion is that there's not a lot of money in the aforesaid tunebooks, which it must be said are beautifully done and appear a labour of love, as I'm sure JJ would agree, and that the authors, or compilers if you wish, have been advised to claim arrangement if nothing else.
nicholas ~ the PRS folks aren't interested in hassling session players, they go for the publican, or any owner of property where it might be considered that 'performance' takes place. That said, most of my direct experience is their hassling of shops that sell recordings, or public places and commercial premises where the music might be heard over a sound system, or just coming out of a boom box behind the counter. However, I have heard, if rare, the case of a publican being hassled by them.
Some collectors have taken to adding to their printed collections 'arranged by' ~ even when most or everything they've compiled was purloined/ripped-off out of someone else's usually uncredited collection... They see it as some means of insuring their rights to the contents of their collection but I doubt, as public domain, it would have any legal standing. What is also interesting are those that add tunes of known composers without bothering to seek that composer's approval. We've had some incidents here on this site with this. Some have been resolved with removal, others with adding comment...
I used to be in a session in Norwich that the PRS attended.
They hassled the publican and he sent them to us.
We stated that EVERY song/tune we played was traditional and therfore not subject to PRS influence.
He then had the feckin cheek to DEMAND we write down every tune we played so that he could check!
We asked him to come back next week - which he did.
He asked for said list and was politely(not) told to Foxtrot Oscar
he still insisted we write the tunes down and so we suggested he might like to :
(A) Write them down himself if he thought they were copyrighted
(B) Invited to leave by a very large hairy-arsed ex-Special Forces soldier.
We never heard anymore about it.
"Traditional, arranged by............. "
"Traditional, arranged by............. "
In a recently published volume of tunes "for Scottish fiddlers", several traditional tunes have been included. However, each of them have been credited as "Traditional, arranged by....".
In a few cases, the arrangement is by a particular musician while the remainder have been credited to the author of the book.
From what I can see, very few of these arrangements are significantly different from what I or many other musicians would actually play in a session or a performance.
Of course, if a player has made a conscious effort to rearrange a particular tune, eg add a variation, compose an extra part etc, then I agree that he/she should receive some credit for this.
However, just transcribing a traditional tune and publishing it in a book is hardly your own "arrangement" even if one or two notes might differ. After all, there are several different settings of traditional tunes.
Of course, I can understand that it's another possible source of "royalties". However, would performers now be always expected to ensure that their version of a "traditional" tune doesn't have a copyrighted "arrangement" somewhere?
To an extent, credit is already given to other musicians on frequent occasions, i.e. "I learned this from the playing of......" .
So, is copyrighting arrangements just formalising this practice or, on the other hand, just being a "bit naughty"?
What do you think?
# Posted on April 13th 2009 by Back for a while
Re: "Traditional, arranged by............. "
This act of disrespect has lead to the various performer's rights folks thinking they can ask for payment from musicians, including sessions, for the playing of tunes slike "Drowsy Maggie" and "The Blackthorn Stick"... The twits who do this argue that their 'arrangements' are their intellectual right, but this act of piracy on tradition muddies the 'rights' issue and has caused problems with tons of traditional tunes listed as 'compositions' by the various musicians who claim rights to the name and melody when they make a few adjustments and claim it's theirs... GRRRRR!!!
There will be those that will praise the musicians unions and performing rights folks, and while I concede they have helped some, I've personally found there is at least as much ignorance and damage resulting from their meddling and strong arm tactics ~ such as 'threats' and misinformation...
# Posted on April 13th 2009 by ceolachan
Re: "Traditional, arranged by............. "
In a book, how could it hurt? Sometimes it's a source of irritation when you're looking up stuff through Harry Fox and every common session tune has had mechanical rights claimed by someone or somebody else, but it's yet to have been a problem for me.
# Posted on April 13th 2009 by reenactor
Common sense should tell us that unless it is significantly different it isn't theirs but belongs remains in the public domain. 'Tradition' is the property of us all rather than of some one person who has chosen a particular grouping of instruments, set and order of chords, and/or sequence of rolls and other ornaments.
Alas, we, like any other pursuit of passion, are not short of our fat heads and raging ego maniacs...
# Posted on April 13th 2009 by ceolachan
Re: "Traditional, arranged by............. "
Come on Jon Jay - you'll have to put us out of our misery here... who dunnit?
(I suspect I know, but could you possibly give the initials of the arranger, or even just those of the publisher?)
# Posted on April 13th 2009 by Ron P
Re: "Traditional, arranged by............. "
A book, crediting a source for a 'version' of a tune, well, that isn't necessarily a royalty issue and could be seen as a mere courtesy. I like seeing and hearing different takes on a melody, but to claim that melody as if it was distinctly yours, because you have a slightly different twist on it, nah, I can't see that as anything but gall. Yes, take credit for the variation, but not the melody, which has been how some performing rights people, and musicians, can interpret it, so it seems...
