As David and I have discovered over the past two idiot's guide books, there are a lot of good public domain songs out there: After the Ball, In the Pines, St. James Infirmary, Hard Times Come Again No More, even Red River Valley and Shine On Harvest Moon. Even the ones you think would drive you crazy can be done well with your own arrangement. We came to the conclusion there must be a reason they've been around so long.
Your task this week, is to take a public domain song and make it your own. Do a complete re-write, ripping off the structure, rhyme scheme, etc. You can change the content to whatever you wish.
Don't tell us the original song when you post yours.
I'm off to post my lyrics for last week and finish critiquing. Good luck.
Nick (or anyone else), what's a good site to verify that a song is really in the public domain?
Renee
Nick (or anyone else), what's a good site to verify that a song is really in the public domain?
Good question. I don't know of anywhere that you can specifically search for that information. I'm not even sure if the rules are the same across all countries. But this site has a very large collection of traditional tunes and songs. If you hunt around it has songs from a bunch of different locations, some with several versions and many with midi files.
Scroll down the page and see a big index, grouped under various categories.
Chris
Hobson wrote:Nick (or anyone else), what's a good site to verify that a song is really in the public domain?
Try a google search for "songs in public domain"
Here are a couple links:
http://www.pdinfo.com/list.php
http://pdmusic.org/
