Open-Source Bach; Copyright-Free Goldbergs 106
rDouglass writes "An open source music notation software (MuseScore) and an award winning pianist (Kimiko Ishizaka) are raising money to create a new score and a new recording of Bach's Goldberg Variations. They will release both works to the public domain (copyright-free) using the Creative Commons Zero tool. This bypasses usual copyright protections that are given to each published edition of the score and each individual recording of the piece, and addresses a gap in the availability of free (gratis/libre) versions of the work. MuseScore scores are XML based and are thus like the source code for music. They can also be embedded into websites and linked with YouTube videos, creating rich multimedia experiences. The Kickstarter project has begun recently and $4,000 has been raised."
Why not MIDI? (Score:2)
I'm not suggesting that MIDI would be better, and I'm guessing there are, in fact, some limitations of MIDI that make it inappropriate here, but I'm very curious what those limitations are, and why XML was chosen instead?
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MIDI is a pita to read.
Re:Why not MIDI? (Score:5, Informative)
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That's untrue. There are many other midi events. Maybe you only have a bottom-of-the-line Casio keyboard, that doesn't send out aftertouch signals, but you just need to upgrade your equipment in that case.
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t doesn't even notate which score a note should be on. This means, for example, that piano music would be just about impossible to play from a raw midi dump.
I've run a few .mid's through Lilypond where no music was available for purchase. It does get the staffs right (MIDI has 'instruments' or channels), but it is ridiculously hard to play. It's best to use the score to get the music into your head, base the dynamics on your memory of the song, then just play it from memory.
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As someone who has learned piano pieces by looking at piano roll representations of MIDI files in a sequencer, i would have to disagree.
The arbitrary usage of a heptatonic scale makes little sense when it all comes down to 12 tones in the end. Traditional notation is not necessarily easier to read at all, it is just far more common among musicians.
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I guess it's that MIDI doesn't support notational details which don't add to the music, but add to the readability and/or playability of the music (e.g. which notes should be played with the left or right hand; synthesizers tend to not have any hands, after all).
Re:Why not MIDI? (Score:4, Informative)
To top it all off, it wasn't meant for music notation. Symbols like Accelerandos, Ritardandos are notably absent- changes to tempos are hardcoded. Many other symbols are absent as well. Sometimes notes need to be formatted in a special way (ie- for readability, or left/right hand on piano).
Anyone who has ever composed in Finale, Sibelius, etc and tried to export to midi will notice the limitations right away. Why, what's your beef with XML anyway?
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Comment removed (Score:4, Insightful)
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You can export Lilypond from MuseScore.
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Music notation is fairly complex. Good notation is easy to read, and what makes it easy to read involves a lot of creativity on the part of the publisher, which is why good scores for music composed in the 18th century are still expensive today.
MIDI can express the notes being played, and any notation software can render that information in a printable form, but it won't be clearly readable by a human being, even though it is technically accurate. What's being produced here is everything on the printed pa
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What the FUCK? MIDI can render piano "perfectly"? Are you mad? 128 levels of velocity is absolutely woeful when it comes to phrasing and articulation.
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From what little experience I've had composing on the computer, I can say that MIDI doesn't create scores very well. Just importing random MIDIs to notation in RoseGarden usually ends up unreadable/unplayable by human beings. Usually it's best to keep the source format in something more exa
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For The Uninitiated (Score:4, Informative)
The Goldberg Variations [wikipedia.org] were made a pop classic (oxymoron?) by Glenn Gould in 1955, becoming a million seller. If you're new to Bach try The Well-Tempered Clavier [wikipedia.org]. A. Hewitt's recordings of both of the above are more recent and very good in my opinion.
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It was humor. Surely you know that the standard classical theme music for evil masterminds is Bach's Toccata and Fugue in D Minor [magle.dk] - it goes along with the evil laugh [flasherdotfiles.org]. (There are newer pieces that are appropriate for the villain to perform with a background chorus, such as this wonderful piece [signalpodcast.com] by Seanan McGuire, but the Tocatta's the gold standard for soliloquies.)
More seriously, though, I do have some friends who have depression issues that I haven't introduced to Pink Floyd, even though Dark Side of the
Copyright free scores already exist... (Score:4, Informative)
There are several copyright-free scores at IMLSP (direct link) [imslp.org].
Re:Copyright free scores already exist... (Score:4, Informative)
While I'm certainly not opposed to the idea, both scores and recordings exists that are out of copyright. Bach is probably one of the easier composers to get hold of both scores and recordings.
There are several copyright-free scores at IMLSP (direct link) [imslp.org].
