Slashdot Mirror
Project To Turn Classical Scores Into Copyright-Free Music Completed
yourlord writes "Just under two years ago Musopen launched a Kickstarter campaign covered here on Slashdot. Today that project is complete with the release of a large amount of classical recordings into the public domain. This brings an extensive collection of high quality classical music into the public domain. The project music is hosted on the Musopen site, and on archive.org."
I invested in this. Great idea to set music free. Enjoy the downloads.
Do anything, anywhere, anytime.
Fantastic. Now let's do it again until more classical works are liberated. And visit their "donate" button.
Help stamp out iliturcy.
The great weakness with this is that the value of sheet music is in the edition. Just as books benefit from a good editor, so does music.
My girlfriend has a music degree, and is an accomplished teacher of piano. She pulls her hair out whenever a student shows up with something downloaded from the Internet, or even worse, one of those oddball cheap Chinese editions. How the music is edited really does affect how it is played.
Aside from that, it's weird that the music listings aren't by composer. Do these folks not know how many "String Quartets in C major" have been written?
Three Squirrels
Nothing puts me in the right frame of mind for some serious coding than classical music. Can't wait to check this one out.
I thought the recording industry had definitively proved that if you didn't assert copyrights, there was no possible way for the starving artists* to be compensated for their hard work, and it would spell the end of recorded music?
* all artists are starving. That's why they look good in music videos.
Just because you're paranoid doesn't mean there isn't an invisible demon about to eat your face
Unfortunately, Musopen provided the content in Apple lossless format instead of a widely used, open, non-patent-encumbered format such as FLAC. Plus, the official torrent contains a single gigantic zip file.
There is a torrent containing all 145 separate tracks in FLAC format here:
http://pirateproxy.net/torrent/7536456/2012_Musopen_Kickstarter_Project_[FLAC]
Finally! A Fifth completed! Ode to joy!
(-1: Post disagrees with my already-settled worldview) is not a valid mod option.
the torrent link is: http://archive.org/download/musopen-lossless-dvd/musopen-lossless-dvd_archive.torrent
Last time I checked them (about 2 months ago), most of their music was in rather poor quality - lots of background noise, soundproofing issues and although I am not a music expert, the performance seemed lacking somewhat.
If you browse the music by composer, the list starts with Dvorak, Antonin... then Albaniz, Isaac and all the composers whose last names start with A... then Bach and the Bs... Chaliapin and the Cs... It looks familiar but not quite what we're accustomed to... like something is slightly off. Whoever created the list must have been using a Dvorak keyboard!
Possibly the project's initial goals were completed, but that's hardly what springs to mind when one hears the phrase in the context of the classical repertoire.
That said, I'm listening to Eroica, and it actually ain't bad.
WRT the print edition quality, most world-class musicians prefer autograph scores. Heavily edited scores are more suited for amateur performers. An exception is Sussmayer's version of Mozart's Requiem, which has a lot of rough spots, and is usually performed from later fixed up versions.
Two elderly women are at a Catskill mountain resort, and one of 'em says, "Boy, the food at this place is really terrible." The other one says, "Yeah, I know; and such small portions."
Reading the criticisms levied against the site is like listening to those two elderly women who just like to complain: "Boy, the music at this place is really terrible." "Yeah, I know; and there isn't nearly enough of it!"
I think quantity needed to be more important than quality for this project. Sure, they need to have a minimum standard of quality, but the idea was to free as much music as possible. Some kid somewhere in the world would never have heard this music because he's not going to pay $1.29 for some music he's never heard (that they're not playing on the radio) and the sheet music isn't exactly jumping off the page to ensnare his imagination. However, something that's well-written and decently-performed on this site may get his attention and maybe someday he'll perform a better version and give back to us all. But that won't ever happen if he never hears it. That first exposure is key.
The first time I heard Scheherazade it was in a movie (The Man With One Red Shoe). I didn't know what it was, but it got my attention. I was about seven. Years later I came across it again as a track that was tacked onto a $3 budget classical CD, and it got my attention again. I suggested it to the orchestra director in my high school and hundreds of people got to hear it. It's all about the exposure.
If you want to be a snob about the quality, go pay for a performance and share it with the rest of us so we won't have to live our lives not knowing what good music sounds like. Frankly, I prefer the Scheherazade recording on that budget CD to any I've found on iTunes. The first performance of a piece is often the one you like best, because it's the one you fell in love with. I have a very old recording of Stokowski and the NY Philharmonic performing Stravinsky's Firebird suite that is full of hiss and crackle, but I prefer it over a clean-sounding recording of Bernstein and the Israel Philharmonic performing the same piece. Bernstein's performance, which is well-done, just doesn't sound urgent enough to me because I heard Stokowski's first. Perhaps what you're really concerned about is the possibility that the masses may come to prefer a version other than what you like.
