Hi...I think that there is a need for a basic beginner guitar lesson book written by a person that has just progressed through the beginner stage. I feel I could do a good job but I need to include some songs to demonstrate certain things, these songs would be in the form of the lyric and just a chord symbol and nothing more...no tab and no musical notation and I will be simplifying the chords from the orginals. Nobody seems to be able to answer if this is copyright and if so who do I approach to get a license as I have no idea who recorded, wrote or owns some of these old songs. When you purchase a simple learners guitar book with some partial song tabs have these people paid a copyright fee. Are all tab sites, blog sites etc illegal?.....what about when David (Guitarnoise) made his CD of beginners songs....what did he have to do?
An answer would be much appreciated.....
Kevin
Lyrics are definately copyrighted. Copyright laws change from time to time, but 'old' songs probably aren't old enough - Happy Birthday is still under copyright!
You need to find out who owns the copyright, and whether or not there's a licensing agency (like Harry Fox) that can license your reproduction.
There is a project to catalog music that's in the public domain - songs not under copyright protection - so you might be able to find suitable tunes in their database
When you purchase a book with partial song tabs, the publisher has probably licensed the work. If you publish without license and get caught, penalties can be high... and agencies like Harry Fox have the lawyers to chase folks down (that's how they make their money)
Yes, tab sites and blogs are illegal. For the most part they're left alone, because there aren't deep pockets there - a commercial book is a different story.
No idea what David did, but he'll probably tell you :)
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