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Open Well-Tempered Clavier: a Kickstarter Campaign For Open Source Bach
rDouglass writes "The Open Goldberg Variations team has launched a new project to make an open source, public domain version of J.S. Bach's Well-Tempered Clavier. The work is significant because of its enormous influence on musicians and composers throughout history. A new studio recording, a new digital MuseScore score (with support for MusicXML and MIDI), as well as all source materials (multitrack WAV, lossless FLAC) will be provided as libre and gratis downloads. New to the project are publisher GRIN Verlag, as well as record label PARMA Recordings. GRIN and PARMA will produce and distribute the physical score and double CD, even though the digital versions are to be widely available and in the public domain. Their enthusiasm for the project runs counter to the general publishing and music industry's fear of digital file sharing, and shows growing momentum for finding new models to make free music commercially sustainable."
The 4-CD set by Andras Schiff was the first recording I ever had to save and scrimp for, when I was still back in high school, and it's been worth every penny. I had heard one track and was told the rest was great, and it is. I'm a drummer, but listening to this recording a couple hundred times is probably responsible for any melodic and harmonic sense I may have developed at that time. I haven't heard the version referenced in TFA, but it's hard to make this music sound bad. Highly recommended in principle.
Le sigh.
Open source and public domain are not mutual, nor is one needed for the other. Public domain means anyone can have it for free as long as they don't try and sell it (under most licenses, EG Creative Commons), while open source means anyone can try and make it better. You can have one without the other, and vice versa.
It's open source because the recording comes with the sheet music in an open digital format. Compare it the source of a picture, which is light. The source of classical music is the musical score.
There's also the issue of ContentID (like on Youtube). Even open source and fully public domain, you'll get the likes of the "Music Publishing Rights Society" to claim and monetize from, or even worse, take down your video.
There also exists public domain recording by musopen.org, which will probably pale in comparison, but nonetheless it's great that these efforts exist.
A piano is a tremendously wonderful instrument for piano music. But this (Well-Tempered Clavier) is not piano music! You can make a decent-sounding performance of clavier music on the piano, just like you can transcribe a vocal for violin, but you lose a lot of the specific things the composer --- especially a master of the instrument like Bach --- put into the work. Basically, all intricate and fast-moving detail in a piece gets mushed up and lost on the piano, which is designed for a smoother, more "blended" sound than the clearly articulated single notes of pre-piano predecessors. Please, if you want an open cultural reference to Bach's keyboard music, play it on appropriate kinds of keyboard!
if it's really public domain you can do whatever you please with it. sell it as well.
problem with making new public domain music - and just free to play anywhere music - is that you have to find musicians who have not signed up for some local copyright monopoly organization.. it's kinda fucked up if you think about it.
world was created 5 seconds before this post as it is.
Le sigh.
Open source and public domain are not mutual, nor is one needed for the other. Public domain means anyone can have it for free as long as they don't try and sell it
No. Public domain means that it's in the public domain: that means nobody owns it, and anybody can do whatever they like with it.
(under most licenses, EG Creative Commons),
If you have to agree to a license to use it, it's not public domain.
while open source means anyone can try and make it better. You can have one without the other, and vice versa.
http://www.geoffreylandis.com
For $500 you might get a proficient high schooled player – but not a professional musician. Then factor in rehearsal time.
Which gets back to the “making it better” and the Creative Commons license – specially the “No Derivative Works” section. They want attribution. They don’t want people dropping out a section and replacing it with another. I think both requests are resonable.
Remember, we are talking about classic works here. You may not be able to hear the difference between on performer verse another but those who are passionate can.
For $500 you might get a proficient high schooled player – but not a professional musician.
Sure I can, easily. And they'd give me a blow-job for good measure.
You really underestimate the sorry state of musician employment.
It's because of the presence of the underlying "source code" materials - insofar as there is a direct analogy. The idea is not just to bring a score and a recording to lots of people, but rather to enable them to use said goods in as many contexts as possible. Thus the multitrack WAV files, information about the microphones and mixing, photos and video of the sessions, and a score in a digital format that can be edited, repurposed, and transported from one program to another.
Starving Music Student here. I trained as a performer. IU. Got graduate school funding at Cinci, Cleveland, Julliard, and Eastman. Basically the best music schools in the nation. I chose academics rather than performance, however, because of arthritis that would cripple me by age 50. But, if you were looking for a good representative of a very compentent collegiate musician, that's me. (I've also won an audition for professional 52 week symphony orchestras, but didn't take the gig because I went into academia instead -- and those are jobs with hundreds of applicants per vacency, and that's only because thousands of wannabes don't even bother sending a tape to actually win an audition)
I wouldn't dream of making a recording of key pieces in the repertory of my instrument. (Viola/Violin) Nobody would want to hear it. I sure wouldn't do something like the WTK (If I were a pianist) or the Cello Suites/Violin Sonatas and Partitas. Sure, I've performed them all more than once, and can teach them all, but I wouldn't dare put a microphone in front of me. And, I wouldn't dio it for 500 bucks. I wouldn't even take that for just one of the suites/sonatas/partitas. (It takes a long time to prepare something to that level, even though I know them quite intimately) I don't even leave my house to play at a gig for less than 150 bucks. That's a crappy wedding or a funeral. If you want me to go to a rehearsal, it's at least a hundred more. (Still cheaper than most tradesmen though)
You have obviously not rented a recording studio. Even a crappy one is expensive. Try gettting access to a really great piano for free too. Even if we have your utopia of cheapo student playing in a recital hall at their university with a crappy microphone, the student workers recording the WTK getting work/study wages, with the many hours that this would take, would cost more than 500 bucks.
