hpr-knowledge-base/hpr_transcripts/hpr0617.txt

Episode: 617
Title: HPR0617: So You Wanna Start A Band?
Source: https://hub.hackerpublicradio.org/ccdn.php?filename=/eps/hpr0617/hpr0617.mp3
Transcribed: 2025-10-07 23:57:20

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Hi, my name is Gordon Sinclair, I am known as Thistleweb in IRC. This
episode of Hacker Public Video is a look at how current copyright thinking affects
musicians. We're going to take it from the perspective of starting a band
and getting together with a group of people starting a band and getting
organized. And just how many different places copyright comes in and
forces you to either cough up or off-cash just to do very mundane things or
forces you to break the law, break copyright law and basically so it's
taking you from that perspective because a lot of people don't really think
about what it's like from the creator's point of view. In this case it's the
creator of music. They see it from the end user's perspective, the audience
member, the fan, the listener, the watcher, the reader, whatever. So we'll
take it from phases. So the first phase is you've got, you've met basically
you've got a say group of four or five people and you're on IRC and you're
kind of getting to know each other. You know each other as names on IRC, you
figured out that you're all reasonably local, that you could get together quite
regularly and you figured out that you're all musicians and if you can find some
common interest in overlaps and influences and styles and tunes and all that
then you could possibly do something. So we'll take it from that perspective.
So you're an IRC, you're chatting away and you're trying to get a handle on who
likes what and who wants to do what. This is just a discussion phase. So all
of this really comes down to, have you heard this song? What about, what
do you think of this song? And say for example I'm saying, we want to do,
I want to do Dreamers Ball by Queen. Then I say that in IRC and then
if the guys come back and say well, I know Queen but never heard Dreamers Ball.
Maybe I have, I just don't know the name of it. So here's the first stumbling
block with copyright law or copyright thinking. As I'm forced to either say to
them, right okay, you're going to have to go and buy, go to iTunes or go to Amazon
or something and go and buy a copy of Dreamers Ball just so that you can play it
once and then get the reaction of, yeah, I do actually recognize that one.
I didn't know the name of it. Now I know, yeah, I'm not that keen on doing that one.
Or alternatively, yeah, or that's what it is. Yeah, I like that but we could do that.
So you can either, alternative to that is you can do it illegally.
You can do it with breaking, copyright law by you can either say, I'll send you,
send everyone the MP3, do a file transfer or I'll email it to you or point to
a, to a torrent file that has that in it or put it up on like a rapid share
or something and some file, file dump program or put it up on my website going
and download it from there or so or you could say, right, there's, well,
find it on YouTube and find the music video or something on YouTube or a live
version or something on YouTube. But of course, all of these, the recording
industry are hell-bent on removing. There is no fair use.
They're determined to block all of that so that the only option open to you,
the one they expect you to do is buy these songs.
So they expect the four other guys I'm talking to all to buy that copy of that song
just so that they can hear it to jog their memories in this discussion.
And bear in mind, this is only one tune, one song and many, many, many that we're
talking about in this discussion. This is a back and forth between all five of us
with all of us saying, well, if you heard this tune, what about this tune?
I would like to do this tune. And it doesn't mean all of us are going to be
scrambling around trying to find our own CDs and trying to find various
ways to hear these tunes. And the current copyright means that most
ways it will be illegal. It will be against copyright law.
So that's the first phase. And bear in mind, we've not even met in person yet.
This is a band that's hopefully about to make music and we've not even met in
person yet. And we're already either extremely out of pocket just to have
the conversation or we are criminals just by having the conversation.
So assuming we get to the phase where we've agreed that on say ten tunes that
we can all do ten tunes from all different artists and bands.
So we've agreed on that and we say, right, okay, we'll get together.
And we'll sit and listen to them from the musicians sort of perspective.
Because musicians, first of all, musicians are influenced to play an instrument
that motivated to learn to play an instrument because they hear song or
multiple songs or a band and artist, a musician and I think I want to be able to
do that. And it takes an awful lot of dedication to decide that, you know,
I could go to the pub tonight or I could spend a couple of hours struggling
away in the guitar, learning to change chords more than three chords a minute.
Knowing that by the end of it, my hands are going to hurt like hell.
