akilo55

I have a lot of sympathy for everyone involved in creating music. The usual rule is that deriving money with such wonderful talent is frequently very difficult. By training and experience I am a lawyer. I can unconditionally state that any music produced by a composer who has been dead for 70+ years is in the public domain. That means that the public owns it and can use in any manner which may be desired. A piece of sheet music which is 70+ years old and which was composed by such a composer is also in the public domain. The Finale and Sibelius computer programs are purchased by a user. These programs SCAN the sheet music and directly produce audio files. There is NO RECORDING process. These computer programs READ the sheet music. They take, for example, some sheet music by Mozart which is 200 years old and directly create a .MIDI file. The person who does this can do anything with the file completely free of the copyright laws. The file is owned outright by the person who scanned the sheet music and produced the file. There are NO performers involved. The foregoing may be unpleasant news. If the administrators wish to act to remove these postings, then they deny their members the chance to make a free choice on this matter. If so, it is not a very open forum. Let's hope the members are given a chance to read the posts and decide for themselves. I am trying very hard to be generous here. I can get as much material as is needed FREE. It may be old, but the composers of 1800-1900 produced a lot of great compositions. I can use these. If I have to, I will use them. If so, two groups of people lose -- those living composers who could be on the CDs -- and the infants who could get to hear current compositions. The pricing of $39.50 for a set of our CDs is new pricing (none have been sold at this price). The total gross income to date from the project totals under $400 (over 11 years). The translation costs alone were over $3K. Marketing has been put off until the translations were thoroughly cross checked (a very difficult process) and until there was music on the CDs. A condition of putting a music file on musopen.com is that all copyrights are fully released. The composers involved have been dead for 70+ years. The performers who did this, did so with full knowledge of what they were doing. These music files are all in the public domain. Doing the audio language files is an independent process and a very tough one. Doing the background music files is also a tough process. Mixing them is tough. I want a wide variety of material. The best I can do for now is to give credit to the composers, new or old. It would be nice to do more, but it is not possible. Best regards, Frank

Contest for music composers I'm holding a contest for music composers. We've finished our first 9 hour set of audio language CDs for infants (birth to age 2) but they have no music. Each CD contains 25 languages. We already have about four hours of (donated) music and sound effects, but we need at least FIVE HOURS more in a broad variety of non-vocal styles. There are 114 final sequences which average about 4.7 minutes each. You can listen to one (a "language-string") at Language-string Audio Track. Our CDs (without music) are currently heard by many infants. The new CDs with music will be widely promoted. Also, in due course 9 hours of video will be produced with the sound from these CDs. If you have a piece or pieces (any lengths) that you are really proud of, you can make a real impact with a very receptive audience. The contest is open for anyone to enter, the best tracks will win free exposure and a link on our website for your webpage/business website/whatever you want and on every site the audio or video gets posted on. They will likely find their way on to youtube, metacafe, etc as well. There will be free exposure in the literature distributed with the CDs and videos. Also the winners get all of our CDs and videos free and 2 hours of Akilo party songs (in 25 languages) -- you can hear 50 of these songs at 100 AKILO Party Songs. Please send inquiries/submissions to akilo26@yahoo.com Please send submissions as mp3 format. Submissions must be completely free of copyright restrictions. This is a multi-forum contest (but we need lots of music). DEADLINE - JULY 10th -- Good Luck! (The music is to be judged by a committee of one. In this regard, you are stuck with a real loser -- Frank, who has little or no musical ability and even less patience. On the other hand, anyone who gets their work in, is a "Grand Prize Winner" since, to quote one critic, "works of art are not wolves -- they do not devour each other.") Frank The Snow Water Corporation Please reply with a quote or donate your work. ----------- Reply to the comments of Nikolas -- 1. The sound effects to be used were produced by me alone. 2. The "donated" music (all classical music) is all from musopen.com (all placed in the public domain by performers). Aaron Dunn is a composer/musician and his material is on that site (it is his site) and it will be used as is. 3. There is huge amount of sheet music available free on the internet -- much of it was produced by composers who died prior to 1930 (and thus this sheet music is in the public domain). Using programs such as Sibelius or Finale (both of which incorporate photoscore.com), this material can be transformed into very clean .MIDI, .WAV and/or .MP3 files with extreme flexibility in the final result. There is great variety here -- from Mozart to bluegrass. Some of the free sheet music sources list 10,000+ music scores that are freely available and which are in the public domain. There is no shortage of music which can be generated and used without payment to anyone. 4. I have worked 11 years to get the product that you see on babysafari.us. It has been a constant drain of time and money. Sales to date have been nominal. There have been no profits to date whatever. There are no funds to pay anyone anything for the use of their compositions. Except for the considerable contribution of the translators and speakers, I have done all of the work (editing, web site, marketing, packaging, etc.) alone. Since, very usable background music can be obtained FREE with Sibelius or Finale, I see no reason to pay for it. 5. The use of a "contest" format is taken from YOUR site. Check your earlier postings (i.e., Nathan). 6. It may be that with time, this venture may be profitable (it is a long way off). The CDs however all need to be redone using children as speakers (a major effort). Other aspects of polishing the materials and of supporting other collateral projects will require a great deal of time and effort and financing for this is unavailable from any reasonable source. Thus these items must be financed from profits. 7. I am trying to produce a quality product with very few resources. I am trying to put language elements in a format which is very receptive for infants -- to give them a decent shot at becoming multilingual. 8. Using old (pre-1930) music does not benefit living composers or performers in the slightest degree. I am offering living composers the opportunity to be heard -- widely heard. If this is not enough and/or if no one wishes to help -- too bad, then I go back to Finale and Sibelius for the music (and/or I take the stuff from musopen.com and transform it in fleximusic.com, Finale and/or Sibelius to give substantial variations). 9. Your comments are understood but I hope the foregoing clarifies the situation. 10. The contest is still in gear and submissions are requested.