Sorry guys, however I was really curious about the relationship between compisition, arrnagement, performance, and how some people change these. If you could help em out by these little examples I would be really helpful.
1. Someone composes, arranges, and performs a song. Someone hears this on CD and keeps the lyrics, cadances, and rhymm, yet makes an entire new melody to it, possibly even in a different key or mode. Is this now that person's arrangement, cover, rendition, performance of it? Or perhaps considered a whole new song that borrows heavily from another?
2. Another person hears the same song on a CD, and keeps the melody and stuff, but changes the rhymm and what harmony is played to it. Is it that person's arrangement, cover, rendition or performance (or whatever) of the song?
3. Same situation, but this time the person just takes the melody and makes his own riffs and runs to it, what kind of a chnage would this be classified as?
4. Same situation again, except this time the person just changes the strum pattern, nothing else, different arrangement? Diferent performance? Cover? Rendition?
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5. Someone takes a look at a tab/sheet music for a piece. But to make it sound more to his taste he/she used hammer-ons and pull offs and slides and bends to the note instead of the straight notes the written music suggests. Again, cover? Rendition? Arrangement? Performance?
Thanks.
The copyrightable stuff is the lyric and melody. Lots of tunes cop a chord progression from another verbatim, but as long as both the lyric and melody are different, it's a whole new tune in the eyes of the law.
So...
1. Same lyric, new melody. Arrangement. Think Joe Cocker's "A Little Help From My Friends".... not a lot of the original melody there, but the words and general idea are the same. Arrangements are not copyrightable, by the way, and the original composer (not the arranger) is the one who gets the mechanical royalties - the arranger only gets performance royalties when his new version is played; if someone covers the new version, the arranger has empty pockets, and the original composer gets the dough.
2. Same lyric, same melody, new harmony. Arrangement - think Jose Feliciano's "Light My Fire".
3. Cover. Adding a few riffs to an original is done all the time, even by the original artists.
4. Cover. Strum patterns don't make a tune.
5. Depends on the extent. If you're just decorating the tune, it's a cover like #4... if you change it by dropping sections, adding stuff, etc., it's an arrangement - think Jeff Beck's "Goodbye Pork Pie Hat".
None of these scenarios is new music. In every case, you'd need to pay royalties to the original composer if you make a hit out of it, and in every case if somebody covers your version you don't get squat - the original writer does.
Just my opinion, and I'm no lawyer... but when a HS music director suggested I do arrangements of contemporary songs for pep bands, I looked into this a bit, and couldn't for the life of me figure out how I could actually make decent money at it. They wouldn't be my tunes, and I couldn't get royalties - even if John Mayer (or whoever) never pictured his stuff for brass bands.
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Haha, thanks. That was helpful. And it's not neccessarily that I was wondering about the money aspect of it, although I enjoyed reading about what you posted on the topic.
Perhaps, althoguh you've already answered a lot of questions, you or someone else could finish this off by answering two questions I think are related.
A) The words and melody are copywriteable. So really who is listed as the authors of a work when copywriting a melody. Just the person who wrote the lyrics and the person who composed the melody? Would the people who make the parts for various instruments such as a drum line, bass rhymm, guitar part and harmony etc. also be included on the names of authors? If someone just helps out the words or melody by a few original suggestions that are incorporated, are they also placed in the list?
B) In practicality though, any performance of one artist of a work by another wether they perform it exactly as the original artist did, wether they change it up a little (different strums, different methods of getting to each note) or wether they make their very own arrangement of it (chnaging the harmony, adding a 5 minute solo and a whole new coda) would be considered covers?
And a few last words. in terms of a melody it's really just the cadances of the melody that make it original no? I mean if a person took a melody and dropped every note by a whoel step and/or shortened note lenths that would really still be the same melody no?
Also, I'm not going to argue but I think the actuall rhymm if original is considered part of the copywrite itself. Vanilla Ice was nearly sued for using the rhymm to Under Pressure, he wasn't fined as it was reasonably different, but the point is that the charge was about the rhymm and not the mleody.
A. The people listed on the copyright are usually by agreement. If somebody contributes something meaningful, the 'real' writers (the ones who did the lyrics and melody) will often share credit. There's often a side agreement for how the money will be split - you may see two names for lyrics, but they have a contract that gives 80% to one of the names. You can't tell that from the credits.
Drums, guitar riffs, bass lines... all just decoration. If you contribute a great solo and nothing else, odds are you won't see songwriting money. If you contributed a key phrase (particularly if you can prove it) odds are you will.
B. Changing the melody means changing it - transpositions like dropping a whole note aren't changes, and altering the rhythm probably isn't a substantial enough change either. Cadences are part of the chord progression, which isn't copyrightable - use cadences and chord progressions as you see fit, and there's no trouble.
Vanilla Ice didn't get sued by Queen/Bowie for taking the rhythm... he was threatened because he sampled the tune - it wasn't just the rhythm he used, it was their performance of it. If you use someone's performance, they get paid. As I understand it, they dropped the suit when he agreed to pay royalties. A rhythm pattern by itself isn't copyrightable material.
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Great. I think this thread is already a wealth of knowledge. Although there's a possibility that all these questions have, although possibly in different threads, been asked before. Hey, there's no search feature on this forum, sue me.
