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Author Topic: Damn copyright laws.
Glenn Arnold
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My brother recently gave me a CD, which is a complete copy of the "Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band" album. That he made. Himself.

The first aspect of this that comes to mind is that it makes me feel musically insignificant. I mean without switching back and forth between the original album and my brother's, the only real giveaway is his voice, which doesn't sound like the Beatles. I mean, my biggest complaint is that "Rita" doesn't rhyme with "meter," because of his American accent. If you listen carefully, and you really know the album well, you can hear differences, but it's really amazingly well done.

The second part, though, is that when he gave it to me, he told me not to distribute it; he just wanted to give copies to friends and family so we could appreciate the work. I mean, after all, it is essentially a counterfeit copy. It just represents a lot more work and talent that hitting the "copy" button.

But being proud of the work makes me want to share it. I can come online and tell you how great my brother is, but without posting it somewhere where you can hear it, what difference does it make how good it is?

And the third part is that I find it frustrating that my brother is so talented, but seems to be completely unable to capitalize on that talent. He has lamented from time to time that he has never been able to write a good song, but he has talent both as a musician and as a recording engineer, but he has never felt that he could get a job in the music industry.


Just: Arrrghhh!

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bootjes
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I believe you without the evidence.
Unbelievable what your brother did! [Hat]

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fugu13
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Your brother is lucky. If he wanted to distribute that, he could almost certainly obtain licenses to cover the songs, because mechanical licensing (what he would need) of music is driven by statute, in what is known as compulsory licensing. Furthermore, much of the music to license is available through central sources.

This is a good resource: http://www.cleverjoe.com/articles/music_copyright_law.html

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Glenn Arnold
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Thanks Fugu, that was very informative. I've forwarded the link to my brother.
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Lanfear
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I really really want to argue with you.

If someone wrote a book that had the exact same story as Ender's Game, with the exact same things happening in every single chapter, with the exact same outcome, and the exact same dialogue, but written in a slightly different voice, would you think that the author of this new book deserved credit?

I love music, and doing covers is something I enjoy doing. But the point is to make them your own, not mimic them.

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Kwea
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No...YOUR point is to make new music. Others motivation may be different.

After all, classical musicians (such as myself, years ago) would probably disagree with you. [Wink] At least somewhat.


Interpretation is a difficult thing to judge. If his intent was to play it as close to the source music as possible, he succeeded.

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Lanfear
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Regardless of motivation, if someone copied your source music and then tried to distribute it or sell it, your telling me your ok with that?
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Dagonee
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quote:
If someone wrote a book that had the exact same story as Ender's Game, with the exact same things happening in every single chapter, with the exact same outcome, and the exact same dialogue, but written in a slightly different voice, would you think that the author of this new book deserved credit?
He would deserve some credit for what he accomplished, which would almost certainly be a far lesser accomplishment than Ender's Game.

Similarly, someone performing an exact cover is also accomplishing something - something different than someone doing an interpretive cover, but still something.

quote:
if someone copied your source music and then tried to distribute it or sell it, your telling me your ok with that?
Under the current copyright laws you are required to grant a license (for some amount of compensation) to people doing cover songs that closely mimic the original.

That doesn't mean you have to like it. But it seems awfully selfish to accept the enormous economic benefits of a state-enforced monopoly and then complain about one of the few exceptions to that monopoly.

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scifibum
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Thanks for posting that link, fugu13. I've often wondered about how copyrights and cover versions work together...very interesting.
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T:man
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My dad wrote an album for his new wife that was distributed and sold but he doesn't get any money for it, this works if you just want to share it.
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Glenn Arnold
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quote:
Regardless of motivation, if someone copied your source music and then tried to distribute it or sell it, your telling me your ok with that?
That's the point. He's not distributing it or selling it, other than to let family and friends hear what he has accomplished. I'm the one that wants to distribute it, because I'm proud of what he's done, and it's frustrating because I can't say "Here, listen to what my brother did!"