There are a few PD or CC versions there (among many which must be purchased). One problem is that the PD ones are mostly just bitmap scans of ancient prints, and the CC ones are PDFs. The PDFs are neater and cleaner than the scans, but neither of them is a "source" code - you cannot easily modify the score to make your own variations in tempo through a piece, for example, or add an extra instrument to augment the piece. That is probably the greatest benefit of releasing scores in XML or TeX format - the ability to easily adapt or modify them.
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IMSLP is great, but all their scores are scans of old editions. To use the same analogy of the submitter, these scans are like a binary distribution of a piece of software, whereas the MuseScore version is the source code.
At the absolute minimum, it will allow you to control the way the score is laid out on the page. However, TFA suggests that the new score will actually have a lot more benefits than that -- it will include modern editorial suggestions, for example. (When it comes to Bach, that's very impor
Re:Copyright free scores already exist... (Score:5, Informative)
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I am totally opposed to this! What incentive is there for Bach to write more music if it's just going to be given away?
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Things to do in Copyrightland When You're Dead (Score:2)
While obviously this doesn't apply to Bach, there are good reasons for copyright to last past the author's death (though that doesn't mean that the current "75 years after Disney Corporation dies" is justified. Helen Hooven Santmyer [slashdot.org]'s novel And Ladies of the Club [wikipedia.org] was published when she was 86, and became a best-seller. But if copyright ended at death, a publisher probably wouldn't have taken the risk of publishing a book from somebody who might die a couple of years later (and in fact did), so she wouldn'
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Mutopia (Score:2)
$1000 concert (Score:3, Interesting)
I just sent that website to our local Economic Development Office. How often do you get an offer from a world-famous pianist to play a concert for only $1000 plus travel costs (from Germany, where she is.) The whole production would end up costing under $10,000 which seems like a steal to me.
alternative to lilypond (Score:5, Interesting)
Apparently MuseScore has been around for a long time in some form, but only recently has it started to become a real contender in same music notation space as Finale and Lilypond -- I had barely played with it until today.
Previously I've used Lilypond, which is very feature rich and produced beautiful output, but there were some things I didn't like about it. It's a non-GUI program, which is fine with me, but they kept changing the syntax of the language. Every time I installed a new version of Lilypond, I'd have to convert all my old files to the new version, and that was a big hassle. Also, for many musicians who are not programmers, the non-GUI nature of Lilypond meant that they weren't going to use it. Although there were GUI front-ends such as Denemo and Rosegarden, progress seemed extremely slow. I would check back every few years and find that they weren't really that much more capable than the last time I'd checked.
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Although there were GUI front-ends such as Denemo and Rosegarden, progress seemed extremely slow. I would check back every few years and find that they weren't really that much more capable than the last time I'd checked.
Nobody ever promised you a Rosegarden.
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Yes, for a variety of reasons. (a) Convert-ly doesn't always work. (b) I have to relearn the relevant parts of the language myself. (c) I have other software that generates lilypond code as output and takes it as input.
There are lots of good reasons why we don't redefine the syntax of Java or HTML every year and just tell everyone to run their code through a converter. All of those reasons apply to Lilypond.
Other Instruments? (Score:1)
This is great! (Score:5, Insightful)
In case you've never heard of the Goldberg Variations, I suggest having a listen to either of the versions by Glenn Gould (1955 or 1981). Both are incredible, and the technicality of the piece is staggering; there is one movement with differing time signatures (18/16 and 3/4) on each hand, that exchange hands, repeatedly . There are some who consider it good thinking music.
It's funny, but I had never noticed until now that there aren't public domain versions of this piece; it's really quite eye-opening that people can recognize probably half a dozen classical pieces because they've been used so much (because they are public domain), but one of the greatest pieces by one of the greatest composers hasn't entered into the public awareness simply because of the tyranny known as copyright.
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Copyright has long since expired on many editions of the scores, there are piles of PDF scans available. No one apparently has taken the time to enter it into a computer readable format, mainly becuase it's huge.
And free recordings are hard to come by, because the people who can play it already have contracts so they can't release a free version.
So to correct your statement, no one with the skills needed has taken the
I stand corrected (Score:2)
I find this surprising. People have created open source projects in their spare time that rival the largest corporate or government software projects. Why not transcription projects of this scale?
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Because it is unnecessary to transcribe a piece of music in order to perform it freely.
On the other hand, it is sometimes necessary to code your own program to accomplish a task freely.
And the open source projects that rival huge commercial projects tend to have corporate backers who use it to sell services and such. I'm not sure the same type of economic strategy would work for music transcription.
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Ironically, the Gould recordings are now out of copyright in the UK.
http://www.naxos.com/catalogue/item.asp?item_code=8.111247 [naxos.com]
"Not available in the United States, Australia and Singapore due to possible copyright restrictions"
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I stand corrected, again (Score:2)
I stand corrected, again! Someone please mod this gentleman up as informative, for I cannot, for obvious reasons.
