Happy 217th Brithday US Copyright Law!

On this day in 1790, George Washington signed the Copyright Act of 1790 into law. The original law was based on the 1710 Statute of Anne, the first copyright law passed in England named after Queen Anne. The original copyright act passed by the second session of the US Congress was quite short, taking up only a half a page of the Columbian Centinel - one of the many papers that the act was published in. The law protected only US citizens who published books, charts, and maps for a period of 14 years - international copyright protection didn’t happen until 1891. This period of time could be renewed for an additional 14 years. It is a simple law with a simple purpose: to encourage creativity by protecting the right to reproduce it for a limited period of time.

Since 1790, the copyright law has been changed numerous times to include various forms of media - including music. Believe it or not, music in the United States was not protected under Copyright Law until the Copyright Act of 1909. It is interesting to trace the history of copyright law to see how we’ve come from a simple half-page document to the current 239 page law. Copyright Law today is quite different from the original document written in 1790, and so is the technology-driven world that we live in.

To learn more about the history of Copyright Law in the US, I strongly recommend the following books:

Music Copyright for the New Millennium by David J. Moser

Free Culture: How Big Media Uses Technology and the Law to Lock Down Culture and Creativity by Lawrence Lessig

Digital Copyright by Jessica Litman

I welcome your comments and suggestions.

So how does one pay for technology? Back in March, I wrote a post called Raising Funds for Technology detailing one of two benefit concerts I produce each year at the Franklin Avenue Middle School where I teach. The Broadway Night concert raised over $5,000 for the music department, almost all of which went to maintain and expand the music technology lab. This upcoming Monday, I’ll be producing the second fund raiser: Jazz Night 2007.

Like many other middle school music programs, I have a jazz ensemble, and they’ve always been my most talented ensemble. Back in 1999 I began Jazz Night with a good friend of mine, fellow Rocklander, Erik Lawrence. Since then we’ve hosted some major jazz artists including Steve Turre, Ravi Coltrane, Dave Douglas, Charlie Hunter, Ray Vega & Dave Valentin, Benevento Russo Duo, Mulgrew Miller, and Steve Bernstein and the Millennial Territory Orchestra. This Monday night, June 4th at 7:30pm, we are proud to host an amazing group led by Erik Lawrence called Hipmotism. Along with slide trumpeter Steve Bernstein, bassist Rene Hart, and drummer Allison Miller, Erik Lawrence and Hipmotism plays an eclectic collection of funky, groove-driven soul music. I had the opportunity to hear them last year at a local club called The Turning Point, and they were fantastic. The group will give a one-hour clinic to my students, working on their repertoire, and then my ensemble will serve as the opening act for Hipmotism. Often the musicians play along with our ensemble, or our students might join theirs. It’s a fantastic experience for the students (although they don’t realize it) and for me.

If you’re in the area, we’d love for you to come to the show. Tickets are only $20, the seating is very intimate, and you’ll definitely be able to meet and talk with the musicians. The Franklin Avenue Middle School is located in Franklin Lakes, NJ. For more information or to reserve a ticket, please email me at jtfrankel@hotmail.com. I’d love to see you there!

I welcome your comments and suggestions.

There are already plenty of websites out there where users can listen to streaming music. Internet radio websites like Pandora are fantastic (although currently endangered) places to hear music, but they do not allow users to choose the music they hear - they can only choose the bands or genre. This limitation makes it somewhat affordable for Internet radio stations to pay for the royalties that are associated with radio stations.

Recently, on TechCrunch.com, I read an interesting article about an existing website called LaLa.com that offers a great CD swapping service and a live music downloading site. What LaLa is about to do is offer users free on-demand streaming music. This service will cost LaLa.com $0.01 cent per listen or $0.17 per user/per hour - quite expensive indeed. So why do it? What is the business plan behind this fantastic service? Like Pandora, LaLa will offer users a simple to use button that will allow users to purchase the CD they are listening to. If each user buys one CD per month, LaLa will cover it’s costs. An ambitious plan, but one that I feel is exactly what the digital music revolution needs. Personally, I much prefer to have a physical CD than just the music. Aside from the sound quality being much better, I like reading the liner notes. Hopefully others will feel the same and support a service like LaLa that is taking a huge risk by offering this service. I welcome your comments and suggestions.

TI:ME NJ has a number of opportunities for professional development. For the first time we will be running TI:ME Courses through Villanova University (Level 1A, 1B, and 2A) at the Franklin Avenue Middle School in Franklin Lakes, NJ. In addition to the TI:ME Courses, there is a fantastic opportunity for elementary music educators to study with the 2005 TI:ME Teacher of the Year, Amy M. Burns.

