Maybe it was within another thread—an offer to open up an AMA. Maybe one did not actually materialize. I swear I did not imagine this. 
I play bass in an old-school R&B combo. We do a lot of New Orleans stuff. At 73, I am the youngest of the four members.
I have a gig in a few weeks playing bass in a trio that will perform nothing but minor-key songs. Two hours of that should prove interesting.
Also play guitar and tenor guitar in a bluegrass/country outfit.
US copyright law had not changed (substantially) from 1909 to 1976. As you can imagine, in 1909, recordings (cylinders?) were not good to preserve music compositions, and most people didn’t have access to recording equipment anyway.
So it made sense to the lawmakers that to store the representation of the composition (that’s different from the actual sound), written music in standardized 18th century notation was a pretty good compromise. Besides, ca. 1909, if you had written a song (on guitar, piano, whatever), the only way to sell it to the public was to produce what was commonly called a “Piano/Vocal” arrangement. If you went to the music store, this is what you would find in multiple racks.
A P/V, as the name implies, is a part for a vocal with piano accompaniment, typically 3 staff lines. Pretty soon guitar or ukulele chords were included. This is what Grandma Potts in Bumfuck, Kansas used to play a popular song for the family. She probably hadn’t heard anyone else playing if first, and couldn’t improvise, so she needed every note on paper.
Things changed drastically over the next half-decade. P/V arrangements can still be had, but instead of preceding the release of a new song, usually followed it, and only if the song had become popular enough to warrant the expense.
When the 1909 copyright office drew up their rules, they included the wording to the applicant, “submit the best copy” of your song. Obviously that meant a P/V or some other written music in 1909, and attorneys continued to interpret the law accordingly until congress got to work on updating it.
I wasn’t around in the swing era, but in the rock+ era, songwriters often didn’t read or write music. They composed by playing, not writing. What to do if you have a hit song written, and you want to copyright it, but you can’t produce an adequate printed copy?
Enter the more technically/formally advanced musician, who not only can write music, but might be able to listen to the song and transfer the acoustic data to paper. I have a BA in music theory, which is a good start, but I had to learn to use a music pen, too.
Musicians for a long time often relied on a “lead sheet” (pronounced LEED sheet) to communicate with each other. Write a quick, scribbled lead sheet of your new song, and any good band, pianist, or combo can fake it enough to get by.
A lead sheet is a form of musical shorthand, and contains the 3 most important elements of most pop songs (from pre-Tin Pan Alley to today). They are: 1. The melody (if any), 2. The harmony (if any), and 3. The lyrics (if any). Note that they don’t tell anyone what the 3rd trumpet in a big band might be playing, and they don’t specify the exact notes for anyone (anything, even the melody, can be changed in pop and jazz).
The melody is usually written in 18th-Century common notation; the lyrics, in some language, and the harmony in standard chord symbols, like E, A7 or Bm.
A lead sheet may have multiple purposes, not just for copyright. If an arranger is working on a large orchestra, the songwriter or publisher will try to get him a lead sheet to save him time. A publisher will also include a lead sheet with a demo tape or record when submitting the song to a recording artist who might record it.
The reason I found an occupation in the early 1970’s was because I could listen to a song, pick up the essential elements in one listening, write a sketch on paper, then transfer the sketch to a finished, highly readable, pen-&-ink master. I could complete this process from start to finish in about an hour to an hour and a half for a typical pop song. (Country songs are easiest, jazz can take some time.)
The musician’s union at the time had a pricing schedule for this same process that charged for the takedown sketch plus the pen&ink final copy, maybe using two copyists. But I could do the whole thing faster and cheaper. You wanna pay 2 copyists $75 for the song, or $22 to me for the same work?
And, for publishers, I picked up and delivered twice a week, and could make multiple copies upon request (Xerox machines were rare then, fax, scanning and email didn’t exist, and most music didn’t fit on a page anyway, so I used specialized equipment.)
Then the law changed, and the attorneys told the publishers that they could deposit a recording instead of a lead sheet. There are still good, practical uses for lead sheets nowadays, but for me, the market dried up over 2 years.
An anecdote, if you will permit me. I said the lyrics are included with a lead sheet, but the US copyright office made a ruling when a songwriter (Harry Middlebrooks) submitted a gospel song with the phrase, “Feelin’ the spirit,” repeated over and over. Copyright ruled that that didn’t qualify as a lyric, so no one could take credit as the lyricist, only the composer. The application had to be rewritten without any lyricist credit.
Last comment about this…You can buy “Fake Books” that have only lead sheets on the pages. Many legal ones now exist, from one to three songs on a page, but years ago, these were illegal, as no copyright royalties were paid. I bought my Volumes I-III from a guy who sold them out of his trunk to starving musicians who needed to learn songs fast. Three tunes to a page.