And I'm still not going to be able to play anything even remotely recognizable.
But I would rather do that to better myself to get further along the path of
being able to play that instrument. And that takes motivation.
That's because you're heard someone else played that instrument and you
want to be able to do that. So that musicians hear things for a different
ear to regular fans. Musicians are able to, because they are focusing
on their own instrument, it's sort of like seeing behind the curtain
in the Wizard of Oz and seeing how things work and sort of demystifying it.
And when you can break a song down to from something that appears magical when
you listen to it, and then you get a bit of an understanding and you find that
it's a three chord sequence. You know, it's an E, an A and a G or something.
And once that kind of demystifies it, you start to be able to hear that
when you're listening to music. And musicians tend to be able to focus
on different instruments as well and follow the bass line, for example,
through a song or follow the arrangements of when an acoustic guitar
comes in for a fill or something or there's some little offbeat timing
change that turns a mundane tune into something quite funky.
But musicians hear that. Musicians spot that.
So the second phase would be the people, the five of us getting together
in someone's house. This is before we've got our instruments out yet.
And we're getting together and we're all listening together to the tunes
that we've agreed to do. But we're all, this is a more technical thing.
It's working out how we're going to do them, what key they're in,
potential things, you know, comparing that these songs to our own abilities
and sort of saying, well, Luke, when it comes from that intro to that bridge,
there's a funky little fill in there that I probably won't be able to play,
but I should be able to get something close to it because you've kind of got an idea
that instead of just listening to it, you're now acting as a student
and saying, I'm going to have to play that. So you're then looking at it
and deconstructing it audibly to know where you're going to have to work on it.
So there's that. And of course, everybody's got together with their CDs
and things because, you know, that might spur out and get more tunes
that we agree on, you know, if you heard this or put that on, whatever.
So once we get to that stage, we're then saying, okay, we've kind of got an idea
what we're expected to do now, what we've all agreed that we want to try and do now.
The next part is about getting the associ copy.
So you, this is again, if you haven't already bought a copy, each,
like five copies of each of each tunes from, you know, Amazon or iTunes or whatever.
Legally, you'd be expected to do that. They copyright holders.
What you do want you to do that. Or if you don't buy them as individual songs,
say, go out and buy the albums. And remember, they were still at the stage
where none of us have even got our instruments out yet.
So the other alternative is what would realistically happen is saying, well, you know what?
Just create one compilation and we'll burn five CDs, we'll burn one for each of us
so that we can take it away. And at that point, the music, each of us would use that in our own way.
It might be easier to rip it into the computer and put the files on to an MP3 player
or onto the phone or something so that we can listen to it when we're on our way to work or college or something.
And just listen to them over and over and over again till we get the, till we really know these tunes
and really get them on their heads. But of course, that's the next part.
Of course, the copyright people, that would be against the law.
You know, the copyright cartels don't want anything even remotely resembling fair use
to be enshrined in any law anywhere. It's vague enough as it is.
And then there's all sorts of lobbying pressure and bills and all that again,
a stuff to ensure that even that is destroyed.
So already we're criminals, before we've even picked up an instrument yet, already we're criminals.
And bear in mind, these are the same people that tell you that all these rules,
they're working on behalf of the artists, and we're already criminals before we even started
because of these rules. So we get to the stage where we've now burned a copy
of a compilation CD of source material to work from, source songs.
So for doing Dreamers Ball, that would be one of the ten tunes that we've all now got a copy of.
So that's only the listening material to learn it.
And now we've actually got to have some source of music that we can learn from.
So musicians learn music from all sorts of places.
It can be anything from an informal thing when you're in someone's house,
and there's another musician there, and they're just mucking about in the guitar or whatever.
And they suddenly start playing something.
And you've been, you've recognized, and you've, how do you play that?
And all of a sudden, whatever else is going on in that house, you completely forget about.
You're totally in student mode. It's like a flip of a switch, a 1 to 0, if you like.
It's just straight into student mode. And all your attention is on the person that's emanating this.
That's knowledge. And you are the sponge that they're meant to pick up that knowledge to absorb it.
So I've been there. I've been there where as a student, I've been there.
