john

Nice one Doru! Again!

I live about 5 minutes walk from the Coupar Institute... small world! I have to say it depends where you live in Scotland. Personally I like our accents, but not so much that I can listen to The Proclaimers.

Hari, it's more or less what I expected, though I was disappointed in the finish. It plays ok though. I can say having a dedicated music PC is about the best think you can do for your recordin. My one can connect to the web, which is useful for updates, but I never use it for browsing, and there are no "extra" programmes installed. I even temporarily share the C drive with one of my other PCs an run a virus scan from there! Creamware are great cards. I love mine (not physically ) You sound like me. I have a list of instruments i want to buy as long as my arm! Cheers John

Hey Rudi I set it up myself, and it seems to be working ok. The Sonic Violins look pretty good for electro-acoustics. I think i was to pick one it would be the Classic, but at close to £800 it wouldn't be my first purchase. Cheers John

Hey I thought I'd better mention that the members aren't ignoring you. It's a bit quieter than usual and I know several regulars are offline or working on their projects. Unlike most online communities Songstuff members spend a lot of time doing music! The best members to probably advise you are Lazz or Didier, though Finn has just gone through setting up a label and publishing company, and he's release an album on itunes and in the shops. I hope it's not too frustrating! It'll get back to normal soon. Cheers John

Hey Rudi Owing to money (as ever) I bought a Harley Benton. it's not brilliant, but it works. If I stick with it I plan to get one of the Yamaha ones at about £600. This one was ~£90! I got it from Thomanns... I just didn't see any point in spending too much. Hari, it's the "natural wood" version of the one you posted a link to. Thanks! Cheers John

Hey I finally managed to get a new violin (birthday money ). It's a cheap electric, but it will be ideal for getting me back in to play. I haven't played for 23 years! I used to play for about 8 hours a day, somehow I think I'll be lucky to get an hour or two a week now. I was suprised at what I could remember. My cats (I have 2) didn't join in, so I'll take that as a good sign. Cheers John

I guess for me the decision would be about which one I thought I would get the most benefit from, and secondly the purchase I would enjoy the most.

"fat guy from Yorkshire" Could be a good hook to call your act that! Have you looked at the articles in the business section? http://business.songstuff.com/articles.php They'll give you a starter for 10. To go down the direction of getting a deal, information is vital. Find out what you can about the various companies, and the kind of material they sign, and if you can specific artists/songs. This at least lets you know what happens to their signings, and whether it's worth pursuing them in any way. Contact them, find out the format they accept submissions, get a contact name, and find out if they are accepting submissions at all right now, or if not when? Write down any names and responsibilities as you can. Try and talk to someone who handles song submissions, if for no other reason than to introduce yourself. All this is just to maximise the chances that they'll listen to it! There are some pretty reasonable books on the subject, but with a bit of prodding you should be able to get the info here. I'll see what else I can dig out in terms of links. Cheers John

Hey, have you tried any of the beta models?

Hi Alan Happy New Year! I detect a Garageband theme to your posts . Cheers John

Bastards! You'll need to get a new job.

Funnily enough the article quoted was the one about doing cover songs and what you are obliged to do by law. I should also say that by "warn him" I meant that other sites he is doing this with might be less forgiving than to ask for a simple copyright statement and the addition of a mention for the author. Fair enough I thought. I actually tend to agree with you all, or did until this happened. Once before someone reproduced a full article, with a small link to Songstuff placed amongst others at the bottom of the page. He hadn't asked for permission, and hadn't published any copyright notice, which just encourages people to pull the article from his site if they come upon it first. There are other articles that have fairly long paragraphs. On this occasion I'd say it was about 10 - 12% of the article, filling half a page on his site. I asked him to either add a copyright notice, reduce it to a simple link, or he was unwilling to do this, remove it. I also asked that if he wanted to quote such large sections of an article in the future that he similarly publish the copyright notice, and drop us a line to let us know. He removed it. I'm not hugely bothered. I think what I had asked for in the circumstances was pretty fair. I was pretty nice about it too. I thought you guys would have some interesting opinions. I guess the post by Nigel about lyric sites being closed down, and they will be or they will come to a licensing agreement, made me think about it. Reproduction in full IS copyright infringement. Many authors on Songstuff insist on full copyright notices on their work. I am also aware of several sites currently being pursued by other sites for this very infringement. The trouble is search engines now devalue the uniqueness of sites if their content is duplicated, meaning lower listings in results. Does taking a comma out of article then allow that article to reproduced without consideration for the copyright owner? Interesting one. I guess the problem is exaserbated by sites like Songstuff that are content sites. We don't have a large income from multiple product lines, our uniqueness is in our content. If someone can just lift it, then they can rip the whole site like a CD. It has happened... It is a difficult one. Several times similarish things have happened, and I've done nothing. For one reason or another I thought this one was worth tackling. The trouble with this whole area is what "is acceptable" is a bit like "how long is a bit of string?". Look what happened when artists didn't credit the artists they sampled in the 80s and 90s. It's kind of the same neck of the woods. Remember Black Box "Ride on Time"? They lifted the entire song including the vocal performance, and gave zero credit to the original artist. I do want promotion for Songstuff, but at what cost. An interesting topic I think. A difficult one especially as it's not my area! Cheers John

Hey Tom Started late eh? Cheers John

Hey Tom thanks! Pretty useful too. I wouldn't call your contibrution poop! So you've not had much available time recently, shit happens. Don't beat yourself up about it. You've been a strong supporter of Songstuff. What extra you do is greatly appreciated, not expected. It would be unfair of me to do so. Either way you still have my thanks. Did you have a good Christmas? Cheers John

Hey I have a question about copyright infringement... Another site decided to add an extract of one of the Songstuff articles (about 3 large paragraphs) to their site without asking. They then added a link saying "if you want to read more visit Songstuff" with a link. Ok this is a link to Songstuff, but there was no copyright notice, and no request to do this. My feeling is, this is copyright infringement. The site in question is more or less a blog that publishes the thoughts of one guy who quotes articles like this on a regular basis. Content sites are really protective of their unique content, because it is what makes them unique. They normally have syndicated content, but not all, because it can depend on the arrangement with individual authors, or sites that have content sharing agreements. Generally it's cool to quote articles (especially in print) like "according to", or "as found in", as long as you publish full article credit but I believe you still need approval for actual quotes, but I think the site owner in this case could get in trouble. I don't think he has intentionally set out to pinch content, but quoting whole sections without permission just seems wrong. I contacted the guy to ask him to publish the full details for the extract that he had published including a copyright notice, and to warn him. I also asked him to let us know if he was planning on using an article in this way (which I think is reasonable, and legal). So now he removed the article completely and says he'll never refer to Songstuff again. Oh well. I didn't mean to offend the guy, and I thought what I asked was reasonable. Do you think I was wrong? Cheers John

It mentions up to 8 tracks...

Hey sweetie Welcome to Songstuff! Try this link http://www.engadget.com/2005/02/08/how-to-...cording-studio/ I hope it helps! Cheers John

Hello.... hello....

Thanks Hari. Quite tastey looking. My budget should stretch to the pop blast screen... Seriously though, I am looking for a second decent microphone at a reasonable price. Probablt to buy in Feb. I'll have a good read at the spec. Cheers John

Hi Donna One that is regularly entered by members is the ISC (International Songwriting Competition.). There are a few others. Lazz should be able to point you in the right direction on that. I'll have a dig about on the one you mentioned. Cheers John

Thanks Lazz. I knew you'd know the answer to that one!

Looks nice Hari. Does the price include the mount? Do you have a link?