TL;DR -- Starving Music Student=not good enough for people with an ear. Recording studios are expensive. It's impressive how cheaply they can do this already!
Get off my lawn.
Why would this J. S. Bach guy write any more music if people are just going to steal it?
But we all believe in Bach !
Companies like Peters that do sell good accurate scores of Bach are so behind the times they literally cannot see the forest because the trees are still being cut down. It is entirely possible for them to distribute decent editions for sale in e-pub and the technology to put scores on e-ink could be made usable with essentially e-reader technology that is score sized instead of pocket book. I would gladly pay for a decent music e-ink reader that would work on my music stand. The information age is slogging along and eventually the real potential of digital music notation will happen. But unfortunately we still have those who have their heads up their assets in the music publishing industry.
Werner was a stickler for accurate notation and much of what is there on the historic digital archive, especially the Bach section, is very accurate. Unfortunately since his death others have corrupted what he started and some of the archive is not good or even accurate notation, however most of the Bach is excellent and done by people who understand the importance of accuracy in music notation. Many of the scores adhere to original source where ever possible. Which can be very difficult as in the time of the great champions of Bach's music during the late classical era much of Bach's sheet music had fallen into oblivion.
For instance a friend of Felix Mendelssohn actually found music scores by Bach being used by a butcher to wrap meats! So the digitizing for all time of all our great heritage of written music is as important as project Gutenberg. Werner understood this as many others do and either the existing music publishing houses will get on board or they will be a footnote in the history of written music.
This message was not sent from an iPhone because Peter Sellers really was a deviated prevert without a dime for the call
is that audiences are not interested in an academic reference recording of Bach but in the richly varied interpretations of artists each with their own gifts --- using arrangements of their own choice, instruments of their own choice, in a venue of their own choice.
It is like trying to capture Shakespeare in a bottle.
Uncork the thing and what you will get is a performance wholly typical of the acting style and staging of the year the play was recorded.
The artist, Kimiko Ishizaka, is easily at-or-above par with Juilliard students. The producer, Anne-Marie Sylvestre, is A-OK at what she does. The studio and staff are top-notch. The instrument will be kick-ass. Etc.
And, there's a track record for this project -- the Goldberg Variations recordings they've already done are fine.
Maybe you have an axe to grind with Drupal geeks? ;-)
education is no substitute for intelligence
But - they're not digital scores that can be edited or converted to MusicXML or rendered as MIDI or turned into Braille for the blind or turned into a score following app or... wait... just watch the video - the one where I describe the Top 10 technical advantages of having our music in MuseScore format. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7zHey9x8Xuc
Thank you for explaining that.
And YouTube will tag your video as having pirated sound even if the music is Creative Commons. I've had this happen - they didn't silence the video or take it down, but they did remove the ability to download the video. Using their counterclaim form didn't get this changed either.
Oolite: Elite-like game. For Mac, Linux and Windows
Using their counterclaim form didn't get this changed either.
Does YouTube tell you who make the illegal claim or are they protecting/hiding them? I'd assume transparency, so they would not be an accessory, so if you have the info of the people making the false claim take steps to protect yourself and the community from these kinds of bandits.
My God, it's Full of Source!
OUTSIDE_IP=$(dig +short my.ip @outsideip.net)
Don't confuse the composition with the performance, or a particular edition of printed music. Bach's work is public domain, but a particular printed edition, or a recorded performance, are new works covered by copyright law. Open-Source derives its power from copyright law.
Gary Dunn
Open Slate Project
Or variations upon a ground bass in dactyls. I have already written several over the years just to see how long one can avoid using harmonic repetition. If you get to five variations you are doing well, provided you avoid iambs in pentameter in the ground otherwise you will wind up sounding far too much like Thomas Tallis or a bad limerick being recited by a drunken Irishman!
This message was not sent from an iPhone because Peter Sellers really was a deviated prevert without a dime for the call
Where do I get a cantankerous clavier?
Table-ized A.I.
ack, also, bach is already public domain anyhow ...
Except that it's not always completely obvious what the composer intended. Sometimes there's the manuscript, often there isn't. Then it might have been copied by someone. The copy might have corrections - sometimes in the composers hand, sometimes not, sometimes it isn't known. Even the manuscript might have corrections that might or might not be the composers own.
A good editor will look at all the different sources, try to assess what the composer intended to write (and occasionally there are obvious wrong notes, sometimes there are notes that are presumed to be a mistake but it's impossible to be sure). The editor might provide a commentary discussing the different sources.
http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/culture/stephenhough/100069784/the-most-exciting-musical-discovery-of-my-life-tchaikovskys-wrong-note-finally-corrected/
That's with 150 odd years less copying history to look through.
God said, "div D = rho, div B = 0, curl E = -@B/@t, curl H = J + @D/@t," and there was light.
Public domain means anyone can have it for free as long as they don't try and sell it.
No. CC license != public domain. Public domain is not a license. There is nothing at all stopping you from collecting the works of HP Lovecraft, publishing them, and selling them. The published product itself is protected, but the stories are not.
A couple of items. First, you should be aware of the CC0 license, which is a way for a creator to explicitly place a work into the public domain, or to disclaim as many rights as legally possible. It asserts that the creator had all legal and moral rights to the work, and that the creator explicitly gives these rights to the public, to the greatest extent possible under law. Second, you're absolutely right about being able to sell stuff which is in the public domain (although finding a buyer can sometimes be tricky).
Those who can make you believe absurdities can make you commit atrocities. - Voltaire
What's your take on The Piano Guys?
It seems they aren't afraid to explore classical (sic) music in a more modern rendering. I'm running into more and more people who enjoy. Quite surprised how they are making some of the "greats" get more exposure.