Monday, January 22nd, 2024

In all chaos there is a cosmos, in all disorder a secret order.

— Carl Jung

It seems that dataview is going to be part of Obsidian core. Looking forward to it.

MUS106 Lecture 6: Copyright and Covers

Quiz on Wednesday

Elvis Presley as a song stylist—Elvis were just covering existing songs
A cover could be faithful to or divergent from the original song
- faithful vs divergent
  - instrumentation
  - dynamics
  - etc
On song ownership
- The copyright was originally held by composer/songwriter (in 1909), as music was mainly published & sold via sheet music due to a lack of recording. If another party wants to use the song, they have to pay royalties to the original copyright owner.
- In 1955, copyright couldn’t be applied to recordings/performers, but only to the original composers of the song
- whitewashing: white headliners cover songs by Black artists to appeal to pop (i.e. affluent, white) audience; possible since recordings didn’t have copyright protection
  - Record labels were trying to prevent LaVern Baker from crossing-over from R&B chart (tracking Black customers) to pop chart (tracking white customers), so they had Georgia Gibbs (white) cover it. This was possible because recordings weren’t copyright protected, so even though Gibbs’s version was almost a carbon copy, it’s still legal.
  - LaVern Baker lobbies to update 1909 copyright laws, which eventually happened in 1978.
- Pat Boone copied songs from Fats Domino, and claimed to be an activist since he was promoting Black artists that wouldn’t have received so much attention.
answer song: fundamentally new song that responds to an existing song
- one of the choices for final project