Final book cover choices for Today's Jazz Book

Everyone -- working on a globally crowdsourced, cross-generational, royalty free book of quality jazz songs. Purpose is to allow musicians to perform songs without venue owners getting hit with licensing fees by ASCAP and BMI etcetera Free to download, share, print, free to perform live within the boundaries of the Creative Commons license each song possesses. Also meant to give composers a chance to have their music performed and remembered by other musicians. A team of Talkbassers and myself, and others, are working on the project.

Would like your opinion of which book cover is most attractive from a font perspective. Choices are attached.

The trumpet player cover was selected in an earlier thread and is non-negotiable at this point. There will be a book cover for each instrument transposition -- Bb, C, Eb, and Bass Clef instruments -- all featuring the trumpet player background. The lettering of Today's Jazz Book will influence the logo used on social media and in other places, so consider that when voting on a cover...

Please vote to help us decide which Font type looks the best...both on the cover and as the inspiration for a logo that comes next...

 

They are original jazz songs written by musicians from around the world. The songs are reviewed by peer reviewers, and then a curator makes the final decision about whether to include the songs in the book based on the reviewer's recommendations.

Some of the songs are from music already published under a creative commons license, while others are new compositions hitherto never published on the web and only recently licensed by the composer.

Some are arrangements of existing songs that had good elements, but were unfinished or needing tweaking. The songs meet certain criteria that makes them suitable for the local, gigging musician to perform....interesting melody, cool chord changes in many cases, accessible to the average musician, doesn't rely on strange instrumentation to sound good, no more than 2 pages.

When we launch the site, there will be about five songs in it you can hear and get the sheet music for via a PDF download. So, stay tuned for the songs. We want them to be good songs, so that is why a team of musicians will be reviewing them and making the recommendation to put the songs in the book.

It's basically the Real Book with new compositions, but legal to print and distribute.

Yes -- it is sheet music for all instruments. You don't have to buy it, it is free and managed by a non-profit (501c.3) in Florida. But we like donations to help defray the cost of the website, licensing fees for the image, and legal costs. There is a way of making donations on the site.

The book will grow over time, so hopefully every week or month you will get a notification a new song (recording and sheet music) is available.

We will be looking for compositions to be submitted from people all over the world....

We have a bit more set up to do in terms of processes, the legal aspect and some web and graphic design, but things are starting to fall into place.

Thanks for asking.

I think the byline could say "Royalty Free Music for Modern Musicians". Although I'm afraid some people might thing the songs aren't any good if we say that. We are committed to good songs musicians will want to play....so the song has to be good to make it into the book....as far as you can generalize what a good song is. People's tastes are all different..

 

We want the songs to be openly legal and viral, so it can be shared, played publicly etcetera -- so that is why we have a creative commons license for each song.

 

Interested in hearing what happened as this will only expand my perspective on musician's reactions to BMI...private message or here, whatever works for you...

 

I agree -- I've had situations were each musician gets $50 and MAYBE an entree and a soda for their services, yet they pay a BMI representative $150 to come out and get our set list. And in all situations, the venue owner just decides to shut down public performance of music, rather than pay the licensing fees. And their fees are based on the capacity of the venue, not actual attendance.

Add to that the extra pressure for the poor musicians to pack the place -- effectively, turning the band into a marketing organization, distracting from honing music skills -- and I find that for small venues, BMI does more harm than good to the actual owners of the music, and the local musicians trying to play it.

That is one reason we thought to try this Today's Jazz Book concept.

Thanks for sharing your experience -- in some areas it's not a problem, but in yours and mine, you are always at risk of getting shut down by BMI representatives...

I have a consultation with an intellectual property lawyer in early March to finalize our plans....stay tuned!