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The Place Of Modern MIDI Music?
-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?"
But if they DO belong to the original owner, who would the rights for the song my 56k modem plays belong to?
Grammar Nazi
GarageBand and/or Reason for Windows or GNU/Linux?
It would be nice to know of equivalents that you don't have to pay an arm and a leg for.
--- Grow a pair, liberals... stop letting the Republicans bully you!
It's not like these midi files are going to take away sales from the artists. "Oh, no, I'm not going to buy that cd. I've already got the midi." But, if I heard a really good midi song, it might get me to buy the cd.
... create a near studio quality rendition of their favorite song.
Maybe I've missed something big, but I didn't know such amazing vocal support was built into MIDI formats. I guess I could always put the lyrics in and let Microsoft Sam (tm) sing it for me, but I'd rather die a horrible, horrible death.
Well, legally it is probably both. It is probably a copy of the original work, meaning that you're not allowed to distribute your remix. It is also probable that you will have a copyright in the remixed version. I.e. no one will dare distribute anything. ;-)
IAAAL - I am actually a lawyer
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.
1. MIDI files are often not produced by the copyright owner. Therefore, the underlying song composition is owned by the copyright owner(s) (i.e. publisher and composer); 2. The arrangement *might* be copyrightable by the MIDI programmer. 3. The US Copyright Office equates MIDI files with audio media(!); 4. If anyone remembers the Negativland / U2 debacle - one of the versions Negativland produced and was sued for was in fact running from a MIDI file; 5. Copyright owners were pretty strict about people distributing MIDI files: One webmaster states she received a letter from the Harry Fox Agency in December 1999 demanding the removal of offending MIDI files. The HFA also contacted the ISP which temporarily suspended the website until the files were removed. Web Thumper's MIDI Site, a popular source for MIDI files was permanently shut down following a copyright dispute.
In music you have copyright on a particular recording of a song, which is what you get sued for infringing upon when filesharing. In addition you have copyright on the song itself - the lyrics, melody, composition, etc. If you look at the liner notes for a CD you will see something like "Copyright CrooksR'US Records. All rights reserved". This is the copyright notice for the recording. You often see names listed by each song, or a note to the effect of "All songs written by Your Favorite Band". This is attributing who wrote the song. This person (people) get royalties on all performances (including bar cover-bands), and recordings of the song, not just this specific recording.
This would clearly be infringing on the second copyright (on the song), but not the first (on the recording).
MIDI, the Musical Instrumant Digital Interface, merely sends instructions for an instrument (could be a synthesizer or a sampler or any number of other devices) to then create sound. There is no actual audio. MIDI data can be represented in many different forms, be it a list of instruction in hexadecimal, a matrix of controller values, or even as printed sheet music. Asking whether or not a MIDI "remix" or re-writing is an original creation is similar to asking whether or not someone who takes previously written sheet music and transcribes it and changes it is creating a new work.
It all depends on the level of art and interpretation in the work (think about Cage, for instance, and his work in creating scores from astronomical maps) and the legalities. I cannot comment on the legalities of rewriting music, as I am just a musician and an engineer, not a lawyer.
As far as I know, it is not illegal to transcribe audio into sheet music, which is basically what one does when creating a MIDI file from digital (or analog) audio.
Shouldn't You expect more from your DJ?
There are free sequencers and samplers. However that's only half the battle, I mean if you get a Creative X-Fi you have a reasonable sampler right there. The real problem is in samples. I can take a MIDI and do two renderings for you using the same software. One will sound damn near real, the other will sound cheesy. The only difference will be the samples used.
Free samples that are any good are much harder to come by. There are plenty of free soundfounts, but many are quite bad and non I've seen are near what you get with good ample packs. Also, a large number out there that are free did no checking on the legality of what they are using. So you may get a free sample you like, but it may actually be ripped off from somewhere else and not legit.
Unfortunately in the good sample arena, I'm not aware of any non arm n' leg solutions. You just seem to get what you pay for. If you pay $200 for an orchestral set, it'll be pretty good. If you pay $2000 for one, it'll sound almost perfect. If you pay nothing for it, it'll sound fake and may not even be legit.
Greetings, Mr. Noculture. There's a such thing as music without vocals.
Just FYI.
- It's not the Macs I hate. It's Digg users. -
If I have a laser printer and a computer, and manually copy a book by typing it into my favorite word processor, i'll be able to print a nearly equal quality rendition of the book - but that doesn't make me the author. In the case of a MIDI it's the same, the author rights of the original composition still lie with the composer.
[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?