The course, titled: Integrating Technology into Your Elementary General Music Classroom, is a hands-on course for teachers interested in integrating technology into their curriculum. The course will include a survey of successful teaching strategies and lesson plans as well as an overview of hardware and software appropriate for the elementary level. The material covered in this course will be applicable to every teaching scenario - the teacher who teaches on a cart, the teacher with one computer in a classroom, and the teacher who either already has a classroom lab or who is interested in setting up a lab. Classroom-ready lesson plans, handouts, and software will be included.

Dates: Monday, July 30 – Friday, August 3
Hours: 9:00am - 4:00 pm
Credit: 30 NJ professional development hours
Cost: $300.00
Location: Far Hills Country Day School (http://www.fhcds.org). in Far Hills, NJ, located near Bernardsville and Morristown
Registration: Participants can register online through the following website: http://info.fhcds.org/~aburns.
Additional information: Questions about the course can be sent to awillis2@aol.com.

I have been thinking about starting a new series of posts that help explain technology terms that are frequently mentioned on this blog (and many other resources). While there are many print and online technology glossaries already out there, I am hoping that posts like this one are useful to you. As always, I welcome your comments, questions, and suggestions.

What is MIDI?

What better term to begin the Tech Terms posts than MIDI?

The term MIDI is actually an acronym for Musical Instrument Digital Interface. While many people already know this, some might not know how it began and what it actually does. In 1981, Dave Smith presented a paper at the annual Audio Engineering Society Convention calling for a universal protocol that would allow electronic instruments and computers to communicate with each other. By 1983, MIDI 1.0 was a standard part of both electronic instruments and sequencing software. Connecting computers and keyboards together is done with a 5-pin connector cable and a MIDI interface device. The interface translates event messages. An event, in terms of MIDI, is everything from the pitch, note duration, velocity, dynamic level, timbre, etc. When you press a middle C on a keyboard there are many events that occur - the pitch, how hard you press the key, how long you hold it down for, when you let go, etc. The MIDI signal that is transmitted (a stream of binary code - 0’s nd 1’s) between devices reports each of those events. Pretty simple really.

In order to connect a computer and a keyboard you need a MIDI Interface. Today, many keyboards come equipped with a USB port that eliminates the need for a physical device (the interface is built-in). If your keyboard does not have a USB port then you’ll need a device like the M-Audio USB Uno. These interfaces have a MIDI Out and MIDI In port - and connecting these ports to your keyboard is quite easy. Keyboard MIDI Out to Interface MIDI In and vice versa. This interface will allow your computer (and the software on it) to communicate with your keyboard.

MIDI Channels

Most MIDI hardware devices (like a keyboard) allow for 16 channels of MIDI information to be transmitted simultaneously. This means that you can have up to 16 different MIDI instrument tracks playing together. Most notation software will assign these channels for you, but higher-end sequencers often require you to assign the channels yourself. This is usually a pretty simple process, but it varies according to what title you’re using.

Hopefully this clears up what MIDI actually is. Feel free to add information in a comment. Terms like Standard MIDI Files and General MIDI will be addressed in future posts. Hopefully this new series of posts is helpful. I look forward to writing more of them in the future.

One of the most successful pieces of music software from the MakeMusic family of products is SmartMusic - an intelligent accompaniment program that enhances practicing.  If you’ve never seen the product in action, you should.  It is very powerful.  Until now, MakeMusic has had the lock on practice accompaniment software.  That may all change.

Sibelius will release a new program titled StarPlay Music this summer that has an amazing twist.  Created originally by an Australian software company under the name In The Chair, StarPlay Music adds a video component to the practicing experience.  Rather than seeing only the music on your screen as you do with SmartMusic, students who use StarPlay will see the music on a music stand as well as a conductor and musicians around them.  StarPlay Music places the student in a professional ensemble with a conductor.  To see a video demonstration of StarPlay, click HERE.  Of course the student has the option to adjust the tempo, and work on problem areas rather than the entire piece.  Teachers can also create their own music for their students to practice.  With a partnership with Sibelius, StarPlay Music is set to become a major competitor for SmartMusic.  Like the competition between Finale and Sibelius, I think that this new competition will only improve both products - helping teachers and students in the long run.

Right now, only Windows users can download a demo copy of the software, but an Apple version is in the works.  The software will be available for purchase this summer - just in time for the 2007-08 school year.  Welcome StarPlay Music - I’m glad you’re here!

I welcome your comments and suggestions.

Infinite Copyright?

I was reading the Sunday New York Times Op-Ed section yesterday when I came across the most bizarre article I have ever seen about copyright. Author Mark Helprin wrote an opinion titled A Great Idea Lives Forever: Shouldn’t Its Copyright? In the piece, Helprin argues that authors should be protected by copyright for eternity. I laughed aloud as he made the argument that intellectual property has the same value as physical property. Here is how the article starts:

“WHAT if, after you had paid the taxes on earnings with which you built a house, sales taxes on the materials, real estate taxes during your life, and inheritance taxes at your death, the government would eventually commandeer it entirely? This does not happen in our society … to houses.”