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you know that pianos have a sustain pedal for a reason, right? you can achieve that exact effect with a single piano
Glen Gould's rendition is still the standard... (Score:2)
by which others are judged.
Both the 1955 and 1981 ("purists prefer the former") recordings are pure genius if you can ignore Gould humming in the background while he plays. It's unfortunate that Gould is no longer around to play yet another rendition to publicize a freely available score.
For those who care:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Glenn_Gould [wikipedia.org]
Interesting, but... (Score:4, Informative)
Contrary to TFA, there are CC licensed scores in Lilypond format available through Mutopia [mutopiaproject.org]. As far as PDF scans and such, as other posters have mentioned, there are innumerable resources [mcgill.ca].
The big questions for me (disclaimer: I'm a professional classical pianist) is that of scholarly review. The go-to publisher for Bach today is Bärenreiter/Neue Bach Ausgabe [baerenreiter.com], and by and large, any edition of Bach that I use that isn't Bärenreiter should ideally be cross referenced with it. Of course, it is very expensive to purchase, but it is one item that any university with a music program simply must have in its library. What concerns me is that TFA simply is vague who or what they mean by scholarly review, and this alone would prevent me from considering it over current alternatives.
IMHO the value in the project will be a (hopefully) excellent recording that is CC licensed, as there doesn't appear to be any decent recordings of the sort (through a cursory search), unless you include Wanda Landowska's eccentric harpsichord recordings [archive.org] from 1945. Genius is already easily available in recordings on piano by Gould [amazon.com] (both 1955 and 1981), Schiff [amazon.com], Hewitt [amazon.com], Barenboim [amazon.com], Perahia [amazon.com], and Leonhardt [amazon.com] on harpsichord.
Open music is starting to go somewhere (Score:2, Informative)
And it's not just in composition software or performances like in the article.
There's some nice synth/digital audio workstation software too. These come fairly well packaged with their own sample kits, integrated synthesizers, LADSPA effects, and plugin support for other things like soundfonts and VST effects and instruments. I believe all of them also save music in XML as well. (Perhaps not the same exact format, but I'm sure they'd be easy enough to convert since labels appear to make sense.) XML is kind
Encourage this, and prosper from it (Score:2)
Once this goes into the public domain.... Once the music is available... Use it.
Make videos with it as the background, put it in your products, play it at your corporate events, use the hell out of it. FREE is FREE. Of course you can profit from it... as long as you add value to it. The only thing you can't do with it, is prevent other people from doing the same damn thing.
I don't understand the confusion here. Why aren't businesses doing this all the time, so they don't have to pay anyone for the rights to
Thank you Slashdot! (Score:1)
Re:Innovate! (Score:5, Informative)
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Re:Innovate! (Score:5, Interesting)
> It's not innovating and creating new if you take existing sheet music...
I agree with you. Unfortunately, the copyright laws don't really see it that way. It's a weird situation where even a 200 year old music is under some protection (performances are protected, the written sheet music is protected). If you wanted to set your home video to some (100+ year old) classical music, where would you get the soundtrack? Even my digital piano (Roland) disables the MIDI out when playing the built-in classical pieces. I look forward to putting it into Rosegarden, piping it through a softsynth and the digital piano and enjoy a truly "surround sound" experience.
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Actually, performances are a new work (they add something not found in the scores, as can be checked by listening to performances by different artists).
Re:Innovate! (Score:4, Informative)
I'm not denying that performances are a new work. What I was trying to get at is that the music that was free can only be had via listening to copyrighted performances, or copyrighted transcriptions. So now you have a situation where music that didn't even have copyright protection at the time it was created (and if they did at that time, they certainly would have entered public domain by now) are only available via copyright.
Material that was in public domain effectively entered copyright. The exact opposite of what the copyright system is meant to facilitate.
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Fortunately there are plenty of people with the love of the music that has played or sequenced the pieces and placed the resulting MIDI files online. They are a simple Google search away.
I have been known to take a few and re-voice them, change the tempo, add a track, remove a track, etc to make my own arrangement of them that sounds great on an XG synth.
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... through a valve amp and speakers that weigh more than most people's cars and cost more than their houses. Connected by crystal-free copper monoxide cables, obviously.
Performance equipment for Bach (Score:2)
You're thinking way too small there - no matter how snobby you get about your audiophileness, your equipment can't really reproduce a pipe organ or good seats at an orchestra performance. And you can't begin to reproduce taiko, because your speakers simply can't move enough air - it takes rock&roll band concert hardware, not audiophile hardware.