It's just completely informal, as I said. I've been there where I've spotted someone doing,
and I've went in student mode. And I've had, I've been in me as well,
where I've just been sitting mucking about, and all of a sudden I've got some decent.
I've done me a teacher, and I've been there.
And I think all musicians have, have these types of moments,
where it's just completely off the cuff, and it happens.
So you've got that. And the tunes, it might be, where did they learn these tunes?
Are they, did they pick them out by ear? Did they sit and listen to the CD or the MP3 over and over and over again?
Did they learn it? Did they, did they get taught it by somewhere else?
Is what they're playing right? Is it accurate? Is it in the right key?
Is, what the chord changes are those proper chords? Are those the proper voicings for the chords?
Does it matter? Really? I mean, as Nuno Betancourt says,
he is kind of reluctant to show people how he plays,
the tunes, like extreme tunes, because he wants people to listen and interpret and play them in their own way,
rather than teaching them his way. And every musician's individual anyway,
so that kind of makes sense. So you've got people teaching each other
on an informal basis, which may or may not be all that accurate.
And you've also got, it's like passing on knowledge, essentially.
Or you've got something called little music, books, or music, sort of teaching stuff.
And you've got websites that offer tab music. And that's again,
this is by people who transcribe musicians who transcribe tunes and put them up.
And these are, these are brilliant. They really are.
Where you can go and search for a song or an artist.
And you can search each of the different sites and you might find like six different versions of the same song.
And they're all slightly different. It might be, it might be just a chords and one might be
just a solo and another one might be in a different key.
So between them, you can get pretty accurate in a lot of cases.
And at least it gives you something to start from.
Or the official way to do it, which would be the way that the right solos
would want you to do it, would be to go and buy music books.
Now for the uninitiated music books, they can come as compilations.
If I want you to get, we'll go back to the Dreamers Ball for example.
If I want you to do a Dreamers Ball, or if we agreed, we've agreed to do Dreamers Ball.
So we say, right, we need that source.
And I'll look at my local books music store and see where there's a Queen's Greatest Hits there.
It's like 30 bucks. There's a lot of tunes in it.
But it's like 30 bucks and it's a piano version. There's no guitar chords.
It's all transcribed for the piano and the tunes are all like one piano plays the sort of composite
of the whole tune, rather than just the piano parts to the tune.
And it's got the lyrics obviously. I mean, the lyrics we can get almost anywhere.
But at least we've got the chords. If we do it that way, at least we've got the chords.
And then one of the other guys says, well, I've found a Dreamers Ball in a buskers handbook.
And the buskers is essentially, it's easy chords. It's very much simplified.
Buskers, chords tend to stick to majors, minors, sevenths, minor, minor sevenths, fifths,
and a few others. A lot of open chords and a lot of bar chords.
But they're not necessarily that accurate. And they're also arranged for like one guitar.
They're arranged to be easy to memorise, easy to play, and easy to just throw into the repertoire.
So that's not necessarily that accurate. Maybe in a different key as well.
And then one of the other guys says, well, I've been checking about it and I've found a Queen's greatest hits
that has actually got the guitar top in it. But you can't buy it in Britain.
It's only available in America. And the website that does it won't even ship to Britain,
because I'm not allowed to. Even if you pay the postage, you're not allowed to.
They just won't sell it because the publishers of the book, I've put some restriction on it
to say we only want to sell to Americans or to people living in America or Canada.
Well, you know what? I mean, that forces them to say, right, okay, we need to,
to contact us or make them in Wisconsin or something and send the money to him
and get him to go to his local guitar store or get him to order it from the website
that you could do yourself and get it transferred to money across and convert it.
It's just nuts, it's absolutely nuts.
So what the end result of that would be after spending all that time and conversion
and post all money and post all time and eventually you get it.
And that's one copy of that book.
Now bear in mind, it might only be one song from this.
All that time and experience and it might only want one song from this.
But that's one copy. Now this is like, this is a teaching resource.
This is something that we all want to use more or less at the same time
so that we can all in our own time.
So yeah, I've got these ten tunes to learn.
Right, I'm going to put aside an hour tonight and I'm going to work on,
I'm working on this tune and trying to nail this and get that right.
So we cannot, it doesn't work like some fiction book where what the guy that buys it
will then work and learn the tune and then say to the next, the next block.
