So let’s say I buy a $30 music book at Border’s and decide I want to do one song from that book in my band. I make a copy of it for my bass player to look at while we’re at rehearsal and then let him take that copy home to study it while I use the book. Let’s even say that the copy I gave to him I wrote by hand into a chart form and fixed the errors. Your saying that is illegal? Well, handcuff me and take me away because I’m still gonna do it. It would be ridiculous to ask him to buy his own $30 book just to do one song.
And CookingwithGas what you said about making a copy of a brand new CD that you just bought for a friend seems completely different. In that case you would make a copy of every song. If it were me and it were my music book being copied, from a struggling musicians standpoint, I wouldn’t be upset if I knew people were copying a song or two to learn and become better musicians. Now copying the whole book is a different story.
On a side note though - I do also burn copies of the songs we are learning in my band for the other musicians to learn at home. The songs come from all different CD’s that I have purchased. Wait, no…I don’t really do that 'cuz it would be totally illegal. So scratch that last paragraph :D.
You know, it’s always possible to contact the publisher and say, look, I am in a band of four people, and we want to perform this one song. Is there any way you can sell us all the music just for this song so we don’t all have to buy the whole $30 book. I wouldn’t be surprised if there were a lot of music publishers who do this.
I agree with dreamer on this. I’m doing a rock tune and I buy the music for the chords (no, we’re not using the condensed piano arrangement of the song that’s provided). I could memorize the chords, and tell them to everybody, write them out on my own, or just photocopy the music I’ve got and hand that out. I don’t think there’s any reason to expect someone to not do the latter. In that case, we’re using the music as a “learning aid,” and are not performing the music in the score, per se.
I would definately have no problem with that and will look into it. What about tabs and charts that are posted on the net? There’s a ton of them and though some of the sites have been closed down or are not adding new tabs, they are still there. Is it illegal to print them? There is one site that I visit often that has a ton of jazz standards with the exact music from a jazz fake book. The site’s been online for a long time and I’ve never heard a word about it being illegal.
OTOH, copying your own handwritten version that even fixes errors creates a derivative work, not simply a copy of the copyrighted material. Frankly I don’t know the rules of derivatives works.
Doesn’t matter if it’s the whole CD, one song, a solo from one song, or a digital sample of one note. The law is the same for copyrighted material in whole or part.
As the owner of the copyright, you can express your altruism with a free blanket license with a phrase something like, “The buyer is free to copy one or two songs but only if they are struggling musicians.” I have never seen a case where a copyright holder has ever granted permission to freely copy even a portion of copyrighted material for other than fair use except shareware and where the copyright is held by the U.S. Government (BTW that doesn’t automatically mean it’s in the public domain).
BTW to state the obvious this discussion is somewhat academic since there is a huge difference between what is illegal and what you’re going to get procecuted for. But technically an illegal act that seems reasonable, convenient, common, and rarely prosecuted is still illegal. Like going 60 in a 55.