More soundfonts than you could ever want: http://www.thesoundsite.net/ Ken Atte André Jensen wrote:

On Mon, 13 Oct 2003 12:13:06 +0200 Vincent Touquet <vincent.touquet(a)pandora.be> wrote: Unless you render it unrecognizable. {It's somewhere in the DMCA faq. Tho' it only makes sense... If it's not a copy... it's not a copyright violation.}

actually... i beg to differ. you will have a certain element of copyright in your mechanical recording of the piano, but the copyright in the sample still belongs to korg/roland/yamaha etc, who are likely to be quite protective of them. there may, as has been mentioned, be licensing provisions but i'd suggest they'd be highly unlikely to extend to relicensing these samples for redistribution. if they do allow this - then wahey, i think we should all celebrate and start a GPL-distributed sf2 project. but i seriously doubt this would be the case. a proprietary company doesnt spend millions on developing an electric piano or synth for nothing. it would be analagious to someone re-recording one of your songs and then claiming that they own the copyright on your song. much as i'd like to be able to, i really can't see any other way around it. m~ Mark Knecht wrote: -- |\ _,,,---,,_ ZZZzz /,`.-'`' -. ;-;;,_ HTTP 503: Too Busy |,4- ) )-,_. ,\ ( `'-' '---''(_/--' `-'\_) fL "Do not meddle in the affairs of cats, for they are subtle and will piss on your computer." -- Bruce Graham Musicians say No to RIAA Persecution and Prosecution of Music Lovers! Sign the petition at http://www.copyleftmedia.org.uk/justsayno/ .::. www.iriXx.org .::. www.copyleftmedia.org.uk .::.

On Mon, Oct 13, 2003 at 09:54:04PM +0100, iriXx wrote: Roland seems to be indeed, this was on Slashdot some days ago: http://yro.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=03/10/11/1833213 Hmm, this analogy doesn't seem right. First of all, the samples in a synth are of course meant to be redistributed in some way. Also there is a difference between 'copyright of a song' and 'copyright of a recording'. Some rap producers are actually re-recording phrases from songs so they don't have to go through the hassles of sample-clearing. There are soundfonts of resampled digital synths already available on sites like hammersound, but that doesn't have to mean they are 100% legal of course. cheers, Christian

That's why csound is so handy for creating sound-alike custom ROMs, you can make a bunch of patches that sound roland-esque, but if it comes down to it, you can show the code for your original sounds. On Mon, 2003-10-13 at 17:33, Mark Knecht wrote:

I that case I'd just finagle access to a grand piano at calarts and sample it myself :-), which is just what I'm doing with some classical and rock guitar patches I'm developing, though csound can make guitar-like sounds, its easier to maipulate nylon string classical samples for what I'm working on. Anyways its all about going the extra mile, I'm really puny and slow compared to what some of my ex-classmates have done, Douglas has done some insane stuff with what I call his "emoto-bots", he had this cookie tin that would vibrate when you pet it right that was really cool way back in '97, and Ryan Francesoni built his own mac performance software. Me, I just learned to build terminatorX from cvs, and that sh*t took me 5 years to learn :-). But I'm working on csound to be able to produce my own custom patches for my asrx sampler and soundfonts as well. Also csound is great for doing algorithmic composition, my goal right now is to develop a good algorithm for some trippy stuff with csound under linux and then port it to a custom jsyn applet and release the source as well so people can enjoy my algorithm under windows and osx as well as linux. On Tue, 2003-10-14 at 00:48, Atte André Jensen wrote:

On Tue, Oct 14, 2003 at 07:21:48AM +0000, Chris Cannam wrote: I know that laws requiring some sort of artistic/aesthetic judgement for their enforcement are on thin ice, but surely it's easy to determine the intention here. Either you are a recording a piece of music (legitimate use) or you are making a carefully graded set of copies of the sample data for use by anyone who wants to clone the instrument (arguably not legitimate). I can't believe that it would require much of an expert witness to decide which was the intention in any specific case. Before someone starts on sampling, my point is that nobody produces a recording of music with the *intention* that it should be sampled and used in something else, unless it's something like a sound effects cellection in which case that intention is quite clear and the copyright statement would be worded accordingly. -- Anahata anahata(a)treewind.co.uk Tel: 01638 720444 http://www.treewind.co.uk Mob: 07976 263827

If you make a tune with your synth and publish it as public domain, so anybody can use parts of it and then someone uses a part of it, let's say one grand piano sample, could (s)he be sued then by the synth manufacturer? Normally you could sue the 'ripper', but since you already gave permission to rip, (s)he should be safe. How about if you make 'artistic' tune, which consists of grand piano samples played from C-0 to C-9 in half note steps and in different volumes. Now apply the same scenario as in the first case. What happens? And if synth manufacturer sues someone for making synth's samples available, what do you think how it affects the synth's sale? "Use synth X and get sued by X's manufacturer." Tommi Uimonen

the sounds from a synth are normally licensed under the EULA in such a way that the sound presets themselves are protected, but the creation of any work from them is not. it cannot be - you are the one who makes 'reasonable effort' to create a work from them. the judgement of how much effort you put into a work is part of judging whether it can be copyrighted. m~ Tommi Sakari Uimonen wrote: -- |\ _,,,---,,_ ZZZzz /,`.-'`' -. ;-;;,_ HTTP 503: Too Busy |,4- ) )-,_. ,\ ( `'-' '---''(_/--' `-'\_) fL "Do not meddle in the affairs of cats, for they are subtle and will piss on your computer." -- Bruce Graham Musicians say No to RIAA Persecution and Prosecution of Music Lovers! Sign the petition at http://www.copyleftmedia.org.uk/justsayno/ .::. www.iriXx.org .::. www.copyleftmedia.org.uk .::.

