Some of you might remember about 4 years ago or longer a bunch of us Talkbassers got together and created a book of copyright free songs we compiled into a book called Today's Jazz Book. We made pretty rapid progress and came up with about 14 songs we put into a professionally formatted book for C, Bb, Eb, and Bass cleft instruments. The songs were all peer reviewed by talkbassers and musicians I knew, before being included in the book. I ended up playing a bunch of these songs in the bands I was facilitating at the time. We had a website for promoting the book, and discussion forum for collaborating on peer reviews. I think we also had a facebook page. We also had a professional music engraver who did all the transcribing into a professional and attractive, unique chart format. We even consulted with a lawyer about copyright issues for a book like this, which was great. I think I paid him, but it was nominal.
Then we let it die. Why?
a) When I started promoting the book to musicians on various discussion forums (not here), I got pushback of people accusing me of acting out of self-interest in promoting "my" book. It's hard to persist in a volunteer effort when people respond that way to your efforts. I have long known that you don't do volunteer work for the thanks, but in this case, the push back was disturbing enough that I didn't feel like doing it anymore.
b) We ran out of copyright free songs. The initial 9 or so were taken from public domain sources, and there were quite a few good tunes out there. Sure, a few musicians submitted songs under a Creative Commons License, but it became clear that if we wanted this book to really include a lot of good songs, we needed a song contest and a live component we could put on YouTube. I was prepared to drop coin to do this, but then the pandemic hit and that killed any face to face performance opportunities, including the steady gig schedule I had for my groups.
c) I had a Creative Commons/non-profit lawyer I was working with who said he would help us put our own license together that allowed the songs to be performed live for audiences under, say 250 people (like bars and clubs, and small feature performance venues). But copyright for all other sized venues, recording, and other copyright domains would remain intact under this license. This was a license that couldn't be accommodated by the current suite of Creative Commons licenses out there that we were using to make initial rapid progress.
This custom license would have cost about $1500 and I was going to fund it, but then the lawyer withdrew from the creative commons/non-profit world, probably because he couldn't make money on it. Regular lawyers wanted a $5000 retainer, which I didn't feel I wanted to put up.
So, Today's Jazz Book sits on a heap of past ideas that didn't come to full fruition. Still glad that we did it, and that I got exposed to a lot of really good tunes from people for my groups' repertoire. Also a bunch of good collaborators here in Talkbass. The link is below if you want to download the book and or listen to the songs. And by the way, no one makes a dime on your download...and we never collected email addresses.
Then we let it die. Why?
a) When I started promoting the book to musicians on various discussion forums (not here), I got pushback of people accusing me of acting out of self-interest in promoting "my" book. It's hard to persist in a volunteer effort when people respond that way to your efforts. I have long known that you don't do volunteer work for the thanks, but in this case, the push back was disturbing enough that I didn't feel like doing it anymore.
b) We ran out of copyright free songs. The initial 9 or so were taken from public domain sources, and there were quite a few good tunes out there. Sure, a few musicians submitted songs under a Creative Commons License, but it became clear that if we wanted this book to really include a lot of good songs, we needed a song contest and a live component we could put on YouTube. I was prepared to drop coin to do this, but then the pandemic hit and that killed any face to face performance opportunities, including the steady gig schedule I had for my groups.
c) I had a Creative Commons/non-profit lawyer I was working with who said he would help us put our own license together that allowed the songs to be performed live for audiences under, say 250 people (like bars and clubs, and small feature performance venues). But copyright for all other sized venues, recording, and other copyright domains would remain intact under this license. This was a license that couldn't be accommodated by the current suite of Creative Commons licenses out there that we were using to make initial rapid progress.
This custom license would have cost about $1500 and I was going to fund it, but then the lawyer withdrew from the creative commons/non-profit world, probably because he couldn't make money on it. Regular lawyers wanted a $5000 retainer, which I didn't feel I wanted to put up.
So, Today's Jazz Book sits on a heap of past ideas that didn't come to full fruition. Still glad that we did it, and that I got exposed to a lot of really good tunes from people for my groups' repertoire. Also a bunch of good collaborators here in Talkbass. The link is below if you want to download the book and or listen to the songs. And by the way, no one makes a dime on your download...and we never collected email addresses.
Today's Jazz Book
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todaysjazz.yolasite.com
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