# Posted on April 13th 2009 by ceolachan
Re: "Traditional, arranged by............. "
To be fair, assuming I'm right as to the book in question, all the compositions are credited solely to the true composers. The traditional tunes are marked as Trad. arr. **. Not all the arrangements are by the author.
# Posted on April 13th 2009 by bogman
Re: "Traditional, arranged by............. "
Copyright law, in terms of music, is driven by the vested financial interests of large recording companies. They don't care about the impact of their activities on the rights of people to participate freely in their own cultural heritage, and unfortunately our politicians are too ignorant or careless to protect the common interest from corporate lawyers. Traditions should always be in the public domain. Unfortunately I think that performers' rights groups are following the lead of record-company lawyers, which is a short-sighted strategy, since the artists they represent owe all their musical accomplishment to the very public domain they are undermining.
# Posted on April 13th 2009 by Hammurabi Breathnach
Re: "Traditional, arranged by............. "
"...driven by the vested financial interests of large recording companies..."
Ding ding ding. It's all about the $. Any musician who helps these fiends play their greedy games should have trouble looking in a mirror.
# Posted on April 13th 2009 by SWFL Fiddler
Re: "Traditional, arranged by............. "
When the English author Thomas Hardy was a teenager he played fiddle and used to get asked to play at weddings and dances. His mother gave him strict instructions never to accept money for playing. She probably thought it was dishonest to take payment for what you don't own. Good advice, I reckon.
# Posted on April 13th 2009 by Hammurabi Breathnach
Re: "Traditional, arranged by............. "
Bogman, we don't need a name, I can't see a problem in 'honesty' where tune collections are concerned. The bones of a melody written down once, or even several times through, is only one 'arrangement' of possibilities for that sequence of notes and chords. There is an honesty in giving credit to those composed and in assuming responsibility for those you've transcribed as you play them, or a semblance of that, which is all the dots or ABCs can do, a shadow of that potential life in the right hands. It is merely a guidance, like a map, not the actual geography and life that map guides you through. That I can respect.
The greater problem is not so much the printed versions but how people represent what they record. This seems to be where performing rights folks are picking up the titles, not from books but from recordings. I think it was here recently that I'd read that a publican was approached by the performing rights folks and asked to pay in order to allow there to be a session in his pub. I'm not surprised, having crossed paths with them before. How daft can they get?
# Posted on April 13th 2009 by ceolachan
Re: "Traditional, arranged by............. "
How about just writing "Transcribed by X", with the possible addition of "from the playing of Y"? The term "arranged by" has a legal meaning in music copyright law, a definition which really doesn't have any justifiable purpose in the transmission of traditional music; its use involves claiming ownership of something, when in reality you're participating in something which no-one owns.
# Posted on April 13th 2009 by Hammurabi Breathnach
Re: "Traditional, arranged by............. "
My greatest respect for the music is twofold.
We will always have tunes which are in the public domain & this is a keystone in the tradition.
We also have composers & I will do everything I can to credit them by name.
Even though I have been accused of not crediting transcribers & arrangers I in fact do. That is important to me as well. It is the players & composers who have earned my respect.
Many transcribers & arrangers are grand people. Having said that ~ they are a mixed bag of nuts.
# Posted on April 13th 2009 by Random_notes
Re: "Traditional, arranged by............. "
It was a different time, but O'Neill simply put his source's name, like Cronin, Touhey, etc at the top right of the tune. I've had someone claim that this meant the person actually wrote the tune -- in some cases that might be true, but overall almost certainly not.
How does jurisprudence work in Ireland, Scotland, England or intra-nationally? Does there have to be a landmark court case to settle it? From what I've gathered on this board the performer's rights people are far more aggressive across the pond than here in the States. I can just imagine the reaction someone would get if they come to a session to say you couldn't play The Humours of Ennistymon because it was copyrighted.
# Posted on April 13th 2009 by fidkid
Re: "Traditional, arranged by............. "
I haven't yet heard of buskers being held up by PRS people and told to disgorge their takings for singing Beatles songs, or whatever. It may well have happened, but not before my eyes in my neck of the woods anyway.
Trouble is, they'd pick on the good ones, who make more money, and leave the appalling ones in peace.
Though there might be a sort of Jesuit cell in the PRS, of sensitive intellectual types whose agenda is at variance with their bosses, who spirit the good buskers away to South America and get the appalling ones built into air terminals or something.
