MikeRobinson

I suggest that you file the copyright registration online, and that you simply give what you consider to be the most-truthful answer with regards to "publication" status. If you decide that some of the songs were "published" via YouTube and the others were not, submit two separate registrations, one for each collection of songs. I hope that you had the presence-of-mind to put some kind of copyright-notice into the YouTube posting. If not, you should promptly take-down the videos and replace them with copies that do. Make it explicitly clear that someone does claim legal ownership of the material, explicitly following the notification requirements set forth in the law. That way, no one can reasonably make an "innocent infringement" defense. Always-and-forever in the future, be sure to submit your copyright registrations at least one full day before you post anything to any online site, thereby removing all doubt that it was, at the time of registration, "unpublished" material. Carefully but unobtrusively include the required notices. (It's also appropriate to include the notices in the metadata-tags of the MP3, along with the song's title and the band's/author's name.) Assert your claim, in such a way that no one could credibly persuade a judge that "gee, I didn't know."

While it's true that I did not grow-up Catholic, I did rather have an early piano teacher who was a bit of a Mother Superior type. I've never quite forgiven her for those times when she (gently) slapped my wrists, lifted my hands and put them back "in the right place" on the C-scale. She was, for some reason, very put-off that my six-year old self liked to play songs like "Merrily We Roll Along" with my hands positioned on the keyboard right-next to "Middle C." She simply concluded that what I was doing was "wrong." She couldn't know that I was hearing a different sound, seven very-different sounds in fact, and liking them, even though I really didn't understand what I had heard. Well, forty-five years later I now know that I was hearing modes, even though I did not know it at the time. Try it yourself. Play "Merrily," using all-white keys, but don't start with the usual "E." You have seven other white-keys to choose from, and remember: play only "white keys." If you start with "C"," for example, you will hear a sound that seems to be very minor, as in fact it is. If you start with "D," it sounds either "very exotic" or "very out-of-tune," or maybe a little of both. Starting with "G," on the other hand, three notes up from usual, sounds "very familiar yet very different." Well, I promise not to bore you with Latin things like: Ionian, Dorian, Phrygian, Lydian, ... bah. Nor even: "I Don't Pet Little Monkeys After Lunch." If you ever take a college course, you can memorize such things (for a few weeks). Never mind: there are seven of them, and they are all shifts along the "all white keys." And this is why they work. "Theoretically speaking," every major scale consists of a certain pattern of "whole steps" (there's a black-key in the way ...) and "half steps" (there isn't). And, if you start with "Middle C" and play "all the whites," you can see what that sequence is: "Whole Whole Half, Whole Whole Whole Half." (The "half" is at position #3, between E and F, and again at position #7, between B and back-to C.) Every major scale (and there are twelve of them in all), is just like that. And, each one of them has seven distinct modes, which are simply dictated by: "where you start" ... a particular song, or, a particular phrase. "Hold on to your hats, folks," because this is where I'm going to point-out a little something that you've been staring-at for as long as you've been staring-at a piano keyboard, but that you might never have thought-of in quite this way before. "Every song," you see, consists of individual phrases. The phrases are a mixture of contrast and similarity with the other phrases (if this is to be an interesting song, that is). But each phrase "begins somewhere," "ends somewhere else," and "covers a certain territory of musical ground" in-between. Well, as your ear listens to the entire song, it so happens that your perception of what's going on is sort-of divided. On the one hand, you maintain a clear sense of "the overall key of 'the song itself.'" But on the other hand, you also hear each phrase as a distinct section, especially if that section clearly includes the interval of a fifth ("C-d=2-e=3-f=4-G ...") or its "a fifth going the other way" cousin, the fourth. When this happens, your ear hears that particular phrase as being "in" one of the seven modes that are available for the key. If you "just fool-around with Merrily, playing this one-hand melody starting at each of the seven white-keys that it can start on (and playing only "white keys"), you will hear for yourself how each of these starting positions ("modes") has a very different flavor, tone, and mood. This gives you a palette of different mood(e)s that you can evoke in the different phrases of your "simple" (sic ...) melodies. Try it!