There's still a lot to be added, so go ahead and donate. Sure, they've got Stravinsky's Firebird, but not The Rite of Spring. The Rite of Spring was so radical and jarring to the ears of the "more cultured representatives of society" at its 1913 premiere in Paris that the audience began yelling so loudly no one could hear the music. Eventually the scene devolved into chairs being thrown and fires set. So go ahead, throw your chairs at this new site in disgust because it doesn't agree with your notion of how the music should sound. The music that stripped away the cultured veneer of those Parisans is worth hearing, and a public domain music site that so-ruffled the feathers of the "free-as-in-beer" and "information wants to be free" slashdot crowd is worth visiting.
It is really good to have music in the free. But it could be organized better. I tired to search for "Locatelli", a baroque composer I know a little about. The first hit found a "piece" with a headline "Battista, Locatelli & J.S Bach - Concetos". What passes for a comment for the music is some details about Vivaldi's life, and under that is a composer Bio, also of Vivaldi. The "piece" consists of four parts, starting with a Concerto Grosso by Vivaldi, followed by Pergolesi, something by Bach, and finally a single movement of a Locatelli concerto. Last there is a fact box that lists Vivaldi as the composer, and fails to mention anything about the performer or period...
In Murphy We Turst
I was looking at this too. As far as I can tell, you're not going to find any of the "name" orchestras or performers. There's a bunch of stuff by The Army Band, the Musopen Symphony Orchestra (!?), and the like. You wouldn't pay for these performances... but since they are free, you're not out anything (other than your time) if you download several and have a listen. It's always possible there's a hidden gem in there.
#DeleteChrome
http://www.blockmrecords.org/bach/ Played by James Kibbie, and as a quote from the website: "This project is sponsored by the University of Michigan School of Music, Theatre & Dance, with generous support from Dr. Barbara Furin Sloat in honor of J. Barry Sloat, and with additional support from the Office of Vice-President for Research, the University of Michigan."
Sound editors aren't magic, you can't take a bad performance and make it great, and you can't edit out systemic noise like wow and flutter from a tape. You also can't edit out a sound from under another sound, without major audible artifacts.
What a big label would do is go and use better quality equipment to record the track. It isn't even that expensive these days. Then they would record multiple takes as necessary and edit those together.
Hell forget big labels, this is what a university recording studio would do. It is not too much to ask that if the idea is to get "open" replacements to professional music that a professional job of it is done.
Perhaps we can now start a project to match new popular music against this database, and figure out that all new music is just a shameless copy/basic rewrite of existing classical music.
If Pandora's box is destined to be opened, *I* want to be the one to open it.
Enjoy!
I should have backed this.
MusOpen is for music recordings, not sheet music.
That sounds scary. Where have you heard about this?
MusOpen is for music recordings, not sheet music.
No.
Musopen provides sheet music and recordings.
IMSLP provides sheet music and recordings.
From the database size it seems that IMSLP has more sheet music and more recordings than Musopen.
From a IMSLP board message http://imslpforums.org/viewtopic.php?f=1&t=840 I conclude that Musopen was founded in a response to a temporary shutdown of IMSLP for almost a year in 2007. When IMSLP re-opened, Musopen didn't shutdown but continued their own platform.
There is also the http://www.liberliber.itliberliber/ Italian project that let you:
1) http://www.liberliber.it/musica/index.php/music from terminated copyright
2) http://www.liberliber.it/libri/index.php/book in Italian language
3) http://www.liberliber.it/audiolibri/index.php/audiobook in Italian language ...
The first time I heard Scheherazade it was by recommendation of guttentag on slashdot.org who provided a link to a recording of it on musopen.org. I didn't know what it was, but it got my attention.
Thank You.
Where does that leave fans in high school or the first two-thirds of college who can't get into gigs because they live in a 21-to-enter state?
You mentioned Adobe Audition, which costs $350 by itself (source: Google search) or $600 per year as part of Creative Cloud (source: adobe.com). Is this also in Audacity? Or is "healing" patented? Or does it happen to be just not a priority for Audacity developers?
What should the fans of a musician do if that musician declines to move the concert from a venue that has insane age restrictions to a venue that doesn't? Must they learn to like a different musician?
Did you actually LEARN anything about politics, laws, and public debates?