Here you are, I'll loan you the book so that you can learn it.
The point is, we all need to have access to that at the same time
to be able to learn it at the same time so that by the time we get together
with our instruments to actually have a go and see as a first attempt to see
what we're going to sound like, that we've all got at least something to work from.
So that brings us again, what do we do?
Are we expected to order five copies of this same book?
Seriously? Are we expected to do that?
Just the copyright cartel would want you to do that because it's all for the artists after all.
That's what they're all about, allegedly, as it's all for the artists.
So without doing that, watch your alternative.
Well, you've got the book, we're only wanting the one tune from it.
So we'll photocopy the seven or eight pages or whatever it is that makes up Dreamers Ball.
We make five copies of that and we each have a copy of the photocopy.
And again, we can apply that to each of the ten tunes that we're doing from different artists
and different bands.
So we've broken a lot already by making compilation CDs by photocopying from tab books
from checking out stuff or from people, we'll get in fact, we'll get to that.
So this is just at the very start.
Now we get to the phase where we've learned, we're learning our tunes, we're getting together,
reasonably, regularly, and we're getting a bit tighter musically.
We're actually starting to produce something that we could then start
taking and playing at gigs in front of an audience.
And again, depending on where you are, what counts as an audience,
because the right soldiers want money per performance.
If you play half a song, do you pay half the royalties?
If you play an instrumental version of the song, what doesn't have the vocal one, do you pay a reduced rate?
And if the song breaks down after the first verse, does that discount you'd rate?
You know, obviously these are ridiculous examples, but it's the sort of mindset
that the rights holders are, are the exposies what the rights holders seem to think is perfectly logical.
So we're playing in various pubs. Now again, pubs and clubs, and that need to be a license
to be able to play live music. Again, the rights holders are getting their pound of flesh.
So again, that's stuff that the pubs pay for, but you still have to play in these licensed venues.
So you record your sets, and then you decide we need to promote ourselves.
And obviously the thing on the internet would be things like set up a YouTube channel,
set up a Facebook page, your own website, mySpace, Twitter feeds,
and hopefully a lot of free software versions of that identity card,
and the asperer when it gets going and stuff.
But for all of that, you're playing cover versions.
So do you need to license these tunes from the rights holders?
Would you have to go and pay money to EMI, who won the copyrights on Queen's back catalogue?
Well, I assume they still do.
Do you have to go to be able to put up a copy of you in your band playing Dreamers Ball at your local pub?
On YouTube, do you have to pay EMI legally to be able to put that clip up on YouTube?
Or to be able to put that recording on your website to allow people to stream it or download it?
Even though what you're playing it is still not written by you.
Or in some cases, if you're doing, for example, Prince, he is notorious for just refusing any of that,
he won't give permission for anything, for his stuff to be used anywhere, at all.
I mean, it would get ridiculous if you wanted to start doing Prince stuff,
because I mean, he was one of the first to go nuts at YouTube and get absolutely everything,
even remotely connected to him, removed.
You won't find any Prince stuff on any of the video hosting sites, for that reason.
So, again, I mean, there was a clip about some...
I think it was the parent that filmed her baby bouncing in a chair,
and the music that happened to be on was a Prince tune in the background.
It was playing on the stereo.
The baby was bouncing about to beat the music, and having a ball and Mum thought that would be a great thing.
I think it was Mum. Mum thought that would be a great thing, and put it on YouTube,
and well, Prince didn't seem to agree, and they got a DMCA request for that to be taken down.
So, that's how ridiculous it is.
So, with your own website, if initially all you're doing is coverage,
I mean, anytime when a band is getting together,
or when people are getting together to play music,
or to see if they've got some chemistry and some common ground,
it's always, or who are your influences?
And if you say, oh, you're a man called Jimmy, who's that?
The only person who knows that is you.
I'd built, nonetheless, your ham to be donated to Jimmy Page, or, you know, Ham's.
But, so, it's all household names.
It's names that you can recognise.
Anytime, I mean, just look at descriptions on new bands coming out,
or what are hybrid between, we've got this sort of heavy side of lump biscuit,
and we do, you know, the political side of the VST boys,
and there's a blend of that, and, you know, whatever, you know.
