[Musicians] A question about sharing music notation online

[David A Kaynor]

There are a lot of opinions and wishes out there.  Here are mine, about publishing transcriptions of my compositions:

I wish more people liked and played my tunes!

I’d love to have transcriptions of my tunes out in the realms of folk and contra dance music.  If my name, as composer, is on the transcriptions, GREAT!  If not … oh, well.  

It’s at least possible that someone with questionable taste (not to mention questionable values) might claim composership of something I made up, but it’s not keeping me awake at night.  For one thing, documentation exists for everything I’ve composed.  For another, even if someone did succeed in “stealing” composership of something I made up, the people who really matter to me know the score, as it were.

Except for The Montague Processional, none of my tunes are licensed, thus can be played in venues which don’t purchase licenses from ASCAP and BMI.

Unless I manage to compose some tunes which more people find more interesting, all of the above is kind of moot …

David Kaynor   

> On Oct 30, 2017, at 10:49 AM, Emily Addison via Musicians <musicians at lists.sharedweight.net> wrote:
> 
> Hi All,
> 
> A question for you about general etiquette on posting recently composed tunes (as in last 20-30yrs).
> 
> I've seen MANY MANY recently composed tunes online through websites like The Session but also contra websites too.  Often these are posted by someone other than the composer and it's not listed as to whether they have permission to post.
> 
> Here in Ottawa, our community band (we're not pros and play almost all our gigs for free.), we're working on learning a varied contra music repertoire for dancing.  In fact, our community band is called 'Stolen Goods' as we're about learning from others.
> 
> I've been thinking that it would be nice to post our sets online as part of the wider sharing so that others can benefit... just like we've benefited from looking at what others (like SPUDS) have posted.
> 
> What's the etiquette here?
> 
> For instance, we play a handful of Keith Murphy tunes and he's got books.  And we have Larry Unger and others too...
> 
> If we post a few is that ok?  Seems that's what others do, especially in irish and quebecois traditions but I'm just not sure as some of the contra musicians have tune books.  Could refer to a few tune books.
> 
> Also, we've written out a few sets from other bands (e.g., one from Wild Asparagus) as we're trying to learn from their groove/chord lines etc. and we are just a local learning band that plays for 20 dancers.   If we only have 1-2 from a particular band, are those ok to post?
> 
> Looking for your thoughts!
> 
> By no means do I need to post of course... ... .just interested in giving back to the wider community what we've been learning over the last number of years.
> 
> With thanks :)
> Emily Addison in Ottawa
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