The Place Of Modern MIDI Music? 261
-1-Lone_Eagle writes "With the free availability of literally thousands of MIDI files on the Internet, and increasingly powerful home desktop systems and software, virtually anyone can take a MIDI file and using a program such as GarageBand or Reason create a near-studio-quality rendition of their favorite song. This opens up an interesting discussion, is a remixed MIDI file an original creation? Or is it simply a copied work with the rights belonging to the original author? Is it piracy? What do you think?"
not piracy (Score:5, Insightful)
Isn't it obvious (Score:5, Insightful)
Even if the original work is out of copyright, for example Beethoven's works, the rights to the "notation or manuscript" is owned by whoever printed or published it, since classical music can be notated in different ways according to different interpretations. This goes for any piece of music. Also, the midi file, even of an out of copyright piece of music is the intellectual property of the author. I've created my own versions of several pieces of classical music, made them available on the internet and I've noticed in the years since I've come across those files under different names. It's the same midi I made, just someone has put their own name as author\tracker in the file. It's not cool.
Instrumental Music (Score:5, Insightful)
Just FYI.
Why not... (Score:5, Insightful)
[v]irtually anyone can take a midi file and using a program such as Garage Band or Reason create a near studio quality rendition of their favorite song
Technically, that's true. If it's going to be any good, however, *still* depends on talent, sensitivity and hard work. Never mind great soundfonts, and great software, if you don't know how to use them or lack the patience to endlessly tweak things until they sound just right, it's never going to sound as good as the original.
The people at (formerly) Media Ventures do some absolutely stunning stuff with MIDI, software and synthesizers. Ever listened to the soundtrack of "The Thin Red Line"? Some parts are MIDI/synthesizers. Some are real orchestra. Can you tell the difference? Hint: no. Can you reproduce it in equal quality? Sure, if you have the correct soundfonts, enough sensitivity, stacks of equipment and a lot of time on your hands. But it won't make you the composer of the work.
That said, unless planning to unjustly rip off the hard work of other people, I don't see why one would want to call a MIDI rendition of an original work "their own composition". Why not simply give credit where credit is due?
Publishing (Score:3, Insightful)
Midi is essentially sheet music (Score:3, Insightful)
Midi is definately copyrighted because its the same as sheet music. Whatever laws apply to sheet music apply to midi files because they are interchangable. Just because windows midi players suck and most people ignore these music files doesn't mean they can't be made to sound righteous and that they shouldn't be subject to the same copyright laws as written music. Thats all it is is sheet music and your midi synth is the orchestra that is playing the music for you. The better your synth the better the overall result.
Re:not piracy (Score:5, Insightful)
Well, then, he sure was quick to make millions and millions of dollars off of "everybody's" possesion. That luxury apartment in New York wasn't free, and Yoko Ono is pretty high-maintenance.
For a guy that sang "imagine no possessions," it's hard not to notice that he retained his IP rights and the cash.
Re:MIDI is akin to printed music (Score:5, Insightful)
Midi files are like player piano rolls, which are publications of performances and copyrightable. (Some of the arcane ways used to delineate the available copyrights for music makes more sense when one realizes that at the time pop music took off, the late 19th century and early 20th, it was the quantity of sheet music and player piano rolls sold which made a song a "hit.")
As for doing transcriptions, fair use allows one to do that for personal use, but xeroxing sheet music or scores and/or selling your transcription infringes on rights held by the publisher for works still in copyright. Remember getting "Real Books," which were sold under the counter to working musicians who needed an inexpensive, publisher agnostic collection of standards for weddings, bar mitzvahs, and casual gigs? There was a reason it was under the counter.
Incorporating significant portions of someone else's midi-transcribed performance would make one's work a derivative work, and licensing of the midi information from its rights holder would be required. Now, doing a live peformance which incorprated a pc playing someone else's midi files -- I would guess that requires a license. But a lot of this stuff is overlooked until someone starts making money from someone else's work. And no, I am not a lawyer.
Re:Instrumental Music (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Instrumental Music (Score:2, Insightful)
-the doctor
The Real Advantage to MIDI (Score:5, Insightful)
Notation software takes the MIDI file and displays it as sheet music. If you can read music (and anyone who can learn C can learn to read music) then you can learn how to play really complicated songs this way. Guitar Tab text files usually only give you simple and often wrong chord changes. Anything beyond G-Em-C-D (I-VIm-IV-V - the progression used in thousands of 1950s-1970s songs) is going to be hard to figure out for non-professionals just sitting down with a guitar and a recording. Almost all older songs have their most complicated chord structures and arpeggios mapped out into MIDI by musically-proficient fans. All the songs played on 'classic rock' FM stations can be learned this way. This is also a great way to learn big-band era stuff from the 1940s and even how older European classical music works. Mozart and Tchaikovsky (the Nutcracker Suite, etc...) can be learned even if you don't have access to the sheet music scores from a library or music store.
MIDI files played into synthesizers, even newer GM synths, don't sound very good even when they have been expertly constructed. It's a fact. There are too many nuances to the playing technique that don't get encoded into the MIDI file. The synths aren't really all that great either. Purely electronic ambient music works like Brian Eno and Steve Roach have a much better chance of being recreated from MIDI files fed into advanced synths. But the idea that a modern pop song can be recreated by MIDI should not be taken seriously. Synths can't reproduce standard instruments like electric guitars and saxophones realistically.
A number of sheet music publishers are trying to get all MIDI files removed from the web. This is short-sighted and cruel on their part. MIDI files encourage people to learn to read and play music far more better than anything that the music publishers could do to develop this market. With music classes being dropped extensively from American public schools, anything that teaches people to interact with printed music scores is a positive thing.
It just sucks that music classes are being dropped by stupid uncultured brain-dead public school administrators (is there any other type?). And to drop music classes for more algebra? Insane. Most people listen to music every single day; very few people ever use algebra after high school. The priorities of the public schools are completely wrong. It's a tragedy.