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Many students buy books where they don't really know what the musical examples sound like until they learn to play them. While that's fine for good readers, many players would love to know what the examples sound like before committing to learning them.

What would stop someone from creating BIAB versions of all the famous method books? Are there copyright concerns? If so, is there still a way to make BIAB versions of these books available for sale to the public. Even be promoted by PG Music?

Seems like an obvious way to provide an exciting new adjunct to existing Tuition materials, right?

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The books are copyrighted. Publishing a recording of the methods could be construed as copyright infringement. Without the book, why would the recordings exist?


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Yes, but the books themselves are made up of examples from recordings. I assume there was no copyright restrictions there. Public Domain perhaps? Is it true that after 50 years, music becomes Publicly useable? Even if copyright issues prevailed, can you simply negotiate a percentage of profits payable to the copyright owner?

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Regarding Copyright:
The Copyright Act of 1976 that became effective on January 01, 1978 is what determines the current duration of a musical copyright. There have been several amendments enacted since January 1, 1978 that also affect the duration.
There are two categories.
Works Created on or after January 1, 1978
Works in Existence but Not Published or Copyrighted on January 1, 1978
With certain exceptions, works from both categories created on or after January 1, 1978: life plus 70 years or 95 or 120 years, depending on the nature of authorship.
This information was obtained at www.copyright.gov.

You also may want to contact Notes Norton, a member here on the forum because he creates Band in a Box midi styles based from Fake Books and has researched copyright issues and has successfully been doing so I believe since soon after the inception and release of BIAB.

Last edited by Charlie Fogle; 05/16/16 06:21 AM.

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Nothing is keeping you from producing your Jazz BIAB method series. Ask permission.

You can contact the publisher of any Method Book. Explain your use of their book and ask permission to use their material to create your own educational material (or commercial material) based on their book. Work out a deal. Its not about copyrights its about enterprise. Music education is a huge business.

Songs in a very well known guitar method book were not available in Tab notation (1970s). Friends of mine requested permission to create a tab version of songs in the book for their lesson studio. The resulting request ended up with the publisher eventually publishing several TAB method books by my friend and his older brother.

I also requested permission from this well known guitar method book publisher to tape the songs in his book for my students. (1981) No problem I was purchasing a couple dozen assorted method books a month from the publisher.

The publisher was Mel Bay. My lesson studios were in Belmont NC and Gastonia, The brothers are Steve and Neil Griffin Charlotte NC. They still have numerous downloadable method books from Mel Bay available today, the company is still run by his son William (Bill) Bay.

FYI: Mel could not get any music publishing company interest in publishing his guitar method books. So he decided to publish them himself. Like Happy Traum they built their careers around teaching the masses how to play guitar.


Last edited by dga; 05/16/16 07:13 AM.

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Originally Posted By: princeplanet
I assume there was no copyright restrictions there.

Best advice you will receive, in addition to the good suggestions above, is don't assume that.


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Thankyou chaps. Great info!

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Hi Princeplanet. Somebody mentioned Norton Music. He already has complete Fake Discs using Biab styles. It's probably easier and cheaper to just get them from him. They do not include melodies because it's the melodies where you run into copyright issues. Simple chord changes are no problem. Whether he has all the different books you want is a different question.

http://www.nortonmusic.com/

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  • MIDI Styles Set 92: Look Ma! More MIDI 15: Latin Jazz
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