Visit http://ringbreak.dnd.utwente.nl/~mrjb/growingbettersoftware to download your free copy of the book
This is not a complete list, but Reason and GarageBand are not free nor open source, so these links might be useful:
:-)
- ardour, Digital Audio workstation / http://ardour.org/
- Rosegarden, audio and MIDI sequencer, score editor, and general-purpose music composition and editing environment / http://www.rosegardenmusic.com/
- LilyPond, music notation / http://lilypond.org/web/
- MusE MIDI/Audio sequencer / http://muse.serverkommune.de/
- Audacity, music editing station / http://audacity.sourceforge.net/
- Music Theory (free, not oss): http://www.musictheory.net/ and http://andyvn.ath.cx/Software-Aquallegro.php
- general link: http://linux-sound.org/
Cheers
Animoog.org
< You have a MIDI. May I add the lyrics? >
/
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\ O| |O|
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% Y
/ There she was just a-shouting to the street \
| Singing: I want Word from Office from Microsoft |
| Snapping her keyboard and shuffling her mouse |
| Singing: I want Word from Office from Microsoft |
| |
\ Want more?
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\ / __ \
\ O| |O|
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% No, kthx.
There are two proudcts for singing that I'm aware of that are pretty good. One is Yamaha's Vocaloid. That's for solo vocals http://www.vocaloid.com/en/index.html for info and demos. It's pretty good, generally needs to be masked behind some kind of effects to not sound too synthesized, but still pretty impressive. The other is the EastWest Symphonic Choirs. As the name implies, it's choir samples and is geared for classical, but damn, when properly programmed I challenge you to tell them apart from the real deal. http://www.soundsonline.com/sophtml/details.phtml? sku=EW-165 for info and demos.
US Democracy:The best person for the job (among These pre-selected choices...)
If you are doing an orignal composition and you compose for your samples then it works well. I mean hell, the SNES songs were 64kb all said and done between music and (compressed) samples.
However it's one thing to be doing an orignal work, it's another to try and do a "studio quality" rendition of an existing peice. No matter how good a composer you are, a little 1MB piano sample is going to sound, well, fake. You aren't going to fool anyone for the real thing. without a couple hundred MB sample at least.
Both are laudable goals. I am a huge fan of music done on older technologies (espically game music, hence the remasters I do) and I have a big collection of MOD (and derivitive) files. However it's a real different challenge to try and make a rendition of a MIDI that sounds like it was done with real isntruments than to compose an orignal MIDI to sound cool using a given sample set.
It's a different kind of MIDI programming even. I find that often, some of the best sounding MIDIs on my SoundCanvas translate the worst when played with higher grade samples. They are designed with certian assumptions in mind that just aren't valid and would need ot be redone. However some of the ones that come of as cheesy end up sound pretty damn good when you throw a few GB of samples at them.
A lot of it depends how close your samples are to the ones the composer used. For example the Edirol songs sound the very best on my SoundCanvas. No supprise, that was the hardware they were composed on.
If creating your own midi files/ringtones was illegal then companies such as handy.de, musiwave and WES would not have been able to start out.
(probably worth pointing out for the pedants that handy.de was bought by one of the big producers a couple of years ago and renamed to Arvato)
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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.
Clickety Click
are you seriously asking the slashdot community for legal advice?
once the owner of a recorded work has had a go, anyone is allowed to cover it - but the owner (that's the creative person who had the idea, not someone who can write midi files) is entitled to their share of the proceeds. the record companies don't care if anyone remixes or covers or records/writes a midi file or writes up the dots for one of their hits - but if you make any money at it, you have to pay up. if your reworked version wakes up interest in an old hit, they are laughing too. tribute bands survive on this basis (regrettably?); the record companies just let it happen - it's free advertising for them. also! if you sit up late in your office working up a midi file on reason with a view to taking over the scene from teenage DJs, Propellerhead (and owners of the samples you downloaded) will come down on you before Sony do on the other hand, I just did Birdland for banjo, bouzouki and sitar (and acoordion of course) over a few d&b beats - had a ball - and how long would I have to wait for Joe to do that? have fun, forget the consequences of the unlikely event that you get famous doing it! besides, it's better not to do something you love doing for money - you'll soon get to hate it
The RIAA doesn't own all music, you know...
I am TheRaven on Soylent News
The law on MIDI files directly draws on Piano Roll legislation. In particular the Compulsary Mechanical License.
The original composer of the music holds all rights to the music until he signs it away to a music publisher. The original composer is important because copyright lasts for the entire life of the composer plus an additional 70 years. (Thanks to Disney and Sonny Bono)
At this stage the Piano Roll maker is not allowed to transcribe it into mechanical (digital) form until he gets permission from the publisher - or - someone else performs it first.