As to why he made an exact copy, he calls it an exercise in extreme musical appreciation.

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Noemon
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quote:
Originally posted by Glenn Arnold:

As to why he made an exact copy, he calls it an exercise in extreme musical appreciation.

I can completely understand doing that. I'll be that he learned a huge amount about the songs in the process.
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fugu13
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Glenn: there's a good chance it would stay up on youtube (though you'd have to split it up), if you made it the soundtrack to some video clips or panning and zooming over pictures.
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Epictetus
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quote:
He has lamented from time to time that he has never been able to write a good song, but he has talent both as a musician and as a recording engineer, but he has never felt that he could get a job in the music industry.
Capitalizing on original music can be overrated. First, you have to make a demo, then you have to find a record company to sign you on, etc. etc. At least with cover bands, your fans already exist and you avoid a lot of the record business' bull.

Also, there's a lot of jobs he could pursue if he wanted to work as a recording engineer. My Dad has worked as a recording engineer for Microsoft, Take Two Interactive, and for theaters before that. It's the same skills that are needed for recording music, but just applied to a different media. If nothing else, working in a job like that can get your foot in the door to work in the music industry.

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Troubadour
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I once worked for the largest audio engineering training group in the world.

The big man always used to say: "We're selling dreams, not careers."

That gives you some idea of the viability of getting a job in the industry unless you're ridiculously motivated and have a very good innate sense for both business and networking.

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Nato
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quote:
Originally posted by Lanfear:
I really really want to argue with you.

If someone wrote a book that had the exact same story as Ender's Game, with the exact same things happening in every single chapter, with the exact same outcome, and the exact same dialogue, but written in a slightly different voice, would you think that the author of this new book deserved credit?

I love music, and doing covers is something I enjoy doing. But the point is to make them your own, not mimic them.

Both the official Harry Potter stories and the fan fiction that is illegally produced have value to those that read and write them, and it is easy to tell them apart. If I write a story that has many similar structural elements to Ender's Game, it may be good. Some of its goodness may come from the stolen elements, some may not. If it does have any value, it doesn't take value away from Card's book, which is still a great story. (I would argue that if it were so close to Card's story that this was distracting to readers who were familiar with Ender's Game, the new work would not have much value.) You say that Card may deserve the "credit"? What if I lovingly indicate that the story's structure comes from Ender's Game in the acknowlegements? Could the public not see this and correctly award Mr. Card some of their appreciation for my book? If they thought the story was good, maybe they would go buy Card's book too?

You don't need to hold everybody else down in order to have produced something of value that is recognized by the community.


The Beatles would be harmed in no way that I can see by a cover album, even if it were released, even if it were released for money. There's no way you could be confused and somehow end up with this version when trying to buy the Beatles or something.

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scholarette
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I am not a musician, but it seems like my friends who play instruments rarely write their own stuff. Yet playing a piece perfectly is considered a huge accomplishment. Signing something perfectly seems as difficult as playing it on a piano. The skill of making your voice do what you want it to is a very different skill from creating a new piece of work and the two are not really connected.
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Bob_Scopatz
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Has your brother heard Faithful by Todd Rundgren?

He did pretty much a similar thing, but with individual songs from the Beatles and other artists of that day.

It is a truly amazing work and even vocally sounds spot on with the originals.

Interesting album and a real accomplishment.

I hope your brother finds his way into making a living in the music industry. People with talent and a work ethic can usually do okay it seems, even if they don't become famous.

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Glenn Arnold
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Bob,

I imagine he probably has, he seems to study musicians in great detail, and I know he has an interest in Rundgren (by the way, Rundgren was in the audience at a Peter Gabriel concert back in 1982 and I got his autograph then. In 1994 he was performing at Woodstock 94 in a little sphere thing in the middle of the surreal field and I got a chance to talk to him, though I can't remember what we talked about, probably small talk.)