# Posted on April 13th 2009 by nicholas
Re: "Traditional, arranged by............. "
"To be fair, assuming I'm right as to the book in question, all the compositions are credited solely to the true composers. The traditional tunes are marked as Trad. arr. **. Not all the arrangements are by the author."
Bogman, I didn't say otherwise.
However, the majority of the *traditional* tunes do appear to be credited to the author although, as I said, some are also original compositions or arranged by other named musicians.
It's a green book (Vol 3).
Vols One and Two were black and purple and also contained traditional tunes with no named composer. However, it's only in Vol 3 that every published tune is an "arrangement".
# Posted on April 13th 2009 by Back for a while
Re: "Traditional, arranged by............. "
Jon, you just have said otherwise..."However, the majority of the *traditional* tunes do appear to be credited to the author although, as I said, some are also original compositions or arranged by other named musicians."
The traditional tunes are not credited to the author, only some of the arrangements. Other trad tunes have arrangement credits to other musicians. e.g. Trad. arr. Jerry Holland. They are credited as trad.
# Posted on April 13th 2009 by bogman
Re: "Traditional, arranged by............. "
Ok. There's obviously some confusion for which I apologise.
I meant that the majority of traditional tunes (By this I mean ... those which aren't stated to be original compositions) are credited as being *Arranged* by the author of the book. In some cases though, the arrangements are credited to other musicians.
I had thought it was fairly clear that I was talking about "arangements" of tunes rather than their composition. Sorry for any confusion.
# Posted on April 13th 2009 by Back for a while
Re: "Traditional, arranged by............. "
Could it just be to discourage wholesale ripping off of the tunes into another publication, without having to put in any effort finding 'good' versions and transcribing them. Someone could take the 'top' 1000 tunes off the database here, pay some kid in a developing country peanuts to copy them from various tunes books (maybe pay another kid to check them) and publish '1000 Favourite Session Tunes.'
At least saying something gives a chance for the orignal publishers to argue the case on the basis that a group of tunes are tone for note the same as in another publication.
Its not new. Anthony Sullivan's "Session tunes" boooks were published in the 1980s and at the bottom of the index page it says "All titles traditional. Arranged by Anthony Sullivan". Putting it at the top of each tune is just putting it where it normally is on sheet music.
Ever wondered why there is no copyright date on things like 'Allans Irish Fiddler' ?
# Posted on April 14th 2009 by david_h
Re: "Traditional, arranged by............. "
"Trad. Arr." was one of the most prolific songwriters on folk albums of the sixties.
It was explained to me at the time that it was because that meant at least someone would get a royalty.
However, I'm unaware of anyone copying a particular arrangement (which seemed quite common to me) acknowledging it to the extent of "trad. arr. Martin Carthy" or whatever so that the Trad Arr person got anything
My conclusion is that there's not a lot of money in the aforesaid tunebooks, which it must be said are beautifully done and appear a labour of love, as I'm sure JJ would agree, and that the authors, or compilers if you wish, have been advised to claim arrangement if nothing else.
# Posted on April 14th 2009 by Bren
Re: "Traditional, arranged by............. "
nicholas ~ the PRS folks aren't interested in hassling session players, they go for the publican, or any owner of property where it might be considered that 'performance' takes place. That said, most of my direct experience is their hassling of shops that sell recordings, or public places and commercial premises where the music might be heard over a sound system, or just coming out of a boom box behind the counter. However, I have heard, if rare, the case of a publican being hassled by them.
Some collectors have taken to adding to their printed collections 'arranged by' ~ even when most or everything they've compiled was purloined/ripped-off out of someone else's usually uncredited collection... They see it as some means of insuring their rights to the contents of their collection but I doubt, as public domain, it would have any legal standing. What is also interesting are those that add tunes of known composers without bothering to seek that composer's approval. We've had some incidents here on this site with this. Some have been resolved with removal, others with adding comment...
# Posted on April 14th 2009 by ceolachan
missing sense
~ purloined/ripped-off out of someone else's collection, usually without giving that source credit...
# Posted on April 14th 2009 by ceolachan
Re: "Traditional, arranged by............. "
I used to be in a session in Norwich that the PRS attended.
They hassled the publican and he sent them to us.
We stated that EVERY song/tune we played was traditional and therfore not subject to PRS influence.
He then had the feckin cheek to DEMAND we write down every tune we played so that he could check!
We asked him to come back next week - which he did.
He asked for said list and was politely(not) told to Foxtrot Oscar
he still insisted we write the tunes down and so we suggested he might like to :
(A) Write them down himself if he thought they were copyrighted
(B) Invited to leave by a very large hairy-arsed ex-Special Forces soldier.
We never heard anymore about it.
# Posted on April 22nd 2009 by UKCITTERN