http://cgi.ebay.com/aw-cgi/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=1522489593
The auctioneer is selling claimed “note-for-note” transcription of one of Matt Molloy’s recordings. The seller has also transcribed some other tunes played by other masters. Personally, I don’t learn tunes from sheet music, but I know others who like the written stuff.
However the seller seems to be saying some rather exaggerated and weird things, like:
“You will progress faster and farther than those who don’t (use sheet music). And you will learn how the masters do it BEFORE you develop bad habits you only have to break.”
and
“My transcriptions will show you how to play Irish music.”
“The whole reason I started making these transcriptions in the first place was that I had decided to learn Irish flute and uilleann pipes and there were no publications available that were written by someone who could demonstrate in intelligent musical notation how to do it. They just couldn’t get their thoughts down on paper.”
It all sounds quite funny.
He also says “Each of these transcriptions takes me 10 hours MINIMUM to complete.”, which sounds doubious to me.
[ This Message was edited by: Eldarion on 2002-03-05 23:52 ]
I wouldn’t go so far as saying that the claims are exaggerated. Using some of the current slow down programs for MP3 files, I know of several people who do exactly the same thing…in fact I have done it for several well-loved tunes. You listen to a song over, and over, and over again transcribing the entire thing note by note. That way you learn exactly how it’s being played. And it is very time consuming!
Personally, I learn by reading the sheet music and then really learn the music by hearing it. I agree that by reading the sheet music you will learn it faster (at least for visual learners) but you won’t get the feel of it without also learning by ear.
I also agree with Judith that there might be some copyright problems lurking here…
Hmmm… interesting… Actually, I used to work in mechanical & print licensing for CMI in Nashville… Obtaining a print license is fairly easy and doesn’t cost that much… For the little bit he’s publishing, he probably sends the copyright holder a couple hundred bucks a year tops…
Ok… just shedding a little more useless knowledge… Goodnight…
On 2002-03-05 23:36, Eldarion wrote:
“My transcriptions will show you how to play Irish music.”
“The whole reason I started making these transcriptions in the first place was that I had decided to learn Irish flute and uilleann pipes and there were no publications available that were written by someone who could demonstrate in intelligent musical notation how to do it. They just couldn’t get their thoughts down on paper.”
He also says “Each of these transcriptions takes me 10 hours MINIMUM to complete.”, which sounds doubious to me.
Sounds like someone getting on the bandwagon to make a bit of money.
While a transcription may show you what notes are being played, it will NEVER show you how the music is actually played.
I have made a good few highly detailed transcriptions for publication and experience tells me the music is not in the written notes.
In combination with the recording it was transcribed from it will show you what is going on in that particular performance, and can be a help in that sense.
There are a good few detailed transcriptions available in books and journals, take the Willie Clancy book, Patsy Touhey, Ceol An phoibaire, the Ennis tutor. Enough intelligent explanations in those, and that’s only the piping books.
Ten hours to complete; he must be joking. Or maybe he isn’t and is just very slow, in that case it doesn’t speak well of his ability to write a tune.
[ This Message was edited by: Peter Laban on 2002-03-06 08:02 ]
Hmmm…I took a look at the auction, contacted the seller and asked him directly about copyright infringements. Below is his response:
“No, no copyright laws are being violated. I am not selling the recordings.
You have to buy the CD’s. My transcriptions are my own work. They are
protected by their own copyright. If I were copying someone else’s sheet
music, then I would be infringing on copyright, but these are my own
notations and interpretations of the rhythms. There are many ways to
notate a performance. I believe mine to be the best in that it is precise,
concise, and at the same time simple. If you transcribed these, you would
not come up with the same notations. This is my work and I own the
copyright on my notations.”
I would suggest (I didn’t think of it before) you are better off buying volume Three of Breandan Breatnach’s Ceol Rinnce na hEirreann which contain 230 concicse yet simple transcriptions of tunes taken from commercial recordings of all very well established players, including Mary Bergin and many many more
TomCat.
I find it interesting if he’s using Matt Malloy’s name to sell something, and if he is indicating that it is an exact representation of how Matt’s arranged the tune. And if it sounds like he’s not kicking any money back to Matt, nor indicating that he had Matts permission. I wonder what an intellectual property or copyright lawyer would do with it. (I mean other than make money for the lawyer, himself).
To me it’s the spirit of the thing. Most of the folks around are pretty free, open and modest with their music. Traditional tunes are meant to be shared. Your quote from this guy doesn’t have the same feeling. Sure would like to here more, (would also love to here what Matt Malloy thought of this).
Enjoy Your Music,
Lee Marsh
P.S. I notice one of his ‘other’ offerings include Frankie Kennedy playing the Sunset reel. Frankie may have passed but the author of the Sunset Reel hasn’t, Cathal McConnell.
[ This Message was edited by: LeeMarsh on 2002-03-06 13:32 ]
The seller’s comments about copyright are nonsense. Yes, he holds copyright for his transcription, in the sense that he has the legal right to stop people from copying it. (In the US, anyway.)
But it is very clearly a derived work, which means he does not have the right to sell it himself without permission from Matt Molloy’s people.
What he is doing is no different than, say, buying a DVD of a movie, watching it over and over, writing down all the dialogue, and then publishing that as the movie script. You simply cannot do that without permission from the movie’s copyright holders.
Which is a shame. I’d love to have that particular transcription. It would be an awful way to learn the tune, but it looks like a great tool for in-depth study of that particular version of it. (Not unlike LE McCullough’s versions of the tunes in his tinwhistle tutor.)