My brother is a commercial artist, and previously I would have said that his art is better than his music, but now I'm not so sure. Both are very good. He does earn a living with his art, but I think he should be making a lot more. In any case, he just doesn't seem motivated to promote himself. I know as a teenager he dreamed of being a rock star, but I think he's put it so firmly in the dream category that he just pursues music for it's own value, which is ok, I guess.

Fugu,

I thought of posting it on YouTube, but it's really not my place to do it. Not the least of which because I could potentially get him in trouble, (or myself) but also because he told me not to distribute it.

I sent him an email with the link about copyrights, and I haven't heard a response yet. But I guess until he responds, it's in his ballpark.

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Glenn Arnold
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Oh, and Bob, have you ever heard of Porcupine Tree?

I'd never heard of them, but my brother's previous CD had a lot of their songs. That and a bunch of Genesis stuff. Since I'd never heard of porcupine tree I have nothing to compare those songs to. They're good but I didn't get the same sense of awe as I'm getting with Sgt Peppers.

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Glenn Arnold
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Well, I haven't got music to post, but I've been talking with my brother, and he sent me a file of the liner notes that he put inside the cover of his CD. Add to his other talents what I think is a very well written story of his life and musical growth, leading to the production of this CD and the impact it has had on him.

quote:
It’s no real secret to anyone who knows me, that I’ve been a frustrated musician for most of my life, starting with the day I first struggled with an open G-chord on the acoustic guitar my mother bought me when I was roughly ten years old. Sure, I’d mastered A and D chords, and I really loved E minor (I only needed two fingers!), but the G chord required the use of muscles that my hand had never even been aware existed before. Pinkies aren’t supposed to bend that way, much less apply pressure. Cramps ensued.

There has always been influential music. Early memories include Saint-Sa‘ns’ Carnival of the Animals, Peter and the Wolf, Dave Brubeck Quartet, various Disney songs, and of course all the songs my mother sang at Old Folks’ Homes and at outdoor events. Indirectly, I was surrounded by Woody Guthrie, The Weavers, Josh White and others, because Mom was a folk singer, and while I rarely heard them sing their songs, I heard Mom sing and play.

Recording is almost more interesting to me than actual performance. I recorded my first song when I was about two years old. Mom has it somewhere. I sang Chestnuts Roasting on an Open Fire into Mom’s reel-to-reel tape recorder. I doubt if I got the words right, much less the melody or anything resembling a key, but you know, I had feeling. Rock and blues musicians have proudly claimed the same. But tape recording was the thing: as I was growing up, we always had a tape recorder of one sort or another. When my parents brought one of those space age Panasonic cassette recorders home, I thought I could do anything. It was one of those red plastic things with no sharp corners on it. I recorded everything. Rainstorms, birds, the dogs lapping their water dish. I recorded friends talking, and sometimes we’d make up pretend radio broadcasts. I used to record music from the record player by putting the tape recorder in front of one speaker and being very quiet while the song was playing. Sometimes a family member would walk in while I was doing this and say something, and then I’d have to start again because the microphone would pick them up.

I tried splicing my tapes so I could edit the good parts together. This worked pretty well with open reel-to-reel tape spools, but occasionally I’d wind up taking apart a plastic cassette and slice up the tape inside. Sometimes I could get the tiny mechanical parts to go back together; other times I would throw the ruined cassette away. But failure never stopped me from attempting it again. After all, I couldn’t think of any other way to get my recordings to play in reverse, than to slice out a section, turn it around, and tape it back together. Cool!

My parents bought a professional reel-to-reel tape recorder when I was eleven. This came with real microphone with a little plastic tabletop stand, and a manual that listed “sound on sound” as a feature. I wasn’t allowed to use this sophisticated equipment at first, but every now and again, Mom would treat me to a session. I tried over and over to get “sound on sound” to work, but never could. The manual didn’t make it very clear either. I was sure that I was just doing it wrong, but years later I’m just as sure that the Sony marketing department overstated the recorder’s capabilities. Each time I sang into the microphone, the playback would be a fraction of a second after the original voice. Useless at the time, this became a feature for me later: when I joined my first garage band, this was the first echo we had, and it made us sound far better than we actually were.

