Evening L. Aspen has offered to set other people's poems to music. Many of us here have poems or songs in our stories that lack melodies. Many of us are also undoubtedly musicians of some kind. Maybe some of us have written songs that are fantasy based.

I think we should all pool our talents and produce a CD. "Lullaby" by Seer and Evening is a beautiful example of what this CD could be like. What do you all think? Jay mentioned that he liked the idea, (cue trumpet fanfare for the entrance of Jay to come repeat himself,) so I thought I'd start a thread for us to all discuss it. Since I sing, play harp and piano, write poems and songs, and can now record them. I'm happy to do anything anyone asks me to, so I'm going to stop talking and watch hopefully for discussion to begin.

That sounds like a great idea, though I wouldn't have a song to add at the moment

Good idea, but I don't have a song or any way to help really.

Wow, this sounds like a great idea! I'm not a musician, but I enjoy good music. I hope this comes to pass.

Can someone tell me more about the "Lullaby" CD? Is this something that has already released?

I don't know anything about it.

Lullaby isn't a CD. Lullaby is a song. There's a thread for it here: viewtopic.php?f=23&t=560

I agree about quality, I have access to a recording studio, and I've started getting some of my songs recorded which is why I brought it up. It's all fresh in my mind.

My advice as far as rights go is to release it under creative commons. My dad and Melody's brother can probably explain it better, but creative commons basically works that like this: you're allowed to copy music, you're allowed to listen to the music, you're allowed to give the music to your friends, you're allowed to use the music in a project, as long as you properly credit the people who deserve the credit. In other words you can use it as long as you don't steal it. Creative Commons is a form of copyright that prevents any kind of theft while still allowing full creative usage for all sorts of creative people around the world. My dad told me to release all my stuff that way because thusly it will get wider recognition than if it were obscured in some depth of legalistic copyright protected graveyard.
We will, obviously, have to work all this out at some point in time before it's actually released, Jay can probably take care of it. He knows all about creative commons. Debugger (the scifi movie) is going to be released under creative commons. But meanwhile, that shouldn't hinder working on it, which could take a while in itself...

Do we have other musicians about? (Melody?) I could probably do some, since fantasy and harp tend to lend themselves to each other but we want variety, right?

I play guitar.

Cool.

Lullaby could be the album name

I play piano but I don't compose.

My personal recommendation at this point would be to create computer files and find someone with a high-quality virtual orchestra. It'd be cheaper than renting a studio. (Unless someone happens to have studio-quality equip...) I know a girl with mid-range quality, and there are people on christianfilmmakers.org with high-quality virtual orchestras... though I don't know how we'd ask any of them to participate in this.

Yes. Look up Cubase for an example. (I know a girl who uses Cubase 4, IIRC) There are other brands, with varying quality levels. General rule is the more the instrument library costs, the more real it's going to sound.

I am unsure of how they work within the program, but you give it music notation of some kind (I know that Grace used a MIDI file once) and then you can set the different sections of notes to play with different instruments, adjust volume, speed, etc...

Many (okay, all that I've heard of) indie film composers use virtual orchestras rather than hire a real orchestra and sound equip big enough to record them due to cost & locations. Also, big film composers will use virtual orchestras to try out an idea before giving it to their orchestra to play for the director.

Does that help?

Thanks, Janin!

This project idea fits right into our plans for the future of Holy Creations. So seeing the excitement around this is ... exciting!

Here is what I see that we should do.

We should compile a list of songs, and then edit them to make sure they are worthy. Then trim the list down to the best. I would suggest trying to avoid using songs that are going to be in books: it helps with licensing.

Then set those to music and do the same.

Then find people to record them (again with top quality).

Then we can figure out how to distribute them. There are a lot of options.

As for licensing, I agree that we could (and probably should) use Creative Commons. I would recommend a CC-BY-SA license (which is what Janin is referring to), rather than a CC-BY-SA-ND-NC license, which is practically a full copyright. In any case, even if we go the full copyright route, the respective artists will retain ownership of the license.

The guy who knows what he's talking about has arrived! Listen to him! Yay!!!

So, poems/songs that you've written independently of your book, or that you're not actually going to use in your book. Who has one? (I have lots. I'm a songwriter. )

I wrote a song, but I don't know if it's any good.

I'm sure it has potential! Do you have anyway you can share it with us?