They did manage to shut down OLGA</A](http://www.olga.net/about/>OLGA</A)> for a while back a few years ago.. but they’ve managed to find some way around the legal issues, and are back with a vengence now.
Although nobody was/is making a profit from the transcriptions available at OLGA, the argument that lead to their temporary demise was the same one in question here… except this time someone is making a profit from the transcriptions.
I wouldn’t attempt such a bold and risky venture myself, but it will be interesting to watch this auction and see if it is actually allowed to continue.
I’m sure E-Bay themselves have an army of lawyers on hand to protect themselves from any liability caused by bidders or sellers.
I’m also sure that those lawyers are well aware of this particular auction already, and will pull the plug on it without hesitation if there are copyright violation laws being broken by it.
I think the copyright issues are totally irrelevant - this is traditional music after all - and I cannot imagine Matt Molloy bothering to take issue with anyone transcribing his performances. (Although I can imagine Noel Hill doing so!)
Beyond copyright, and leaving aside the question of whether the transcriptions are actually any good (I noticed a couple of things on your man’s website that do not inspire much confidence in his professed meticulousness), I seriously doubt that this kind of transcription is of much use to most learners.
I tend to think that if you have the skill required to correctly interpret such a minutely detailed transcription, with every last ornament noted, then most likely you already don’t need it. You’ll be able to hear what he’s doing.
But if you don’t have the skill to interpret it, you could get yourself into trouble. It’s interesting that Colomon mentioned LE’s book. On the old board there was a fellow that posted a couple of sound clips of tunes that he had apparently learned from this book. To my mind, it was sad to hear someone struggling with intricate ornamentation, making a right bollocks of it, and getting the rhythm of the entire tune woefully wrong. The same guy used to discuss how to perform rolls on C-natural and the like.
This obsession with fancy ornamentation is really misplaced. It reminds me of the Chris Langan quote we discussed about young players trying to learn complicated tunes right away.
Get the rhythm right, learn basic ornamentation. When you can make a good job of a standard setting of the Tarbolton, then maybe you’re ready to study what Molloy did with it on one recording 30 years ago.
Personally, though, I really don’t see the interest in cloning someone else’s playing.
StevieJ, perhaps you wouldn’t get anything out of the Tarbolton transcription, but I’m damn sure I would. (In fact, I already have, from the one line of it posted on E-bay.)
I know the tune, well enough that I feel confident about playing it solo in public next week. But I know I don’t really have a good sense of the possbilities inherent in the tune. Yes, I could slow down my copy of the Molloy recording and dissect it looking for differences from how I play it. But it would be a heck of a lot easier if someone else had already done the grunt work of analyzing the recording.
The goal isn’t to clone Molloy’s playing – frankly, even if I wanted to, I don’t have the talent. The goal is to better understand the tune and what can be done with it. (Ideally someone would have done a transcription of the Michael Coleman recording as well!)
On a similar note, I was very happy this week to get a second recording of Seamus Tansey playing “Saddle the Pony”. At some point in the not-too-distant future, I’m going to sit down and analyze both versions, which each differ from the standard version in different directions (so to speak).
The reason I bring up the copyright issue is that transcriptions such as this, sold in large quantities, DO HURT the profits of a particular artist. This is why I always buy the actual CD, rather than a burned copy available on Ebay.
Am I saying don’t buy this? No. But I am saying buy this knowing what its limitations are. If you want to play this just like Matt Malloy, fine. But remember that part of the reason Matt Malloy is who is is because he is able to take a traditional piece of music and interpret it an individual way. You can’t learn that from sheet music, but from years of listening.
I had another look at your man’s list, I know a number of people whose recordingst are being transcribed and sold here. I have contacted Jimmy O Brien-Moran directly and most other pipers through Na Piobairi Uilleann. I don’t expect NPU will be very happy with your man transcribing music fro mtheir tutor video either. As soon as I hear what they have to say I 'll let you know.
I know I would immediately go after him if he’d be selling transcriptions of my playing.
[ This Message was edited by: Peter Laban on 2002-03-07 11:07 ]
I think that if management at eBay happens to see this auction it will be shut down (and with good reason…).
Not only does it look like a clear case of copyright infringement (I would assume that someone that has purchased the Rights to sell a transcription would post somewhere in the auction that they have the right to do this), but they are offering to send the high bidders other sheetmusic instead, if they don't want the specific sheetmusic that's up for auction. This is a clear violation of eBay's policy - you can only auction specific items at eBay.
For instance, if I offered Clarke Sweetones up for auction and gave bidders their choice of colors, eBay would shut down my auction if they got wind of it (I know this from personal experience...).
[ This Message was edited by: thomlarson on 2002-03-07 09:24 ]
I don’t know about the “specific item issue” but eBay does not seem to care one jot for copyright infringement. I had my name taken off their list last year when they refused to do anything about the copies of Bateman, Doolittle, etc being badly sold (sold as limited editions, though they were the wrong size for the piece and not numbered). Copyright is really hard, and really expensive, to enforce. In this case it also probably applies only to the original piece of music and would have ceased to exist (I think it is fifty years) after the death of the orriginal artist. That’s why everyone can play classical and traditional folk music.
I am not a lawyer and no part of this statement should be taken as legal advice. It is just my humble understanding of copyright law, my frustration with eBay, and my respect for artists who want, need, and deserve to be compensated for their work.