When I was in high school, the garage band had matured into Rivendell. Okay, “matured” is a relative term, but we were dedicated, and we were pretty diverse in taste. We played all the standard rock songs, but we had an anything-goes attitude. We tackled complicated songs that had no business being played by teenagers with limited equipment, but we did it with feeling. Actually, we were pretty creative in how we rearranged songs to suit our sound. No Moog synthesizer? No lush ARP string ensemble? No problem! Just plug the wheezy old Farfisa organ into a few effect pedals, and it’ll sound close enough! Or use kazoos…

I would often record Rivendell rehearsals and concerts on whatever little stereo recorder was available, and recorders by this time had become common, so I had some versatility. Most of my friends had their own cassette recorders. Every time Rivendell played in public, we recorded the show.

And then at home, I discovered a way to play the Rivendell recordings from a cassette deck into Mom’s reel-to-reel, while playing a new part at the same time. Epiphany! I could add a rhythm guitar! Or a harmony! Or piano! Well, not piano, not really: I couldn’t play piano. But this opened up a whole world for me. It sounded awful, but it was finally possible to record sound on sound. It didn’t really bother me that each time I added a new part, the original song would get noisier, and over the next few years, I learned ways to minimize the noise.

In 1984, I saved for a full year, and bought a self-contained 4-track cassette recorder. It came with a mixer and equalizer, and it was advertised by Tascam as “the same as the Beatles used to record Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band.” Which was sort of true. EMI studios in the mid-sixties did in fact use a 4-track tape recorder. They also had Neumann Telefunken vocal microphones, Fairchild limiters, and classic REDD mixing desks, as well as greatest sounding room on the planet, Studio Two at Abbey Road Studios. My red Panasonic would make good sounding recordings in that room.

But the idea that I could record true multi-track overdubs for the first time was the whole point. I was no longer playing in bands with other musicians, and this way I could record fully arranged songs by myself. Sometimes, I’d get my friend Phil to collaborate. He played instruments that I didn’t, and he played them very well. I remember we snuck into a couple of the music rooms at Westconn University one time (I was friends with the night custodian, who was a drummer), and took the 4-track and our still-limited equipment. This was a treat. The rooms sounded good, very reverb-y, and there were exotic instruments just lying around; a gong, tympani, a concert grand piano, a real harpsichord… We recorded a little of everything. Phil sat at the harpsichord and played the opening of Fixing a Hole, and some Bach. He played Rhapsody in Blue on the Steinway. We were in heaven.

For a while, I lived with Bill, a friend from high school, in a stripped-down apartment that had little or no furniture, other than a card table and a few apple crates that were used to store vinyl albums. The apartment was filled with music equipment, and the living room floor was arranged with amplifiers, a synthesizer, guitars, basses, a saxophone and a broad scattering of effect pedals and twisted cables. And not one, but two 4-track tape recorders! All of my free time was spent recording music, usually by myself. Bill’s work schedule was often different from mine, so we usually didn’t see each other until after midnight. I churned out a large catalog of songs and musical sketches in just a little less than six months.

Skip ahead a few more years. I now had children, and time had become somewhat limited. If the kids were awake, they were the center of the universe, and as their daddy, it was my job to make sure it was a good universe. Recording music still happened, but it happened during nap time with headphones on, or in the middle of the night when I really should have been sleeping. So recording rarely happened. But that didn’t stop me from recording other things: when Cate was an infant, I used to make sound recordings of her gurgling baby noises. By sheer luck, I happened to have a microphone near her when she laughed for the first time (coincidentally, the same cheap, weathered mic that came with Mom’s reel-to-reel Sony).

Soon after Maggie was born, I bought my first Macintosh computer, and it came with a clip-on dictation microphone. You couldn’t do much with it, other than record short clips to be used for sound effects on the computer, and I remember thinking how great it would be to record digitally if only I had a program that would work like my 4-track. But there wasn’t one, and all I could record were snips of my daughters when they sat in my lap at the desk. I have a clip of two-year old Maggie imploring “pweeeeeeez?” I have another of Cate at about the same age asking “how do you get down off an elephant?’ and then answering “you don’t get down off an elephant, you get down off a DUCK!”