Here's a practical suggestion: "separate the two concerns!" Anytime "Your Muse" wanders by, have two important tools ready: the "Song Recorder" application on your Favorite Phone, and the "Note Pad" application on the same device. "That idea" is a Moth, and "that technology" is a push-pin and a mounting-board. "Grab that sucker, before it has a chance to get away, and stick it with a push-pin!!" Dutifully and very-carefully backup and preserve these precious things: recordings of "the things that you hummed," and notations of "the lyrical ideas that came to you at that moment." Once you've captured them, then you can of course examine them at your leisure. What's next? Heh... "That's where the work begins." That "groping, feeling-your-way, uncertain" moment that you find yourself in ... i-s "The Creative Process"!! No, you are not "off base." You just don't yet realize that you are where you want to be ... and that there is much work ahead of you with no one to tell you whether you are "right" or "wrong." You see ... at this point, there is no "right" or "wrong." No one can tell you what "your song" ought to be, because there are no absolutes. "Your song" will be finished when you decide that it is finished ... and the market-quality of your decision depends upon your craft. (Or, if you are not pursuing "markets" at this point, then the decision is: Yours.) Any "assessment" that you may ever read, of any creative work, is by-definition "ex post facto": after the fact. By that point, the creative process is already done. The creative process, furthermore, did not stop when "some celestial voice from heaven" started making funny-noises. No, the creative-process stopped because of a creative choice of the creator. (Which choice was, shall we say, "a calculated risk.")

Let me also quite-candidly say this: "i - n - t - e - r - n - e - t - !!" I live quite close to another famous "music city" ... Nashville, Tennessee. However, there seems to be no "New York, New York" song that has yet been written for "here," and maybe that's a very good thing. Because, if there were, I would surely dismiss it as a "well, it rhymed!" lie. Simple fact is ... it is "a lie." If you move to New York City, you only increase the population of that city from "8.4 million people" to "8.4 million people plus one." Good luck with that. "So, you say you have a song to sell?" Very well, then. Sell it. In doesn't matter in the slightest where it is that you call home. Merely get your product in front of the faces of the people who actually possess the ability to buy it, and make your product better than everybody else's. Once you manage that, you're home free.

Otherwise known as a "capo" ... The much-mythologized "system" is simply to number the chords based on their position ... which position, of course, is the same in any scale. Instead of looking at a particular chord in a chart and having to figure out on-the-fly which chord-number that is, in the key that is now being played, you simply tell the player which chord-number you want and what key to play it in. It's all second-nature to these cats.

Well, lots of songwriting teams started with a lyric, because this is where the "meaning" of the song comes from but also where the natural pace of the words will fall. The music that accompanies those words needs to blend with and to support the lyric's phrases as they are naturally pronounced by the singer. The lyrics can only be spoken a certain way, whereas notes can be put anywhere. (But they ought to be "put anywhere" in a fashion that supports and enhances what the lyric is trying to say.) Sometimes, of course, it does work the other way. For instance, when Vince Guaraldi came up with another killer song for A Charlie Brown Christmas, somebody decided that it needed lyrics, so in about fifteen minutes some words were written down on the back, yes, of a napkin. It became: "Christmastime is Here." As the lyricist said thereafter, "who knew?" Really, I just don't think that there are any absolutes. Sure, ex post facto, you can come up with any story for your adoring fans that makes you look like the genius they expect you to be.

All of which (should ...) go to show us that: "popular music is a product ... a work of fiction." Yes, "the shelves of record-stores" and "the shelves of book-stores" and (may they rest in peace ...) "the shelves of video-stores" are really all the same: they are "the shelves of stores." And all of them, one way or the other, contain: "vacarious escapes." But ... these "escapes" are not "escapes from 'our boring every-day Real World.'" No, they are "escapes directly into Exciting Fantasy." Face it: you're not "driving your Red Pickup Truck™ Down By The River™ with A Six-Pack Of Beer™ ... to 'hang out' (heh heh ...) with a Girl™ who's Wearing Painted-On Blue Jeans™," and that is precisely why you do not want to buy a song that sings-about reality!! "Daddy was a C-P-A ... he drove to work and mucked with debits-and-credits ev-er-y day ... and then he died ... so we had a fun-eral, talked about him, then we cried ... while his co-work-ers just went on ... yeah, the com-pa-ny he worked for just went on and on ..." ... sh*t ... that extemporaneous-something-or-other sounds like a way-cool lyric ...!! "©"!! Waitaminit!! Firsties!! "©"!! "©"!! ... "but, I digress.™" Marketers, and therefore song-writers, know this. They know they're not around to sell reality. So do the writers of Romance Fiction, the purveyors of "Bulging (Virgin, of Course™) Breasts" and Men who are "shrugging off their (blue jeans, of course ...) Pants" ... for the benefit of an actual audience consisting of ... well, nevermind. Nobody wants to know what the actual audience-profile of a Romance Novel consists of ... even though everybody does. "Play the game," and most importantly of all, "sell to it."