Once the copyright owner of a musical composition records and distributes the work to the public, or allows someone else to do so, anyone that wishes to record and distribute that same work may do so without permission (subject to certain limitations) by issuing the copyright owner a notice of intention to obtain a compulsory license. After that the only legal requirement is to pay a compulsory mechanical reproduction fee of 6.95 cents per copy to the publisher or their agent (Harry Fox - who license from 1,000 copies upwards).
So, how does this apply to MIDI? Those "free" MIDI files you can download off the internet are only legal if someone else performed them first and if the creator of the MIDI file pays 6.95 cents for every download made.
Orationem pulchram non habens, scribo ista linea in lingua Latina
When I made my living as a photographer, clients would gripe about the cost. "I could have my cousin Freddy shoot my wedding for free!" Well, when cousin Freddy did so, no surprise, he knew nothing about selecting the right gear for the job, even if he could afford it, and nothing about composition, lighting, etc. Recording is the same - you may have a great quality MIDI file. You may, as I do, rip mp3s of your favorite songs, import them to garage band and then replicate the drum track to the song a measure at a time, so you can then play your bass and guitar(s) over the beat and get a 'real' recorded version of the song. You could, like me, sound nothing like Metallica at all. Even if you did sound good, and there are Metallica tribute albums released by major studios that suck, your version would not be a threat to Metallicas.
Besides, an artist, as I recall from a IP class I took (IANAL), has first recording rights to whatever they write. I write a song, I have all rights to it. As I recall, Bob Dylan once used this to deny himself permission to record a song of his. He was in a dispute with his record company, and this was the only way he could get around their demands legally - they could make him produce a record, but not one with content he did not have permission to use, and the songs had not yet been recorded by him or anyone else. Once recorded, however, anyone can cover the song - you can sell tickets to a performance by your band, "Metallica-Lite" and play all Metallicas songs, and sell CDs of your band doing so, but you can't represent yourselves to be Metallica.
If you distribute commercially, you may have to pay royalties, and that seems kinda crappy, but I would think it would be 'a piece of the action' rather than a fixed amount - so if your Metallica tribute album sells 4 copies, you owe a percent of those four sales. I'd get a lawyer if you go that route...
Short answer - replicate/remix/reproduce all you like - derivative works are just that - the property of the creator, unless they are so close to the original that they are identical, in which case, it is a replica and (as of now) illegal to sell/distribute without permission.
My $.025 (inflation, y'know...)
Make that modern synth sounds, or samples. Midi is just the on/off instructions, roughly, like a piano roll. Check out this new product from MOTU of sampled sounds you can use with a sequencer:
l /en
http://www.motu.com/products/software/msi/mp3.htm
This sounds pretty real, and I think is sort of what this article was after.
It seems like MIDI discussion come up every so often on Slashdot.
First, a couple things to get cleared up:
MIDI is just a serial protocol, nothing more. It's been around since the early 80's. The protocol defines 128 MIDI notes, on 16 channels, and 128 controllers that have values of 0 - 127. That's basically it, along with a few other things like channel change and bank change messages. MIDI itself does not define any instruments, because MIDI is used to control non-instrument devices like effects boxes too.
Now, when most normal computer people think of MIDI, what they are actually thinking of is GM or "General MIDI." GM defines a standard set of instruments, for example instrument 1 is always a piano, instrument 74 is always a flute, etc.
It's up to the hardware or software to actually implement these instruments, usually done with wavetable samples. The idea is that a MIDI file played through any "GM compatible" device will sound roughly the same on any other GM device, although the quality of the samples varies widely. Roland's GS is an extension of GM.
GM used to be used for games primarily (think Doom1 and Doom2!) but has fallen by the wayside now that everybody is using full audio tracks for music.
But most of the music created for video games these stays was still created using MIDI! The file format is specific to the studio application, but MIDI is still used internally to communicate with various synthesizers and samplers including virtual synths that run on the local machine.
So if you were to get the original data files, you would need to also have the sample libraries-- which are VERY high quality, and can cost several thousand dollars. And you need to be using software that works with these libraries, which rules out free/OSS software-- you're gonna NEED something like Sonar, Logic Audio, etc.
Almost all video games and most TV shows that have symphonic music are actually MIDI based, but use enormous sample libraries like EastWest symphony orchestra. In fact I believe that the Return to Castle Wolfenstein soundtrack was created mostly with that sample library.
Other examples, the "fire baby" sequence in The Incredibles is created with Voices of the Apocalypse so even realistic choirs can be created using MIDI.
You don't have to spend THAT much though-- the libraries I use the most are Storm Drum and Garritan Personal Orchestra, both of which are very affordable but good enough that they are often used in hollywood. All of these are plugins that can be used in many different software packages on both OSX and Windows, but not linux that I'm aware of.
So, nowadays MIDI is still an integral part of even the most modern studios, but General MIDI is nowhere in sight. GM still has a place in cell phone ringers.