I still recorded music on the 4-track, and learned ways to keep the sound as high fidelity and noise-free as possible, but four tracks are four tracks, and even if you “bounce” or pre-mix three tracks down to one (which allows you to make those three tracks available for new instruments), you can still only record a limited numbers of parts in a song. Skip ahead to 2002, when I discovered a computer program that, gasp! worked like my 4-track! And let me record thirty six tracks! Now I no longer had to perform tricks to squeeze a whole bunch of sounds into a little tape cassette, and hiss was no longer a concern.

Little by little, technology has caught up with me, and become affordable enough to allow me to be the one-man-band I’ve always heard in my head. Programs have become available that let me shape the sounds I’m recording, and to emulate every instrument I’ve ever heard (and a whole bunch I’ve never even heard of).

But before I even thought about making noise on my own, there were the Beatles. Mom gave me a copy of Revolver for Christmas when I was six or seven. I wore it out on a little toy record player. I played it slow. I played it fast. I pushed the turntable backwards with my finger so I could hear what John Lennon was saying in the song She Said She Said. Mom herself owned copies of Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band and Abbey Road, and I wasn’t allowed to play those on my toy record player. We listened to those on her hi-fi system (which I later inherited). The sounds were fantastic, even to a little kid who doesn’t know how completely different they were from everything that came before.

I’ve heard older people talk about how everything changed after they heard Sgt. Pepper for the first time. Not me; it’s always been there. I remember riding in the car when I was four and hearing Petula Clark or Buddy Holly on the radio of our old Rambler, and then the Beatles would come on with a whoosh! I asked Mom how the same singer could sing at the same time as himself, and she told me somewhat correctly, that it just sounded that way, that it was really two different singers who were very good at singing together. But the Beatles vocal sound is more complicated than that: Lennon and Harrison sounded extremely similar, so they sounded like the same man singing with himself. Lennon and McCartney sound very different, but when they sing together, the blended vocals seem to make sparks, and it almost sounds like there’s a third voice. I read that last observation somewhere, but it’s appropriate. Frequently, all three Beatles would sing harmony, and the car radio would practically burst into flame.

But the sound that I heard as a little boy wasn’t the sound of Lennon and McCartney singing together. It turns out that it was the sound of Automatic Double Tracking, or ADT, and it was invented at EMI Studios for the Beatles, largely so John Lennon wouldn’t have to overdub his vocal lines. “I’ve sung it once, boys, just track it!” It gave their vocals a lush sound, very spread out. I’ve been hooked ever since.

Which brings me to this project. I’ve been listening to Sgt. Pepper since I was five or so, and I’ve paid attention to every little ambient noise on the record, from the orchestral tune-up at the beginning, to the sounds of editing mistakes (there’s one in Lucy in the Sky, where I can hear the sound of a tape splice edit cutting off the beginning of a word sung by Lennon). I love the sound of Lennon’s singing in A Day in the Life after “somebody spoke and I went into a dream,” not just for the dreamy melody, but for the way it seems to wind itself through and around the horns. As the horns get louder (they dominate by the end of this section), Lennon’s vocal recedes, as though he’s trading places with the horns.

But nothing prepared me for the prospect of recreating every single sound on the record by myself. This project forced me to finally listen to the record as a single piece of long-form composition, and to reject all of my preconceptions about “this is how this song goes, la la!” Deconstructing the songs forced me to listen to everything for the first time, from ambience and nuance to harmonic structure. I was given a copy of The Beatles Complete Scores by my former sister-in-law Cindy, and the book has been like gold to me over the years. Any time I’ve wanted to learn anything new about music, I crack it open, and it’s never let me down. Indeed, it’s been irreplaceable to this remake, but I’ve discovered that it’s not as complete as I always thought: in recreating the string arrangement of Within You Without You, I had to rely on my own ears to pick out the Indian instruments. The book sums up all the Indian instruments in a single staff as “sitar,” even though the dilruba, tamboura and swarmandela are more prominent than the sitar. And the clarinets in When I’m Sixty-Four do some very corny things that don’t quite reach the target note. In other words, they’re pretty intentionally flat.