It seems to me that synths were invented before the current conception of 'intellectual property'. I doubt Robert Moog was thinking - 'hey, every time someone makes a Bach record on this thing, I can claim a 10% royalty'. Selling the synth itself was the business model. The problem as I see it is that there are now a whole load of business models based on non-tangible property, usually delivered in a digital form. You can sell or licence the sound of a piano, even though you didn't invent or even build the piano. It's clear that some things aren't physical property, and yet we are being told that than can be bought and sold in exactly the same way. I think it was George Bernard Shaw who put it like this: "We each have an apple. I give you my apple - you have two, and I have none. We each have an idea. I give you my idea, you give me yours, and then we have two ideas each." Intellectual property just doesn't respect maths... Laws (and interpretations of very old laws) are being changed to prop up these intangible businesses, and the fundamentally unsound nature of the proposition means there are bound to be problems. It's a bit like selling air in a can - only now there is no can. Cheers Daniel

On Tue, 14 Oct 2003, Michal Seta wrote: great link. i forgot about them. while i don't think negitivland releases cds with the intention that they should be sampled, they certainly wouldn't have a problem with it - they'd probably like it. and there are some great links on that site dealing with fair use, ip, and the RIAA (which has nothing to do with korg/roland/yamaha/etc). perhaps sampling the DWGS from my microKORG to create a software emulator might not be legal (if i sell it or give it away). i'll just provide instructions on how to create them, then. of course, right now i'm in korea, and copyright is pretty much ignored here. hrm...

The Residents did The Commercial Album, which had 40 tracks all exactly one minute long. Maybe they were trying to hint at something... Cheers Daniel

I seem to remember it was available in a triple vinyl version, also explicitly intended for remixing. I was lucky enough to see The Shamen before Will died. Last time I used Cool Edit it was no better when it came to opening and working with projects - Audacity 1.0 for Windows was much faster on the same machine, a P2-450 with 512MB RAM. Cheers Daniel

Michal Seta wrote: i'm very much a supporter of negativland and if you follow the links in my sig youll see that we were honoured to have them sign our petition. but negativland are, (like me), anti-copyright activists. what they do is either *deliberately* breaking the law, or bending it and playing around in the grey areas. it takes skill and knowledge. for example, most of their work can be classed as fair use under parody or journalistic comment exceptions. the same goes for my Madonna Remix Project. and thats why Madonna didnt sue us - because she couldnt. unfortunately the same *doesnt* apply for taking samples. i am trying to encourage people to license their work under the Creative Commons (www.creativecommons.org) or under a Free or Open Audio license, because this would permit us to share work and build Free/Open samplers in this way. that is the purpose of my www.copyleftmedia.org.uk website - which is now one of the supporting organisations involved in porting Creative Commons to Europe (iCommons). i want to build a repository of work licensed so that we can freely share and learn from it - thats what Larry Lessig refers to as the 'Commons', and thats what copyright in the way it is applied today is taking away from us and from our children. but as far as the law goes, you still need to be very careful at present if you want to avoid a lawsuit while you're building your sampler. Negativland and John Oswald (www.plunderphonics.com) deliberately break the law to make their protests heard. Adbusters are similiar, although most of their work is still covered under parody as fair use. whatever you do, do it in an informed way, and with good knowledge of the law. i would be more than happy to put up links to a sampler made as a 'protest' work on my website, in the same way that i support other great software that is being marginalised because of oppressive legislation (remember Vsound?). but in doing what i do, i've spent 2 1/2 years studying national and international copyright law, being involved in the debates, protests, and making sure my knowledge is sound before i take any action myself. otherwise i just make a fool of myself and of the cause. best m~ aka iriXx -- |\ _,,,---,,_ ZZZzz /,`.-'`' -. ;-;;,_ HTTP 503: Too Busy |,4- ) )-,_. ,\ ( `'-' '---''(_/--' `-'\_) fL "Do not meddle in the affairs of cats, for they are subtle and will piss on your computer." -- Bruce Graham Musicians say No to RIAA Persecution and Prosecution of Music Lovers! Sign the petition at http://www.copyleftmedia.org.uk/justsayno/ .::. www.iriXx.org .::. www.copyleftmedia.org.uk .::.

On Mon, 13 Oct 2003, iriXx wrote: then, wouldn't they mention it somewhere? especially on a new piece of equipment considering all the software and dvd issues these days? my microKORG manual, and the unit itself, says nothing. only the manual itself has a copyright. i don't remember any restrictions on my sy85, either (but it's in the states, and i'm in korea). the sounds in my microKORG and sy85 were never licensed to me. i bought the instuments for their sounds (perhaps to make recordings which i could sell and own all the rights to), whether i do something minimal or complex with them is up to me. these companies are in the hardware business, and with all the advances in softsynths (etc) these days, hardware is still very popular (even with me, who is cheap and a geek). it might be analogious to someone covering your song, and claiming the recording of their performance of your song (whether you gave them permission to use it or not). -dave

On Tue, 14 Oct 2003 11:22:31 +0200 Joern Nettingsmeier <nettings(a)folkwang-hochschule.de> wrote: Thanks. I'm gonna look into that for sure!!!!! -- peace, love & harmony Atte