I just had a thought.... Do keyboard makers pay fees to musicians or those who own rights to a specific song? I've noticed over that past few years with all the keyboards I've owned that some of the styles are dead on copies of songs.. Here's a good example. If anyone here has a Casio WK-3000 or 3500 check out style #69. Play the intro to that style, and the song should hit you in the face. It's a popular disco piece. It's like Casio took that intro note for note. I wonder if they paid a fee for using that, and if so doesn't that kind of screw someone if they themselves use that style as it is un-edited for a song of their own??????? I'm pretty certain my old (original) DJX had some styles that were way too close to the originals.

Squeak

I'm open to correction on this but I think I'm right:

To my knowledge, U.S. copyrights only apply to the actual song melody and lyrics. In fact, I've seen books and websites which make the chords, even with the full song title, freely available. I believe that you can use a song's chords and title without paying any royalties.

There are many examples where arrangers have danced around this - my Yamaha 9000 Pro's music database includes setups for famous songs where the title is slightly altered as a legal precaution, like "Proud of Mary" for the song "Proud Mary", etc.

I saw that the Yamaha PSR-K1's song bank includes the song "Englishman in New York" by Sting complete, and I'm sure that fees were paid for that.

Yeah, I think you may be right. I can remember the song data base on my old PSR-550 having song titles that were really close to the original.

Squeak

Hi,
and it's sometimes fun to read the database:
"It's a sin to have pets" - we know this statement, when we try to rent an appartment.


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Regards
RF

You DO know that there are MDBs out there with the corrected titles?? Look on www.psrtutorial.com
DonM