Drawing this parallel is nothing new - Mark Twain famously did the same thing in his arguments for increasing copyright protection in the 1800’s. The author seems to have misunderstood the original purpose of copyright law - to provide an economic incentive to create new works. Publishing houses were making copies of literary works and the authors (and their publishers) were being cut out of this income - clearly unfair. The original copyright protection offered a 7 year exclusive right to copy by the owners of the work - usually the publishing houses. This term has been extended many times over the years. Now copyright owners are granted protection for 70 years after the death of the creator. That means that family members of copyright owners will make money on works created decades ago, and will do so for quite some time. I know this might sound harsh, but why should they? The profits have been made, and the original creators have been paid. Why should their great-grandchildren (or great-great-great-great-great-etc. as Helrpin suggests) continue to make them? At some point, shouldn’t the public be given the right to use this property to make new works? Disney has certainly done their fair share of borrowing. Should the profits made on Cinderella go to the family of Charles Perrault - the original Mother Goose? Not if Disney has anything to say about it.

Helprin’s argument that physical property has the same value as intellectual property is misguided. Physical property is inherently scarce. Intellectual property is not. TechDirt.com, among others, has a great post about Helprin’s article that does a great job explaining this. Lawrence Lessig has set up a wiki in response to the argument that has some great posts already. When you create a work you are paid to do so. You sign a contract, get paid, and move on. Royalty checks come in over the years - but if you ever received one, they’re usually pretty small. The point is - you get paid - sometimes quite a bit - when you create the work. Most often, the contract you sign gives ownership of copyright to the publisher with a negotiated royalty percentage going to the author. When you sell a house you have no rights as to what happens to the house. You sell it, make a profit, and move on. Helprin’s article suggests that he original owner of the house should have rights on all of the future profits on future sales of the house. There is no way you can effectively make an argument that intellectual and physical property are the same. If infinite copyright were ever to be considered, the original purpose of copyright law would be lost. If everything ever created was protected forever (by mega-corporations) there would be no incentive to create new works because you wouldn’t be able to borrow ideas from anywhere else. While I am unfamiliar with his work, I’m sure that Mark Helprin used ideas from other literary works in his own novels. Infinite copyright? An absurd idea that would severely impact creativity in our society.

I welcome your comments and suggestions.

Looking for a great resource that covers pretty much every piece of technology on the market today?  Look no further.  The Technology Guide for Music Educators (TI:ME/Thomson Course Technology, 2006) is a wonderful book from the Technology Institute for Music Educators (TI:ME) that does just that. The book, which sells for $19.99, provides product descriptions, technical specifications, pictures, comparative charts, Web resources, and curricular-integration ideas for the hardware and software currently available to music educators. Twelve of music education technology’s best came together to write the book with Scott Watson serving as editor.  It is a great resource for anyone looking for information about specific products and how they can be used in the classroom.  To read more about the book, check out my article entitled Read Me! in the February/March issue of Music Technology Magazine.  The article also reviews three other invaluable books that every music educator should have on their shelf.

I welcome your comments and suggestions.

Mark Your Calendars!

The Technology Institute for Music Educators, TI:ME, has recently announced that the 2008 National Conference will be held in conjunction with the Michigan Music Conference from January 24-26, 2008 in Grand Rapid, MI. If you have never been to a TI:ME National Conference I strongly recommend making plans to attend this one. If you have ever wanted to present a session on a successful technology experience in your classroom, there is no better place than the TI:ME National Conference. TI:ME is accepting session proposals until May 26th 2007. There will be hundreds of amazing sessions focused on the effective integration of music technology in music education. TI:ME Conference chair Rocky Reuter always does an incredible job getting the best clinicians presenting fabulous sessions. I’ll see you there!

If you are looking for an amazing website that thoroughly covers the entire Well Tempered Clavier by J.S. Bach, then you need to check out this site. I found out about it while visiting another great lesson plan website called The Merlot Project - a website dedicated to utilizing multimedia to teach students about a wide variety of topics. The Well Tempered Clavier site was created by Dr. Timothy A. Smith (from Northern Arizona University) and Dr. David Korevaar (from the University of Colorado). The site was created using Flash and has tons of excellent information, including definitions of key terms and the historical significnce of the work. My favorite part of the site is that you can pull up any of the preludes and fugues and see a detailed analysis of the piece in an interactive movie environment. While the intended audience is the collegiate level, I believe that the material could enhance a lesson at the middle or high school level.

I welcome your comments and suggestions.