Just don't write about "baby" "goin' down to the river" "in a (red) pickup truck" "with beer." There's an entire industry around these parts (Nashville) that's devoted to writing songs just like that, and they don't need the competition. Sometimes the difference between cliché and originality is: one unexpected, different word. And, sometimes, the lyric is cliché to the point of being hackneyed, but the treatment of the song itself is an 'earbug' that you just can't stop humming. What I'd suggest is, simply, "write it anyway." Get the thing out of your head and onto paper. Then, rewrite it as often as you need to, never throwing any of the copies away. Don't rip anything in half. And, don't expect your muse to necessarily show-up when you call. Keep all drafts. Then, when you're rich and famous and Hard Rock Cafe wants a copy of the lyric, obligingly write it down on a napkin. (The fantasy is supposed to be that "this just popped into your head one day." Indulge them.)

Then ... do it that way. Lots of songwriting teams, even Rogers and Hammerstein, approach the task in just that way. The "prosody" of the lyric – that is, the "patterns of rhythm and sound used in poetry," "the patterns of stress and intonation in a language" – really does dictate most of all how the song itself will fall down. "The word here is 'triplet,' so let's use a 'trip-o-let' right here," and so on.

Whether or not it fits the idea of "Common Phrase," Louie, that lyric sounds like one for a great hand-clappin' gospel spiritual. Let's get that spinet piano and that drum kit and that big thumpin' bass out here and have church!

This is definitely a situation where I would buy the expertise of a qualified entertainment-law attorney. Have him or her review your song, do due-diligence that you must pay for, and create a statement of opinion on company letterhead. (And if he or she says that the song might be an infringement, "it's dead, Jim." Go write something else.) You can, of course, expect to pay several hundred dollars for this worthy service. But, since you are contemplating a commercial venture, "attorney's fees" are deductible expenses anyhow. And, since you are contemplating a commercial venture, you really don't have an option anyhow. It's exactly like doing a title-search before buying a piece of land. When you go to try to sell your work, their lawyers will perform such a search. But, before engaging their lawyers, they're going to want to see something from yours. The potential for legal liability is (by design) extreme, and this is everyone's business.

Label-making software can do jewel cases. For instance, I bought a CD Stomper at the office-supply store and it came with a very fine program (for Macs and PCs) which makes the layout a snap. You prepare the images with whatever other tool you want, then use this tool for layout.

It sounds to me like this is not principally "a vocal song." It's full of instrumental riffs, "noodlings" and so on. You can write lyrics and put them into it, where the singer comes in, sings a verse (while the instrumentalists lay low ...) then steps back away from the mike and grabs a cup of coffee while the instrumentalists tear-up the joint. And so on. A song which involves a lyric does not have to be just about the lyric. I think that the organization that you have in mind will work very well.