I spent as much time assembling the animal noises in Good Morning Good Morning as I did singing Getting Better.

I tried to work chronologically through the album, from beginning to end. As I was finishing the basic tracks for Fixing a Hole, I realized what a very deep hole I had dug for myself. She’s Leaving Home would be next on the agenda, and I wouldn’t have a drum track or an acoustic guitar to use as the basis for everything else: the song has only a string octet and a harp. And I wasn’t sure if I could perform the parts to sound natural and convincing. Using a sample-based computer version of violins and cello seems very reasonable on paper, but it could easily sound like a cheesy toy keyboard if I wasn’t careful. And Within You Without You seemed like it would be impossible. But I think I managed to pull it all off.

It’s important to point out that I did not consider this project to be in the same class as the thousands of so-called “Beatles tribute bands” that exist in the world. I’ve heard that Paul McCartney loathes Beatles tributes, and I can’t say that I blame him; every tribute since the Beatlemania Broadway show is formulaic to the point of silliness. You know the formula… it’s in three acts, beginning with four guys in collarless suits and mop-top wigs. One of them has a Hofner violin-shaped bass, and shakes his head while singing “woooo!” Act Two has the same guys dressed in Sgt. Pepper costumes, and with fake moustaches. Act Three replaces the Pepper costumes with the clothes shown on the cover of the Abbey Road album, and the moustaches have been augmented with beards. The music is often good, but the dress-up is awful. Especially the moustaches. And the art of the Beatles gets trivialized into a cartoon.

No, I tried to avoid the trap of the impersonator (and in the event that I failed at this, my apologies to Mssrs. McCartney, Lennon, Harrison and Starr), and to instead treat the album as a piece of long-form classical music. Classical ensembles don’t consider themselves to be performing “Beethoven tributes,” or “Mozart cover bands.” They simply play what’s written in the score, and they follow the conductor’s direction as to how it should be played. Some classical musicians spend the whole of their careers specializing in one specific composer, studying every last nuance of the composer’s intent for their work. Why shouldn’t the same attitude be applied to rock music?

So the idea of this remake isn’t so much an attempt to do justice to a masterpiece (although I did attempt to do it justice), or to improve upon the original (who would I be kidding?) as it is an exercise in Extreme Music Appreciation.

The dissection of these songs allowed me to get as inside them as I could. The most ironic aspect to this remake has been the fact that my main goal was to experience the music as intimately as possible, but by doing it alone, I’m unable to share the experience with anyone. Sure, you can listen to the final product. I’m proud of it, and I think I did a faithful job for a middle aged man in his basement studio. But anyone who hears my remake hears something that might as well be an impersonation; I’m the only one who got to pick apart every last wisp of the original and then reassemble it. If anyone else wants the same experience, they’ll have to start from scratch. I recommend it.

I’ve finally been able to experience what it’s like to hear this music for the first time.
Everything’s changed.

Deane Arnold, June 2008
-------------------------------
Postscript: I think that many people tend to forget the scope of what the Beatles accomplished, considering the short amount of time in which they existed. Their first EMI recording session was September 4, 1962. Their last session was March 1, 1970. In less than nine years, they went from Love Me, Do to the album Let it Be. It seems to me that this was an evolutionary explosion. When you consider that they were fed up with working with each other by the White Album sessions in May, 1968, their collaborative group creativity lasted just about five and a half years. And what a learning curve! Keep in mind that the White Album had songs that were written mostly by Lennon or McCartney or Harrison, and recorded without the participation of the entire band. Whereas most songs leading up to this point had been written and performed together as a group, from here on most songs were written alone, and recorded in overdubbed stages, many times without the participation of all four Beatles.

