Quoting:
My opinion:

If you can do it a capella, it´s (also) literature. If people then recognize the tune it´s the same as recognizing a "meter". As long as no instruments are being played there should be no problem with copyright infringement, though I´m not sure if you could get into trouble by mentioning what the original is.

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Is this right? Copyright is not infringed if it's sans instrumentation, but is infringed with instruments? Do you have a link on this, or any further info?

Thx

Quoting:
Is this right? Copyright is not infringed if it's sans instrumentation, but is infringed with instruments? Do you have a link on this, or any further info?
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No, not really, and I´m not an American so I wouldn´t be able to tell you for sure anyway. This was just what I´ve been told once and it seems to make "common sense" (whatever that is) to me.

If you sing your own words without instrumental backing and without telling what the original tune is, then the recognizion of the imitation is in the mind of the listener. And we were talking about open mic poetry here, which by phrase definition states that the performance is not musical.

But, as we all now, rap can be considered to have closed the gaps between those two forms of art. There´s no absolute border between talking/reading and singing/chanting.

I think that it would be okay to introduce your a cappela stuff with something like "this is to the tune of ..." but it´s probably dependent on the situation and your possible gain from it, the most important thing to take into consideration here is whether or not your back is free on the issue of economic intent. Are you to gain money from your performance?

When in doubt better state on beforehand that the prize bucks doesn´t stay there with you, but moves along to the audiences favourite charity (a free round at the bar) or something like that.  ;D

Remember that Weird Al was recently denied to use Eminem´s "Loose yourself". The words would have been Al´s, but the "instrumental" part was the property of Eminem and could therefore be denied. And Al of course has an economic intent with reaching out to the masses. (And God bless him for it too). :P

Would Al have been able to do it a cappela anyway? I think so, it would have been much the same thing as we are doing on AmIRight 75 times a day, but I´m not willing to swear on it.

Maybe someone here´s a professional on the subject and can give further info.

Quoting:
and this open mic is music and poetry... not that i know how to play any instruments to accompany myself
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well, if it's poetry you're all set.. good lyrics are poetry..

since you're not playing the music, the only thing that is recognizable will be the beat and pacing, and I doubt anyone could ever sue you for that. I also doubt you'd get in trouble if you said something like "inspired by, or sounds very similar to..."  

The filk community has been performing their songs live for years (some with instrumentation) with little or no harrasment from the music community at large.  The stuff on amiright could be considered filk, though generally filk is considered to be sci-fi community only (Babylon 5 parodies anyone?). So I think you should just go for it.

Quoting:

No, not really, and I´m not an American so I wouldn´t be able to tell you for sure anyway. This was just what I´ve been told once and it seems to make "common sense" (whatever that is) to me.

If you sing your own words without instrumental backing and without telling what the original tune is, then the recognizion of the imitation is in the mind of the listener. And we were talking about open mic poetry here, which by phrase definition states that the performance is not musical.

But, as we all now, rap can be considered to have closed the gaps between those two forms of art. There´s no absolute border between talking/reading and singing/chanting.

I think that it would be okay to introduce your a cappela stuff with something like "this is to the tune of ..." but it´s probably dependent on the situation and your possible gain from it, the most important thing to take into consideration here is whether or not your back is free on the issue of economic intent. Are you to gain money from your performance?

When in doubt better state on beforehand that the prize bucks doesn´t stay there with you, but moves along to the audiences favourite charity (a free round at the bar) or something like that.  ;D

Remember that Weird Al was recently denied to use Eminem´s "Loose yourself". The words would have been Al´s, but the "instrumental" part was the property of Eminem and could therefore be denied. And Al of course has an economic intent with reaching out to the masses. (And God bless him for it too). :P

Would Al have been able to do it a cappela anyway? I think so, it would have been much the same thing as we are doing on AmIRight 75 times a day, but I´m not willing to swear on it.

Maybe someone here´s a professional on the subject and can give further info.
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well, if you take some thing and change some about it, then it is a parody, and that is perfectly legal......it doesnt matter if you have artist permission or anything, as long as you changed something...... (and BTW, this applys to everything, not just music)

Quoting:
now i've gotta decide what song to do - any suggestions?
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Depends on what you think your audience is like - I reckon your "Beyond you and me"/Blowing in the Wind parody would probably go down well with a more serious audience... "Bitten by Bugs" would probably work pretty well as an unaccompanied poem (almost a rap  :o), but if you've got a "silly" audience, expecting something lighthearted go for "Stupid College Frat Boys Did It Everybody Knows This" or "Gruff The Billy Goat Clan".

Phil

Quoting:
well, if you take some thing and change some about it, then it is a parody, and that is perfectly legal......it doesnt matter if you have artist permission or anything, as long as you changed something...... (and BTW, this applys to everything, not just music)
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um.. it's a little more complicated than that.. if you change just the lyrics and reuse the exact same music, it's a parody of the lyrics but not the music. Therefore, the writer/publisher of the music receives royalties. This is one of the reasons Frank Zappa changed the beat of Louie Louie, to avoid paying royalties, even though what he was performing could be considered a parody. Since Weird Al generally doesn't alter the underlying music very much, he negotiates a better rate before performing the piece.

MAD magazine actually helped settle most of these issues in court in the late 1950s..

Quoting:

Depends on what you think your audience is like - I reckon your "Beyond you and me"/Blowing in the Wind parody would probably go down well with a more serious audience...


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well, that was a direct reply to my Blowin in the wind  parody, so wouldnt the audience have to see mine first to understand it?  (Im not just trying to promote mine here, this is a serrious question lol)

Quoting:


um.. it's a little more complicated than that.. if you change just the lyrics and reuse the exact same music, it's a parody of the lyrics but not the music. Therefore, the writer/publisher of the music receives royalties. This is one of the reasons Frank Zappa changed the beat of Louie Louie, to avoid paying royalties, even though what he was performing could be considered a parody. Since Weird Al generally doesn't alter the underlying music very much, he negotiates a better rate before performing the piece.

MAD magazine actually helped settle most of these issues in court in the late 1950s..
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well, it was actully a court case in the 1990s that made parodies legal....and the rule we follow by in Nonsense (granted, we dont do parodies) is if you change something of importance, then it is a legal parody...we did this with comic strips before, and with a Wheres Waldo centerfold like thing, where we copied a page exactly from the Wheres Waldo book and changed everyones face and Made it a "Wheres Saddam" thing (and btw, this was my idea, and it was cut from the issue at the last minute  :'( )....anyway, Im pretty sure that just changing the lyrics is somewhat sufficent if you give credit to the original writers of the music....you cant claim that you yourself wrote the music, that would be plagerism........

Quoting:
This topic needs to be aired more. Can we all be sued because of our performances in the "performances" section, or are we ok because we haven't made money from it?
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I'm not sure whether US and UK law differ, but you can't be sued over here for not passing royalties on if you haven't received any.

If you were to be selling, or otherwise making money out of parodies, then the writer of the melody would be due 50% of the royalty (funnily enough, although a parody usually draws on the words of the original song, the guy who wrote those words is entitled to nothing - providing you didn't use "a significant amount" of the original lyric... what defines "a significant amount", though, is why you still get court cases, I guess).

Phil