But for classical music, the quality of your sound system isn't the critical issue - it's the performers. I had a housemate in college who had a medium-quality
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I suggest you look into Glenn Gould's [wikipedia.org] work with the Goldberg Variations if you really think that.
Re:Innovate! (Score:4, Funny)
I suggest you look into Glenn Gould's [wikipedia.org] work with the Goldberg Variations if you really think that.
He is the closest thing to God that's ever played them...
A concert violinist dies and goes to heaven. St. Peter shows him around, telling him they're delighted that he's here to play in the heavenly symphony orchestra. They look in on a rehearsal and there's a tyrannical bearded white-haired conductor. "Who's that?" asks the violinist. "Oh that's God," says Peter, "he thinks he's Von Karajan."
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You need to be clear on what you mean by "existing sheet music".
High-quality editions of classical music are ultimately based on research into early editions and, if possible, the autographs of the composer. These results are usually compiled into critical editions, which represent our state of knowledge about what the composer intended for this piece.
But that's not what you buy at the sheet music store. That is a version that has been further edited to produce a version which represents the closest to th
Not a monopoly, but certainly copyright protection (Score:2)
It doesn't give you a monopoly - some other music publishing house can just as well do their own version of the same pieces. But it certainly does give you a copyrightable product, because you've put actual creative work into it, not just typesetting. And even if you hadn't done significant creative work, just taken some late-1800s sheet music on which the copyright had expired, but re-typeset it yourself, that's protected enough that somebody can't buy one copy of your sheet music and Xerox off a hundred
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Whoops, wrong moderation. Cancelling.
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Are you saying it's not innovating? Classical sheet music is very, very expensive.
Goldberg Variations: BWV 988 [doverpublications.com] $7.95
Upon its 1742 publication, Bach entitled it "Keyboard Practice, consisting of an Aria with Diverse Variations, for the Harpsichord with 2 Manuals. Composed for Music Lovers, to Refresh their Spirits." As Glenn Gould remarked, the title offers a very down-to-earth description of a monumental work. Long regarded as the Baroque era's most important set of variations, the Goldbergs were relatively unknown when he chose them for his recording debut in [1955.] The sensation created by his still-popular recordings revivified the piece in concert performances, in which spectators delight in its virtuosic hand-crossings.
Reprint of the Gesellschaft, Leipzig, 1853 edition.
Bach: Goldberg Variations [Gould, 1955], [amazon.com] Bach: The Goldberg Variations [Gould. 1981] [amazon.com] MP3 samples for both.
Two very different approaches to the same work.
In presenting the "Variations" to a modern audience, do you use an arrangement from 1742 or the 1853 Leipzig edition?
Glenn Gould from 1955? Glenn Gould from 1981? Or should you be rolling your own?
The choices are never so simple as mechanically playing a "piano roll"
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They are innovating. Just not in games. See: latest commits to Linux kernel, Apache, LZMA(2), Android, Firefox and Chromium outpacing IE, the website you're posting on...
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I have not yet determined the cause of this divide, but it certainly exists. Once I figure out the reason for it, though, devising a way to make open-source art work should be simple.
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If anything, I think it's because there's no good way to collaborate on art. SVN and other source-control is too heavily-focused on text - you can't do a diff on a texture, for instance. So you end up with only one or two art passes, instead of the repeated cycles you need. This lends itself to cloning a game rather well, but not for creating a highly original game.
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One of the best computer programming courses I took in college was mainly focused on learning how to program in teams. Officially it was about doing computer simulations, but we were working in groups of 4-5 so we could learn how to do that, and we were pretty much free to divide the labor however we wanted, but we did have to learn some basic human communication skills in the process. For bright nerds with egos, which was most of the class, this was a tough course :-)
I'm not much of a gamer, and tend to
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Hint: There is no money in making free art.
No money in making free art (Score:1)
Mod Parent Up, Please (Score:2)
That was a great comment - thanks!
Also, they are making a little money here (Score:2)
They're trying to raise $15K here at Kickstarter, plus whatever they can get from CD sales. They're not going to make a lot of money, compared to the amount of work they're going to need to do, but they're making some money.
And they're going to make the Goldberg Variations a lot more accessible to the public, making it easier for kids (and adults) to learn that level of music skills. Maybe that just brings the world more art, but by putting Free editable versions of the scores out there, it gives people m
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Whaaaambulance (Score:1)
Why won't someone else innovate and work hard instead of me? Someone call the whaaaaambulance!
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First of all, I don't think few things are really new in terms of technological development. Most technology, if not all, is built upon a layer of old technology. The wheel was probably an evolution of the rolling log, a technology that nature invented. Famous computing technology examples: the Macintosh, which "innovated" on top of technologies d