During this period between 1968 and 1969, the band gradually dissolved, each Beatle taking a turn in quitting the band, and then returning to give it another try. Lennon refused to have anything to do with many of McCartney’s songs, his interest drawn to other pursuits, and the Let it Be album was actually a collection of songs they considered to be leftovers (the usual Apple record label was a green Granny Smith apple; the label on Let it Be was a red apple, a sly acknowledgment that they considered these to be songs “past their prime.”

The hottest period of fast growth was between the fall of 1965, when they recorded songs for the Rubber Soul album, to April 1967. Which is when they completed work on Sgt. Pepper. In a year and a half, they went from country-inflected songs to a progressive form of musical art that’s splintered off into every corner of modern music since.

The text of these liner notes is copyright Deane Arnold 2008. They are posted here with his permission.

[ July 13, 2008, 12:14 PM: Message edited by: Glenn Arnold ]

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Glenn Arnold
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For anyone that cares, aside from my self, Deane now has about a dozen albums of cover music. Most of it is Genesis, Porcupine Tree, and Beatles, but with a few others thrown in. For Christmas this year he gave me a copy of a complete cover of Genesis' "The Lamb Lies Down on Broadway."

Unlike Sgt Peppers, in "The Lamb" Deane has not remained faithful to every note and nuance. Although the compositions are not his own, his own musical voice has grown to the point where it takes on a style that makes it clear that he has his own input, and it feels right.

Still, he has not pursued any copyright approval, and I still can't share it.

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El JT de Spang
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That's a really interesting story (from his liner notes). Sounds like an insane undertaking. I'd actually love to hear it.

And I understand his and your reluctance to share it, but you can almost certainly put it up on myspace or another online streaming site with nothing to fear. There're tons of covers on those sites, and I've never read of any action being taken against any of them (mainly because a component of compulsory licensing is that you have to pay mechanical royalties at a rate of 9.1 cents per song per sale, so if you're not selling you're pretty much clear).

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ricree101
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quote:
Originally posted by Epictetus:
Capitalizing on original music can be overrated. First, you have to make a demo, then you have to find a record company to sign you on, etc. etc. At least with cover bands, your fans already exist and you avoid a lot of the record business' bull.

That isn't necessarily true any more. There are a number of distribution outlets and promotional opportunities online. It may not be as lucrative as signing at a major label, but it lets you skip the step of having to convince some middleman and
only requires you to appeal to fans.

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El JT de Spang
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You realize that post is a year and a half old?
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ricree101
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quote:
Originally posted by El JT de Spang:
You realize that post is a year and a half old?

I do now. [Big Grin]

Not the first time I've been caught by a bump before.

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rivka
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quote:
Originally posted by ricree101:
Not the first time I've been caught by a bump before.

This is begging for a pregnancy joke, but I got nothing.
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Godric
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I just gotta say... Reproducing Sgt. Pepper, whether you think it's just mimicry or not, is an astounding feat. That album had remained, until a few years ago, considered impossible to play live. Granted, reproducing it in a studio is a lot easier, but it's a darn impressive feat in and of itself - especially if it's as good as Glenn says it is. Kudos to your brother Glenn.

He really should pursue his talent. If he did this, he certainly has it.

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Glenn Arnold
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As it turns out, Deane has put some of his stuff up on http://www.deanearnold.com/songs/

None of this is Beatles, but most of it's pretty good. The vocals on Barracuda are done by his daughter Cate, and her voice is pretty impressive on its own.

If Dana wants to alert Bob, I'm pretty sure that "Supper's Ready" is a complete version. I'm sure he'd be interested in that.

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Glenn Arnold
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Whoops. Some of it is Beatles, but none of it is Sgt. Peppers.
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Kwea
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Cool, thanks for sharing. [Big Grin]
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rollainm
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Neat. And your niece's voice is incredible.
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Strider
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I love his cover of Dear Prudence Glenn!
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