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Provider of Free Public Domain Music Re-Opens
Chip Zoller writes "This community took note when the International Music Score Library Project shut down last October, and when Project Gutenberg stepped in to help three days later. I would like to alert you all that our site, IMSLP, has re-opened to the public for good after a 10-month hiatus. All the news updates in the interim can be found linked to the main page. We take great pride in re-opening as it demonstrates our willpower to make the masterpieces of history free to the world; and moreover to make manifest that we will not be bullied by publishers sporting outrageous claims of copyright in a country where they clearly are expired."
the ensuing slashdot effect will take it offline for another ten months.
Good luck with that.
No, really, I mean it. Be prepared to fight the music mafia, worse than you have before. After all, you are presenting a very nasty precedent for them, that copyright on music actually expires and that people can and do make use of it without even asking them first.
I'm certain, though, that their response will be tu purchase a law that extends copyright in your country, too.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
But where's all the Metallica?
Fantastic.
I, for one, would like to thank and congratulate.
There is no reason why anybody should not be able to download and print copyright free works from 150 years ago, I do - and I am very grateful indeed for the opportunity. Quite apart from that this is a matter of principle - to fight the insidious attempts by labels and corporations to extend copyright and hence earn money even after the original artist is sadly no longer with us.
Now, if only my piano skills were more up to some of the music. Sigh.
http://musopen.com/
Analogies don't equal equalities, they are merely somewhat analogous.
I tried to get the score for the Dies Irae for Mozart's Requiem in D Minor (K. 626). I got this instead:
Maybe they should have waited a couple more months when this type of message gets less common.
Qu'on me donne six lignes écrites de la main du plus honnête homme, j'y trouverai de quoi le faire pendre.
you don't, but this gives you the source with which you can make an mp3 and upload it for the rest of us...
Donald 'Duck' Dunn: We had a band powerful enough to turn goat piss into gasoline.
Sad they do not promote Lilypond more. Many PDFs on the site have been typeset using Lilypond, but only the PDFs are available.
Lilypond: http://lilypond.org/
Can somebody explain the difference between IMSLP and Mutopia ( http://www.mutopiaproject.org/ )?
This is what we really need. Yes I know there's software out there for a laptop, and yes I know there are $800 devices for this, but there should be a OLPC type device with a decent sized screen that you can put on your piano or music stand or whatever and grab music off a shared drive or flash RAM card. One of these days people will figure out that people really do want single-purpose devices, like the Tivo or iPod, but for other, less pervasive, uses.
Free Conference Call -- No Spam, High Quality
My house was a licensed premises in a former life, and yesterday I received a letter from the Performing Rights Society (UK), explaining that if music was played on the premises (whether recorded or performed live) then I was obliged to pay them for a license.
The letter strongly implies that ALL music is in scope. I just have to decide whether I have the energy and inclination to enter a debate with them about out of copyright works, or works with a permissive license.
This would all be for my own entertainment. Any suggestions?
But what they do is get an "expert" to reinterpret the score every few years.
There are actually very good musical reasons to do this. Music written or printed 300 years ago looks much different than that published today, and often requires an editor's help to bring it into a form usable by modern performers. To give one example, many instrumental sonatas and other works were written out in "figured bass" notation, which gave the keyboard player only the bass line and numeric symbols representing the harmonies. It was up to the player to improvise the right-hand part. Since very few keyboard players these days can do this, editors of modern editions of Baroque music usually provide a written-out interpretation of the chords, which looks just like normal, modern keyboard music. There are also many notational conventions that have either died out completely, or changed their meaning, which need an expert editor to "translate" them for modern players. In addition, many scores of the time were not published, but circulated in handwritten copies, which often contain many mistakes. Modern editors have to sift through the various copies and make judgments as to which versions are correct. Bach's Well-tempered Clavier is a famous example.
On the other hand, if you want or need to study the scores as they were written, you want to get an "Urtext" edition, which preserves the original notation as much as possible. Collected editions are presented this way. In the case of the music of J.S. Bach, there are two collected editions, one completed in the 19th century, and the other in the latter half of the 20th. The 19th century edition (Bach-Gesellschaft edition) is now in the public domain and may be copied freely - in fact the Dover editions of Bach are simply reproductions of this edition. The 20th century edition (Neue Bach Ausgabe) is still very much under copyright.
Journey onward.
Imagine how awesome it would be for humankind if all copyrighted material could be accessible to all. All books, art, movies, music etc would be available with a click.
Here is how we do it:
Make a global library where everyone can donate a copyrighted work. The library then manages the copy, and make sure only one person can use it at a time. This should be managed like Netflix (which also btw distributes copyrighted material)
Example:
1. You rip a DVD to mp4 and upload it,
2. then place the original in a drawer marked "Archive copy of donated work".
3. The library registers that it has the license.
4. Now anyone could download the mp4 to have a copy on the disk, but needed to check out a license to actually view it.
If a second person donates the same work, no upload is necessary, so skip (1). Only (3) is required (i.e. licensecount++)
I am sure the with the efficiency of the net, the cost to build up this library to contain everything would be much smaller than the cost to operate current brick and mortar library.
Also, all the hard software parts is pretty much done/solved: MythTV, Bittorrent, Youtube, and the Netflix algorithm.
Who will take a stab at this?
don't cut it off www.mgmbill.org
It would be more in the spirit of a project like this if they allowed open formats like lilypond and ABC
Yes, folks, all these FREE public domain HITS can be YOURS!
-Camptown Races!
-Amazing Grace!
-She'll be comin' round the mountain!
-Ain't we got fun!
-Anchors Aweigh!
-Hail, hail the gang's all here!
-I can dance with everyone but my wife!
-Mammy o'mine!
-Row, row, row!
-Swing low, sweet chariot!
Yes folks order now and for NO CHARGE you can sing these songs ANYWHERE! Saloons! Public squares! The telegraph office!
And if you order NOW we'll include at no extra charge:
-The whiffenpoof song!
-Stop yer ticklin', jock!
-Nobody knows de trouble I've seen!
-It's delightful to be married!
-I love my wife, but oh you kid!
-Everybody works but father!
Don't wait! Call now! DO IT!
[all real songs]
[not a troll]
-b
No offense, but I've stopped responding to AC's.
Where did this "for one" meme come from? Just say "I would like to thank you." See how easy that is? No commas, no extraneous words, it's brilliantly simple.
Personally I think people use the "for one" thing to look like they're bucking the crowd, since the traditional use would be something like: "most people in this city think that kicking puppies is good, but I, for one, think it's terrible!" You set yourself apart from the crowd by having some superior morality.
The problem is that in stories like this it makes no sense. There's no crowd you're setting yourself apart from; there's no legions of Slashdotters saying, "damn these jerks, that public domain music should be taken off the web for good!" So it just looks stupid.
Sorry, resume your discussion.
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