If there could possibly be any mis-conception in this world that wastes(!) an extraordinary amount of time among creative folks, it would be this: that the process of listening to a song is at-all(!!) similar to creating one. "A song pops into our head." We grab a <<keyboard / guitar>> and try to capture it, but then the moment passes and we delete all the files and fuhgeddaboudit. "A lyric pops into our head." We write it down, then angrily scribble through it several times, then disgustedly throw the whole thing away. What's wrong? Well, actually, nothing at all. Nothing but our expectations ... which are decidedly unrealistic. The "profound disconnect" is that we're basing our expectations of future success upon our recollected memories of au fait accompli. That is to say, "upon our auditory recollections of 'released, therefore perfected' commercial songs." Therefore, we're comparing our seminal ideas – which necessarily represent the beginnings of "the actual(!) creative process" – against "the highly-polished ends" of that same process (at the hands of consummate professionals). Short Answer™ ... "you just can't do that." Therefore: "you are irrevocably shooting yourself in the foot" ... and "selling yourself short in the marketplace" ... if you try. A much more pragmatic, and therefore much more practical, way to look at all of this, is simply "to give yourself the benefit of the doubt." The actual reason why you can't manage to make all of the right decisions in-advance is that nobody else in all of musical history could ever do so, either. Nothing and no-one will ever present anything to you that "this is 'the Right Answer.™'" The creative process actually consists of imagination, selection, and refinement, in no(!) particular order. Imagination is literally the process of plucking something from nothing. However, at the time, you have utterly no idea how to "judge" any of it ... no matter how hard you try. All of this must wait for selection among all of the ideas that you've so-far come up with. (And, fair warning, you might have to "imagine" more things to fill-in some of the gaps!) Yes, you'll feel just like a ping-pong ball in an Olympic match ... even as you find yourself migrating toward one (or more!) definite ideas "that seem to be migrating towards the top." Uh, huh. There's nothing wrong. Even if there's more than one idea, at the moment, "fighting to be on top." This, after all, is what "a blank page" is really all about. "The 'right answer' is ... that there is no 'right answer.'" The finished-song that you come up with, whatever it may turn out to be, will entirely be your ... decision. Yes, decision. And, it will not be "the one-and-only decision that you could have made!" It will simply be the one that you finally, and for now, "approved." So ... what should you do? Most importantly, you should make it a point never to "discard" anything. Stuff it under your bed, stuff it into a box, whatever you wish to do, just don't destroy it. Keep every idea, even as you select which ideas to move forward. Hence, refinement. "Refinement" of lyrics is very different from "refinement" of a musical turn. Nevertheless, both of them are "refinement," and this is especially what is customarily hidden from the Public's view. There will never be "a lyric," nor will there ever be "a tune," nor "an orchestration of that tune," that will ever be proclaimed to be "the best." No, at some definite point, you must "release the thing." You must choose, from among many possibilities, what will be "the final tune" and "the final lyrics" to go with that tune. You must choose, then you must ... "let it go." The song, even then, might not be "complete." Orchestration, mixing, mastering, and so-forth might stand in the way of the final, penultimate expression of your musical vision. (All of these, too, are "creative decisions" much like the ones that you so-far have made.) The bottom line, therefore, should be: "purposeful uncertainty." Yes, "there is no single 'right answer,' and that is precisely the point." No matter how "obvious" or "inevitable" the end-result of the creative process might appear to be (as you are signing autographs for millions of adoring fans ...) the actual process of getting there is a system of choices, and the target that you're shooting for is: a calculated risk. You won't be handed "the right answer" to the accompaniment of beams of light from Heaven, strums from a celestial harp. So, if you're secretly expecting http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RaBmWqQkKYE, fuhgeddaboudit. Instead, you have a process ... but it is a process that works. A song, or a lyric, can be anything that you decide it to be – and that you work for it to be. But those decisions are not ... are never ... "ready-made." (If they were, after all, then that means that they would be merely deterministic. Which would be extremely boring, don't you think?) Therefore, recognize the decision-making that is part and parcel of "the creative process." Recognize it, embrace it, and above all, enjoy it.

I personally think that most people who hear the song (including me ...) never actually hear all of the lyrics. Fewer still, today, would actually relate to it. However, everybody understands "a hook." A gravel-stricken voice ... "bawrn-n-n-n-n in the eww-ess-aaay!!" ... and the amazing-as-usual performances by E-Street Band ... that's what made the song "iconic." Also: "war protest songs" have generally become passé, because the Marketing of War has become much more sophisticated since the 1960's. It turns out that people really don't give a damn whether there's a war going on ... as long as they don't see it on the news, and especially as long as they cannot get drafted to fight in it involuntarily. For example, the United States has now been involved in a war in "generally, the Middle East" for more than fifteen years, and yet the President of the United States has treated it as merely a government exercise ... announcing a timetable (being: "when I am no longer President and can never be President again") for termination of the "engagement." But people can't even locate Afghanistan on the map, because nothing about the war involves them. Thousands of coffins are no longer "news," because no Average Joe has to worry about being inside one of them unless he is whatever-enough to actually sign up. [[ And, please note: (1) I am an American, and (2) this is not intended to be a rant. "War is Business." A multi-trillion(!) dollar business, paid-for by endless fountains of Money that goverments "borrow" from themselves for that purpose. No song will ever change those economics. (At least, not yet.) ]] So ... "Born in the USA" really isn't a war-protest song. It is ... a distinctive opening riff, and an iconic chorus performed by an amazing singer backed by an equally amazing band. You could substitute a lyric about the Teletubbies in "the middle eight" and it would make no difference now.

I just want the 12" album cover to come back. First it got squashed into that hideous plastic case. Then, it disappeared altogether.