-CausticPuppy "Of all the people I know, you're certainly one of them." -Somebody I don't know
No matter how good a composer you are, a little 1MB piano sample is going to sound, well, fake.
But some composers embrace the fakeness of a 12 KB toy piano sample and make something like this.
Of course, all it takes is a few modifications to sheet music and it's no longer the same song
Sorry to burst your bubble, but that's a wrong reading of music plagiarism case law. The real case law is worrisome.
"Song" is a colloquial term; the legal term is "musical work". But if "song" is defined in a document (either explicitly or implicitly) to refer to any musical work, then for purposes of that document, a "song" can have no lyrics.
MIDI data - at its most basic - records that a note is played (note on) the note location (pitch), the duration of said note, and the volume (often expressed in terms of note velocity) and that the note has stopped playing (note off). However, there are other pieces of data that can be transmitted, such as patch change up, patch change down, pitchbend, and data generated from continuous controllers such as modulation wheels.
If you take a typical and ordinary piece of MIDI data, it only has detectible relation to a given piece of music if the note data is matched to tones produced by a synthesizer or sampler (or a computer program that functions as such) that permit the possibility of melody and harmony. If the tones are, for instance, Latin Percussion, and their is a different non-pitched tone for each note on the keyboard, one would be extremely hard pressed to detect that the MIDI data making it happen was derived of a particular song.
MIDI note data, in point of fact, has NOTHING to do with the timbres generated by the end device, be it synth, sampler, and computer. Also, MIDI note data is easily dislodged from time, and it can be cut up, pasted, and used to trigger other MIDI generators (such as arpeggiators), and can also be subjected to randomisation and processing schemes.
So, one could easily take some drippy POS tune from the likes of Celine Dion, delete entire ranges of its data, take a section that might be too slow but is interesting, loop it and play it at 400 beats per minute, and then have the remainder trigger an arpeggiator that then triggers some Big Beat Drum machine sounds or a selection of machine . I seriously doubt anyone would be able to tell whether it was pulled from Celine Dion or Britney Spears or Claude Debussey, because:
Data that is used for pitch is not inherently tied to a pitched tone.
MIDI can functionally resemble a piano roll, but only if a player piano plays it. If you remove the pitched instrument (the player piano) the data of the "piano roll" can be used to trigger other kinds of nonpitched events (a drum, an explosion, a "thwip", a car engine, a generator, or whatever sample you assign to a given key position, etc. etc. etc.) and thusly make a lot of interesting sounds. Also, the piano roll can be played backwards (i.e., MIDI data is easily processed.)
Hence: the relationship between MIDI data and a given stream of MIDI data's copyright is actually rather problematic. Recreating a track by Celine Dion (or any other pointless musical product puked out by the music industry's star system) is an interesting academic exercise in MIDI programming, but it's not terribly creative. It would be much more interesting to mulch her MIDI data and make something interesting out of it.
RS
Shoes for Industry. Shoes for the Dead.
The only real advantage of MIDI over audio files like MP3 or OGG is that the actual notes being played can be learned when viewing the MIDI file through a notation program. The best notation software that I've used is MIDIsoft Studio4 even though it's ten years old.
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.
My subject line actually is derived from an interesting article I read ages ago on a legal website. (I wish I could remember now where it was.) Viewed in a utilitarian way, a file/stream/CD/DVD or any other digital rendering of a work is essentially a set of instructions to a device to reproduce the work. Taking this even further, one can consider the entire file/stream/CD/DVD to be a single integer. While I'm not suggesting there isn't a great deal of skill and artistry to "find the integer" that creates the work and that copyright holders are entitled to protection, the fact that copyright law forbids unauthorized copying of digital works in essence means that you can't make a copy of an integer.
If it weren't for deadlines, nothing would be late.
A song as a MIDI file is a cover, and simply that. Asking Is it piracy? is a ridiculous question, since piracy is a dumb word the entertainment industries use to refer to the infringement of their works' copyrights. Is it copyright infringement? is a valid question. That, of course, depends on whether or not you have the original artist's (or record company's) permission to sell or perform the song in question.
Of course, MIDI files are hardly realistic. It's doubtful that any record company would consider a MIDI file a threat to a song's sales. What would really concern them would be a MP3 of a MIDI: a MIDI fed through a Virtual Studio Technology plugin (VST plugin) - audio plugins that can be used in conjunction with MIDI sequencers to give MIDI tracks a whole new sound. VST plugins can make a MIDI track infinitely better, since VST plugins use actual audio samples. It's possible to make a song that sounds just like the original though VST technology, and I'm sure record label executives would take notice if they found songs like that floating around on the p2p networks.
If you're reading this, stop it.