But, everything is a description of a bit of this,
a bit of that with this part of someone else.
You can only do that if you have recognisable names to fill in those slots
to give people an idea of who you are.
So, for that, and even, I mean, even the bands in the artists who write their own stuff,
they never do that right off the bat.
They always start with covers.
Always, always, always start with covers.
Because it's easier to say, right, do you know, you know, just by radio head.
And it's, at least you've got a point of reference to be able to say,
yes, I do know that, and I've got the tune to what from it's already written,
you don't have to work anything out, and you don't have to teach anyone one of your songs
that only you've heard in your head.
And again, for the students point of view, you're not the one who's trying to get a grip
on a tune that someone else is trying to teach you, that you have no reference point to go on.
So it's only, for a while, every band does cover until they start to find their own style
and their own blend, their own chemistry.
At that point, they reckon then some of them then start writing their own stuff
and start introducing their own music into their sets.
Or their own versions of covers that are significantly different from the original,
you know, their original in the fact that they're very different from the original.
So up until that point, you're starting off, and your set is almost all based on covers.
And at that point, you've got your own website, your own Facebook page,
your own YouTube channel, and all of that is vulnerable to DMCA requests from the rights holders,
saying that's our stuff, either cough up the cash or take it down.
All vulnerable to that.
You know, a lot of them, as I said, Prince just refuses to allow his stuff at all.
And some of them say, just put too high a price on it and say,
to license this tune, it's either cough up a lot of cash or you choose something else.
So again, would you choose not to promote yourself in that way?
Not hell not. You would do it anyway.
Because again, you've forced essentially into breaking the law because of the laws set up by business people,
supposedly to help musicians and artists.
So as a musician, you're forced into breaking the law to get around that.
Either that or coughing up lots of cash.
Again, to a labour point, these rules are supposed to be there to help you allegedly.
So what's the way around, what's the solution to this?
Well, Creative Commons answers a lot of that because the thinking on copyright
is that you should be paid for every single instance of it.
Every time someone listens, you should be paid for it.
Creative Commons is a solution to that.
What it does is take going back to the introduction phase where we're all trying to get to know each other
and getting to know our own levels.
If I'm saying, have you heard, imagine all these songs are going to different,
go back in a different timeline.
Imagine all these recognised household names are all Creative Commons.
So if I'm saying, right, I want to do Dreamers Ball by Queen,
and you guys say, well, I know Queen, but never heard that tune.
Well, I can say that, that's cool, I'll send you an MP3.
Or I can put an MP3 up on a torrent somewhere or up on a rapid share or something
and say, there's the link, go check it out.
Or I can, if I have a video or something, I can put it up on YouTube,
knowing that it won't be, I'm not breaking any laws.
It's all tributing back to Queen and the writers,
which I believe would be Freddie Mercury, Brian May might have had a hand in it, off hand.
So, there wouldn't be breaking any laws, and we could have all this conversation.
All of us could be firing links back and forth and saying,
if you check this out, we could do this tune by this band and how about this one?
Or I could quite like the guitar part of that.
So, that whole discussion could be done easily, no problem at all without breaking any laws.
And then we get to the stage where we're getting together
and we're listening to it from the musicians ear and start analysing the tune.
Well, we can hear all different variants, we can explore different jazz version of this tune
or a brass band version of a tune or something.
Because it's all creative commons, it's all legally shared with derivatives
and improving on other versions and we'd be part of that.
If optimistically, if we can listen to a tune and disseminate it
and put it through the filter, that is us, the chemistry that is us,
and then record it.
And again, when we're burning these CDs, there's nothing that's encouraged to be shared.
Creative commons is about being shared.
So, we wouldn't be breaking a lot there either.
As far as derivatives over the work, I would assume that transcribing,
a creative commons tune, I don't know off hand, I'm not a lawyer.
I would assume transcribing that tune would be perfectly legal as well.
So, we wouldn't be breaking a lot by getting transcriptions of the tunes that we want to do
and then photocopying that so we can all learn it and we can all improve on it.
And again, if we wanted to put our own transcriptions up over the way that we do it again,
that would be perfectly legal.
It would be encouraged, in fact, under the creative commons,
because it helps spread and improve a derivative of the tunes that are already there.