Mods – I heartily apologize about including all this history in the thread, but I often get requests for it. If you (or the OP) doesn’t want it here, shorten it to one line and I’ll start a new thread.
I took about a decade of piano lessons. I also played trombone in the school band. In any school band you get a handful of students who take it seriously and know their parts and a bunch of students who don’t. The teacher would spend much of the time trying to get the not-so-serious students up to speed so that the overall band sounded reasonable. Since I knew my parts and was kinda bored, and the tuba player next to me also knew his parts and was kinda board, we would sometimes switch instruments and learn each other’s parts. The teacher never said anything, so either he didn’t notice, or he didn’t care since we both knew our parts well.
My trombone skills have completely atrophied and I’ve since forgotten the fingering for a tuba.
I taught myself how to play the guitar, bass, and drums. I’m fairly decent on the guitar and bass. I can keep a beat on a drum set, but I don’t really call myself a drummer.
I’ve been on stage a couple of times (back in my college days). We got paid, so I guess technically I was a professional? By the time we were done paying the sound guy and whatever other fees were involved, I think we all made about $25 each total. I wasn’t doing it for the money though. I had fun. That’s all that mattered.
I have a little recording studio set up in my basement (basically just a Tascam 16 track digital recorder and some mixing boards). I don’t use it much though. I never seem to have enough time for it.
Lotta bass players here.
Who remembers the Ace Frehley line, “I’m the trout playa?”
Awesome post! Thank you!
Any comment on this bit upthread?
My late wife was a small time gig performer like several folks upthread. So I got to carry her gear, buy drinks for the band, and spend a lot of happy nights in smoky dives vicariously playing the table drums. Hence my interest in this thread.
My musical skills? When asked, which happened most nights, I’d say “I play the CD. I’ve mastered Play and Rewind, but I’m still working on Fast Forward and Skip.”
Which is a very accurate summary. I wish it was not so, but it is. A man has got to know his limitations.
AMA? That’s an acronym I’m not familiar with. Embiggen me!
I’ve written on this topic here since 1999. Unfortunately, I don’t have a ready index of all my applicable posts, and am resisting the effort to search for and categorize them. Maybe that’s a future rainy-day activity.
“Ask me anything”. As in “I’m a guru in [whatever] … Ask me anything”
There were many such threads on many boards back in the day.
That was often suggested, and although I contributed many stories in random threads, I never followed through with a “formal” AMA.
Yeah, I searched for an “ask the” post, which have been here for at least fifteen years, but I don’t see one by Musicat. I seem to remember mentioning it in a thread, and Musicat writing something like “do you think anyone would be interested” or “should I start one,” but apparently nothing ever came of it.
Very, very much a hobbyist…I play flute and piccolo with the local Shriners’ concert band and sing with a large barbershop chorus.
I was working on becoming a decent sax player when I was a kid, but in high school this other guy was just over-the-top incredible and I figured “oh, THAT’S an actual musician” and I lost my way.
That guy was Lenny Pickett, who you know from the Saturday Night Live band. Unmistakable, and still an otherworldly talent (and wonderfully generous human being).
A couple of years ago I got a TravelSax, an electronic gizmo that provides all the sax keys and lets me play into headphones with or without accompanying tracks, without disturbing the neighborhood. Still not a “real” musician, but having a blast.
Flute player, in a community pep band that does street music and various community events. We have a Facebook page and everything.
I don’t so much play banjo and guitar as play with them. I use them to sing relevant songs to my history classes. The banjo has the benefit of waking them up in the nosebleed section of the lecture hall.
Guitar, keys, bass, occasional drums, and I’ve dabbled in all of the instruments of the high school concert band as I used to be a band teacher. Mostly the first three these days.
Right. Probably my most useful contribution would be at the mixer console.
I always knew I was never going to be the Next Beatles, but I could do a fairly good George Martin job…
No objections from me. I’m interested in all aspects of music, artistic and technical.
I remember that whole discussion, because it was fascinating! Though it might have been another poster. But either way, I can’t find it now. 
Musicologist / music historian by training and still on an amateur basis as the spouse is a professional one and occasionally asks me to read through stuff for a second opinion. I also write the odd program note when asked.
Most of my musical activity over the years has been singing in choirs and other vocal groups, including early music ensembles, doowop groups, chamber ensembles, church choirs, a Russian choir, offstage chorus for theatrical productions and (mostly these days) a large active chorus affiliated with a professional orchestra. I’ve done three concerts in the past three weeks and am taking the next month or so off before the autumn concert season kicks in.
Technically I also play the cello but I’d put my current skill level at “extremely rusty”.