Yes, and after looking at the political action committees who determine who is allowed to actually get elected, I've determined that politics is controlled by the old-boys club. "After having considered your proposal, we have concluded that it is not in line with our current business goals."
A) look to find concerts elsewhere that allow 18+
Please see my reply to RaceProUK's comment above.
B) petition the business or local township to allow 18+ at concerts. Signatures on a petition like that turn into dollar bills when thrown in front of a business owner as they stare at all that lost revenue.
Not necessarily. In order for the state not to classify the establishment as a "bar", the venue would have to prepare and sell a lot more food. A lot of these venues make so much money from selling alcoholic beverages that it would exceed the marginal revenue from selling tickets to people not of drinking age.
To my formally-untrained ear, the third movement of Beethoven's Moonlight Sonata sounds roughly comparable in complexity to Chopin's Revolutionary Etude in C minor. An arrangement of this Chopin piece by Takayuki Ishikawa and Naoki Maeda is playable in one of Konami's Dance Dance Revolution games under the title "Kakumei". DDR is ported to iOS. An arrangement of the third movement of another of Beethoven's sonatas is in Andamiro's Pump It Up, under the title "Beethoven Virus". Perhaps someone thinks "playing" a piece of music in one of Konami's rhythm games is as good as actually playing it, seeing as how the keysounded games (Beatmania, Pop'n Music, Keyboardmania) will play the note early or late if the player presses the button early or late. This is in contrast to Guitar Hero and Rock Band, which just mute or unmute the recording for missed notes.
To everyone posting here, thank you all for the donations and thoughts. It was a long and challenging project but I am very proud of the end result. I'm considering a second project, if anyone is interested in hearing about it in the next couple of weeks, please make sure to follow us on Twitter/FB/our blog etc: https://twitter.com/ajdunn83 or /musopen or
our blog at blog.musopen.org
Thanks again,
Aaron Dunn
Musopen.org
Copyrights don't have to be asserted
I thought that if you fail to assert your copyright, your claims could be estopped by laches, and certain nonliteral elements could become generic (called scenes a faire in copyright).
Copyright is not granted for 'hard work' or 'sweat of the brow'.
It isn't in the United States (Feist v. Rural), but in some other countries it is. Australia, for example, has a precedent about telephone directories that's the opposite of Feist (Telstra v Desktop Marketing Systems).
If I use one of these new recordings in a Youtube video for example, i'll probably still be screwed by the "Music Publishing Rights Collecting Society"
I know it's a joke and that you're probably trying to make a sensible statement about the formulaic quality of most pop tunes
Perhaps the argument is that if the major labels' works are so formulaic, they're probably not original enough to warrant the major labels trying to enforce their exclusive rights against the public in such a draconian manner. So if we can find some public domain sources matching various pieces of popular music, we can liberate them.
you're not out anything (other than your time)
What you say is true for those fortunate enough to live in the service area of wired broadband. Some people can only get wireless broadband (generally satellite and cellular), and this tends to have a single digit GB per month download cap that isn't designed for downloading a lot of lossless recordings.
This is all I could find on the WIPO Treaty:
http://boingboing.net/2012/08/11/wipos-broadcasting-treaty-is.html
Wouldn't put public domain things back into copyright, per se, but says that recordings of broadcasts of public domain material would be under copyright. Still silly, and should be shot down.
Reading your comment between the lines reveals you believe the following three things:
1. The website with the highest number of "units" wins, and no website with a lower number is legitimate.
2. Any single example of a "unit" is the same as any other, hence generic. The only important comparison value is quantity vs. price.
3. Despite this flattening of value, expensive somehow trumps free, and newer is better than older.
These ideas are quite current, and popular, but I think they're rarely examined. And I disagree.
Everything I've ever learned the hard way was based on a statistically invalid sample.
After looking around, I did find a well-known (and well-respected) group. Musopen has a recording of Mozart's Symphony No. 40 done by the Academy of St. Martin in the Fields.
I was surprised (and a little disappointed) they don't have some well-known classical music pieces - stuff that most people would recognize, even if they don't know its name (e.g. Debussy's Reverie). I'd think popular pieces, even if performed by unknown artists, would do a lot to drive this project forward - but that may very well come with time.
#DeleteChrome
Ah, thanks for the explanation. I hadn't realized the different aspects of this project at first.
#DeleteChrome
Unless I am confused here there are like 20 songs, less than a CD normally (except that it is in lossless format so actually takes up far more).
Troll is not a replacement for I disagree.
Oh, that is good to know! Where'd you find that out?
#DeleteChrome