Creating and Posting Cover Songs on the Internet (YouTube, SoundCloud, etc)

So 3 posts ago, I posted about a cover version of My Grown Up Christmas List that I created and uploaded onto SoundCloud.

I was wondering if it would be infringing any copyright laws, especially if I am not intending to make money out of the track.

On the other hand, I see a huge number of YouTube artists performing cover versions of songs. Has anybody wondered if it was legal at all?

I searched and found an article in NewMediaRockstars,com that held some promise of answering my question.

From what I understand from the article, it is actually illegal to upload and produce our own cover versions of copyrighted songs without permission from the creator.

However, quoting from the article: "Back in 2012, YouTube made deals with major US publishers that allowed creators to keep up their covers while publishers took upwards of 50 percent of the revenue generated from them. Unfortunately, we’re still not sure which publishers officially signed on. This means that even though YouTube has made it legal to upload a great deal of cover songs, we have no clue what those cover songs actually are."

Therefore if we really want to steer clear of copyright infringement when posting cover recordings of copyrighted songs, we have to  check with YouTube's list of publishers and which songs fall under the coverage of that deal.

For those who have uploaded material that publishers have flagged up to be infringing their copyright, that video will have the following notification on his/her video.

Another consideration for content creators who upload cover songs on YouTube, is the "three strikes" policy. YouTube states that for any user who receives three strikes of having claimed to be infringing copyright, his/her account will be removed, along with all his/her videos. Thereafter, he/she will be barred from creating a YouTube account, and from accessing YouTube's community features.

So it looks like in order for us to be on the safe side, we need to find out the publisher of the songs we want to cover, and to see if those fall under the list of songs included in the YouTube deal struck in 2012.

That is how much I have found out at the time of this post. 

I will continue to read up and find out how other music hosting platforms deal with the issue, and what are the proper procedures to go about doing this, if it is legal at all.

Merry Christmas to All!

Here' greetings and well wishes for the season, to all of you fantastic people who have been following my blog and the random posts :)

I pray peace and joy to one and all, and all your families and friends.

This has been a year of change for me, and a big change at that. I moved from involving myself in training and full 3D animated episodic to doing full-time TV commercial production and local Singapore films. This is something I have never done.

The hours are something that I'm still trying to get used it. I have always respected people who have worked on TV commercials. now I have even more respect for them. They toil day and night and many times putting in many over-time hours to get their content out on time, and meeting high standards of expectation in terms of quality, and meeting client's requirements, all at the same time.

However working in a post-production facility also sharpens my "hacking" skills like never before. We constantly need to think on our feet and re-invent our workflows to get around obstacles, sometimes using different software working together, or sometimes using software in unconventional ways.

In the same period I was challenged to pick up Unity3D (I also took up coding in C#, that came with learning Unity). The company has also entrusted me with the responsibility of working with unconventional input devices and testing sensors to work with Unity too.

In the music side, I registered a company with a partner, with a focus on creating more music (instrumentals for now) and trying to create our own brand for it. I hope to do more with the company in the new year, and I will update about the company when I can.

I also had the chance to collaborate with a vocalist Marlie from Soundcloud.com. It was a refreshing experience working with fellow musicians, and I look forward to more collaborations.

All in all I was stretched but I felt that I have accomplished a lot in many directions all at once.

I thank God for giving me an eventful year.

Here's to a better new year filled with meaning, and love for our fellow men. Lets make this world a better place, one smile at a time.

I pray God's peace and favour be with you.

Patrick

Softube Saturation Knob - Free to All

On 17 Dec 2014, Softube announced (see article) that their Saturation Knob audio plugin would become a free download.

Being previously available only to Protools and Presonus One users. However the Saturation Knob plugin is now available to every DAW that supports the VST, AAX or Audio Units plugin format.

Propellerheads Reason users can get it from the Propellerheads store.

For me I had access to the Saturation Knob through Cakewalk Sonar, as one of the components available in her ProChannel strip.

It is great to see this plugin become available when I work off other DAWs like FL Studio and recently, Reaper.

My Grown Up Christmas List

Hey everyone, I hope you had a good year in 2014. Let us be thankful for what we have and spread the love with our fellow man, make this world a better place this season of peace, love and grace.

As God gives His only Son unreservedly, let us be just a little bit more caring to the next person, and strive to be better people in the coming year.

God bless you guys, have a great holiday, and Merry Christmas.

About this track:
This is a beautiful song (one of my favourite Christmas songs) by Mr David Foster, who happens to be one of my favourite composers.

Arcellia sang and recorded her voice for the track, and I did the music and mixing. This is the first time I am collaborating with a fellow musician over the Internet, and it is a refreshing way of working, opening doors to greater creativity and synergy in the collaboration.

I hope you like it.

Strings Articulations on Wikipedia and Youtube (Mostly Violins)

I was reading up on strings articulations (8Dio Adagio Violins has a "Loure" articulation which I wanted to read up on)

Wikipedia has a page Violin talking about playing techniques.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Violin_technique

In one of the links there is a link to The Violin Site, that has a page that has detailed instructions on how to execute quite a few articulations.
http://www.theviolinsite.com/bowarm.html

Finally I went to YouTube and found some instruction videos for Violin playing techniques, where the very patient Fiddlerman shows how he achieves various playing techniques on the violin.



Its great reference to see people showing how they play various articulations.

Cover Version of Dick Lee's Rasa Sayang, for the Japanese Association

History of this job:

About a month ago I completed a job doing a cover version of Dick Lee's Rasa Sayang. The client was the Japanese Association. There was going to be a cultural exchange program where a Singaporean team of children would perform a music piece at their event in Japan.

The parents had wanted to do a multi-cultural piece. Dick Lee's Rasa Sayang was the ideal candidate for that piece. As they did not have access to Dick Lee's instrumental version (after they consulted him via email), they decided to engage me to create the instrumental track, with permission from Dick Lee.


After the instrumental was created and approved, The client went on to record the children's vocals, and also produced a music video featuring the children. So here's my track in the music video. :)


Details about the music track:

I programmed all the arrangement, (except for the guitars). 4:23 onwards, I created a mix of instruments emulating a mix of ethnic Indian, Chinese and Malay feel to the track, to respectively represent a mix of the main cultures in Singapore.

Electric guitar performances are by my talented and highly skilled  partner, Glenn Fong.

Er-Hu lines at the end are phrases performed by a client's son. At the time of recording, his playing speed is 1.5 times faster than the tempo of this track. I slowed down and re-timed portions of his playing to achieve the final version in this track.

The a capella portion in front was from the original recording.
I do not claim rights to any of the replicated arrangement
All rights from the song and original recordings belong to their respective owners.

Original Track here: www.youtube.com/watch?v=cs1lab0X8LI

Groove3 Releases Training Videos for Eventide UltraChannel

Eventide-UltraChannel-Explained

On 1 July 2014 I published a blog post about Eventide giving away their UltraChannel plugin for free, as a introductory time limited offer.

Now, Groove3 the training videos provider for audio and music software, has released a 2-hour long training video series just for Eventide's UltraChannel.

The tutorials and training are written and presented by Multi-Platinum Producer / Engineer Kenny Gioia. Here are the other training videos on Groove3 developed by Kenny.