In the days when children's TV programs were self-produced by local stations, the purveyor of a local Hammond Organ studio played a tune every day. I was hooked. I wanted to do that. The keyboard fascinated me from the start: all that music was right there. There were no mysteries (or, so I thought at the time ...) how the music was being made.

And take a lesson from Judge Wopner of the original People's Court TV program (in the US): "Get it in writing!" The two of you make an agreement. Write it down, sign your names to identical copies, each keeping one. Better yet go get it notarized. Say everything in it that you think might need to be said. Or, better yet, look on the Internet for some suitable boilerplate. You should be paid something up-front in case that's all you wind up getting. And, as has been said, the buyer should not get "absolutely everything" that he's paid-for until his final payment has cleared. All that should be spelled-out in your agreement. The buyer should not get everything he wants until you've gotten everything you want. And there should never be any question, e.g. in the objective opinion of "a trier of fact," exactly what it was that the two of you agreed-to.

Be sure to mind your copyright "P's and Q's" since, if there is any money to be made in the song business, it is the songwriter who will be doing it. The trouble throughout the music industry today is that there's really no barrier to entry anymore. Recording studios used to represent a technological barrier, which record-companies exploited rather ruthlessly. But now, you can "put the shine on" a recording entirely by yourself, if you are so inclined. Some folks say that this is what's bringing music back to its roots – as something which people write and play for one another.

Well, it's interesting – with the usual technical cliff-hanger at the end. But one thing that's really nice is that it reminds me of what got me interested in computers in the first place, in those days ... and, still interested, today.

I especially liked the "it's all about ME" diagram on this post.

There are some legitimate sites like "taxi.com" which charge a modest per-submission fee to listen to your song – and they're quite up-front about the fact that this is both to pay their expenses and to keep the riff-raff out. They're in the primary business of satisfying the needs of, for example, film companies and advertising agencies for specific sound clips. They're absolutely above the board, provide a useful service, and have been in business for a very long time now. The solicitation that opened this thread, however, raised immediate suspicions because the (other ...) company wanted a fairly large sum of money, $350.00, in order to do – "what, exactly?" Plus, they approached the songwriter out of the blue with this solicitation for money. All of the hallmarks of a scam, and properly treated as such.

There sure are "truth to these words." Maybe I'm just branding myself as an old-phart here, but I'm both disbelieving and downright confused by the time that people willing spend on "those damned phones." When they could be doing something much more productive ... like hanging-out on Songstuff!

It don't always take too much inspiration. Surf around to find that video about "how all country songs written in 2013 are exactly the same." One will hope that the rest of us can do better.

Another idea, which I draw from my day-job in computer programming, is "TMTOWTDI = There's More Than One Way To Do It.™" Affectionately known as "Tim Toady." So – when you're putting a song together – "there's more than one way to do it." You'll probably come up with more than one combination of phrases as you're writing things down. So, keep them all. You can (especially if you work with a computer as a composition-tool) rearrange things in many different ways ... and, all of those possibilities will probably sound different and sound good. Keep them all. Some will sound like "clams." Keep them, too. Basically, don't actually discard anything. The one thing that I suggest you should not expect is ... probably what you do tend to expect. Namely, that you'll put your hand to your instrument (or your computer) and ... a ray of light will beam down from heavens above, and choirs will sing and a solemn voice will intone: "there it is." Uh uh. Don't happen that way. There is no "one right way," no "one best way." Creativity – at least to me (and no matter what it is that I'm trying to create) – really consists of a process of selection, much more than inspiration. And I think that absolutely the coolest thing that can happen ... is when something that you've just done, genuinely surprises you. You put two things together, just to hear what they sound like together, and ... "Wow." Maybe you pick up one of those previously-discarded "clams" and suddenly you hear yummy "clam chowder." You start fooling-around with different ways to string-together the little pieces you've come up with, and a song appears. A good one. It starts to sound like something that you've heard before and that you like, not something that you created. The song "has legs" now. It has a life of its own. It's more than the sum of its parts. And when you think you're "working on more than one song" ... well, perhaps you are, and perhaps you're not. Can you "borrow" a phrase from one of those ideas and drop it into another? Hey, try it. Sounds great? W00T! Or, uhh, not so hot? Okay, don't discard it; just put the idea aside. You never know where one piece of something that you've come up with while thinking of one thing, might be the perfect ingredient for another, seemingly-unrelated situation. It's all "the creative process."