We wouldn't have any problems with any of the recordings we put up on YouTube.
We put our entire gig up on YouTube every time we play a gig.
We record it on audio and video and set up a YouTube channel or a Vimeo channel,
blip TV, whatever you want.
Put our music out on torrents, put them out on rapid share and all of that.
Then we're helping spread the word this entry and we're not breaking any laws.
We can do all that and do all creative commons.
And for people wondering, where does that get the original writers of these songs?
Will they get increased listeners, increased viewers, increased audience?
People are going to share songs anyway.
If you're good enough, people are going to want to share this song that they've heard with other people.
Creative commons let's them do that legally.
So what do these, what do the original artists get out of it?
Well, they've got a bigger audience when they're playing in various gigs.
They've got a bigger number of people are aware of them and will happily go and compensate them and go to the gigs.
And that's where they make their money.
It's a bigger audience, bigger sort of a word of mouth, grassroots fan base essentially.
And people promoting their music, free of charge, you know, in forums and in blog posts,
mentioning, oh yeah, I went to see them last week when they were in Cardiff and they were brilliant.
You know, the guitar solo on such and such was blistering, you should check these guys out.
And this is all grassroots promotion.
And all of that is by fans who are enthused by what they hear.
They want to help promote and reward the artists that do the work.
So that is where the original artists benefit, they benefit from ticket sales.
They can sell CDs, they can sell DVDs and all that kind of stuff from their websites.
They can sell CDs and stuff and USB sticks with their albums on it at the gigs themselves,
sell t-shirts, all that type of stuff.
And just because you can download something for free, there's an awful lot of people who say,
well look, all of this money that I give is going directly to the artist.
Because what the current sort of copyrights are thinking is,
I mean, Morrissey, a while back, said to his fans, look,
there's a compilation, a greatest hits compilation coming out,
from my record label on my former record label, I don't know which.
But it's, they're doing it against my wishes.
They asked, they don't know if they asked them or not.
But he objected to it partly because it didn't want,
it was like a cash in, a Christmas thing.
It was like a cash in thing, just to screw more money out of these fans.
But the other point was the royalties, the contractor he was on,
the royalties had dried up years before that.
So he wasn't receiving a penny from these sales.
So they said, look, don't buy it.
Don't just don't buy it.
Now, even when artists are getting royalties,
they're getting pennies per sale.
So the creative commons way, essentially,
that all of that money goes to the artist directly.
You're directly contributing, you're directly rewarding the people
who are pouring their heart and soul into the music that you listen to
and the you enjoy and that you can share and help promote.
So there's that.
And even the books, the music books,
so many of these deals that artists are on don't cover any
and sell your stuff like books.
Tab books, I mean, I would imagine, I don't know,
I would imagine the Queen example.
I would imagine that the members of Queen
even in their heyday, even when they were at the height of their creative powers
and releasing all these albums and playing stadiums all over the world.
I would doubt if they ever received a penny from sales of these books.
I would imagine that that would have been hoovered up by the various publishers
and distributors and talked away into the small print
that Queen would never have received a penny out of these, let alone now.
So there's the whole concept of these rules and these laws
that need to be extended and locked down and tightened up.
All hell of the artist, it's bullshit, absolute bullshit.
So that's just an idea.
I mean, a lot of people think of it from the perspective of just the
listener, the fan, the viewer.
So this HPR episode is about imagining it from the musician's point of view,
from the creator's point of view and just how it doesn't work for them.
It's actually how it screws them as well as the end user, the fan.
So this has been a rather long episode and a bit of a monologue.
So I apologise for that and thank you for listening.
My name is Gordon Sinclair.
My email address is Gordon at thistleweb.co.uk
if you want to de-contact me.
I'm available on IRC as well.
IRC name is thistleweb.
You're not a part of me.
And my website, I just clean casts as well.
So that's the end of the self-promo thing.
And they can be found at my website and the blog, which is
thistleweb.co.uk.
So as I said, this has been a long episode and I thank you for your time.
And until next time, goodbye.
Thank you for listening to Haftler Public Radio.
HPR is sponsored by Carol.net.
So head on over to C-A-R-O dot E-T for all of us in need.
Thank you.