Hello Folks!

[Diane Pettipas]

I am a 31 year old singer/songwriter originally from MA, now I'm in KS. Been writing since I could! I started out with poetry then when I met my husband- a guitarist- I started writing songs. I know enough music theory and keyboards to get me by.

My husband recently entered the Guitar Center Blues Masters copetition, if anyone would like to help him out here is his link - http://bluesmasters....nels/G Pettipas Round one is based on views and shares, so we need as many as we can get!

I look forward to conversing with like minds! I wish I knew this forum existed before, I'm always looking to help people hone their craft and get help with my material.

The only question I have is are personal copyrights protected on this site? or is everyone respectful enough to not rip other people off? I would hope for the latter, but either is good!

My biggest pet peves are 1. people who steal other peoples work and 2. people who don't maintain the integrity of the english language! (IF it's thier first language, if it's a second language I give you props cause it's not an easy language to master!) - OH and badly imagined repeating rhyme schemes- hate those! LOL

[Diane Pettipas]

It's terrible! We've written an album we're recording and I'm trying to get a patent on an invention I have - so between the 2 we're hoping to get back hiome! the music scene here is ridiculous. Should have seen us trying to get a band together and explaining it as a business with travel requirements - no one gets it, theres only hobbyists out here- drives me crazy!!! LOL, funny enough the band is comprised completely from Non-Kansans that moved here and got stuck the same way.

[writeandwrong]

Hi, Diane. Welcome to the site!

As far as copyrights go, as soon as you publish it on here or elsewhere, it's established that you own it, but when it gets to a certain point, you really should register your material with the copyright office.

Be sure to use the copyright symbol with the year and your name (and others if they assisted in writing). Once you have music set to it, if others have co-written, it means you both share in the whole song equally...so once music is set and if you only wrote the lyrics and are only posting the lyrics for review, you need to put both your names with the copyright symbol.

Good luck to you and your husband with the competition!

Hope this helps.

Cheryl

[john]

hi Diane, welcome to Songstuff