Does anybody know what's involved with getting music onto iTunes? I heard it's pretty complicated, but where there's a will there's a way!! I have a friend with an older brother who is a musician, and from what I've heard he's got pretty good equipment. He recently had a song of his played on the radio. I don't want to volunteer him, I actually don't think he'd do it. If he did, It'd be for a fee, he's pretty busy with his own stuff. He would probably want some credit and some of the profits, IF he even does it. So, he would be like a last resort.

Another option might be to sell it on bluebehemoth. They sell Christian music, audio books, and movies online. Very good service, and I would love to support them.

A lot of people feel that way, Evening. It really has no basis in reality, and doesn't help the progress of... anything, really. But that doesn't matter. It is your choice.

And you can easily prevent what you are afraid of by appending ND to the license. That makes it so that people can't use your work to make their own stuff.

Another thing to consider: you can't stop them from doing it anyways. No matter what you do. You can license it so that you can tell them to stop it, or sue them for money if they keep on going, but you really can't stop everyone, and it would be pointless to try. That is true of any kind of creation.

Each person will be able to license their own work as they see fit, and we will make sure to provide the materials to enable them to know what they want to do. It won't all be distributed under the same license.

That makes sense, when we create an album the individual songs will still belong to the individual songwriters, under whatever copyright they choose. Creative Commons is cool because it allows free use, like you said, someone may decide to use your song in a mushy romance movie, but people will hate the movie and love your song and you'll be more popular in spite of it. The more people who have permission to use your song the more people will, the more people who do use the song the more people will hear it, the more people who hear your song the more notice you'll get. That's my philosophy on it, at any rate.

We're still not making a list of songs here, which seems to me to be the first step. Distribution and copyright deals with a finished product, one would think.

Non-Derivative.

You can also have Non-Commercial, which means that people don't get to make money off of any re-distribution of your work. There is also Share-Alike, meaning that any re-distribution has to be licensed the same as yours (as in if you make them give credit, they don't get to make something new out of it and then not require credit). There are several different clauses you can do.

I still have to write a song.

This is really neat! I hope that you guys can make it work.

I play the piano, and if I can help with anything, just tell me!

I play piano and guitar, but I don't think I'd be able to help, as much as I would like to :/

Hm... so a lot of enthusiasm... but that's good!!! If Evening is willing to get sucked into this at some point in time, if Seer writes more awesome poetry, and if I do a couple songs, we don't need that much, just three or four people should be able to pull of an album that we can all call our own. Right? I know I've got Morgon's Lament, which is fantasy based, I'll put my thinking cap on and get busy myself.

Evening, you said you can't get sucked into this right now, right? So we'll just let this idea gather momentum for a while.

I just have verses written down (I don't write music) so I could send it to you as a PM or just post it here. Although I feel it's more of a poem than a song, so if it's all right, I'd like to spend some time writing a song particularly for Holy Worlds.

You speak and I am here! Just kidding!

It would be fine with me (and an honor) to have it on the CD. It doesn't have a title at the moment...

Would it be OK with you to use it in my book (or just the words), Evening? Or would it be too complicated with it on the CD, or what? I am slightly confused...

Hey, I might be able to come up with some lyrics if someone else would be willing to put it to music and record it. And copyright isn't a big deal to me since I'd only be doing a small part of the work (unless I should be concerned about it?)

That shouldn't be a problem at all. In the credits we can put that it came from your book, and you can get extra advertising that way. You own the license anyways so we can't stop you from using it in your book.

Yay! That is good, because I need a song for my book, considering the title, A Slave's Song.

Neat-o! Sweet! Cool, cool, cool.
I'd do a new recording, the one I have has... issues. It was my first time recording, ever so they're not the greatest, just something to show friends.
If you like the harp I could record some of the other songs too, if the composers and writers don't perform. I know Seer's Lullaby would be gorgeous on harp.

You can go ahead and post the poem here, or on Evening's thread in announcements. I write music too, so if anyone wants I can take a stab at it as well. Except, I can't do the beautiful sheet music Evening does.

Anyone who wants to write a song specifically for this, go ahead! Jumped in! Grab some straws!

I just thought of something.... Who's gonna sing? Namor?? The respective authors? Does anybody on the forum even have a good voice?

There are several people on here who can sing. We will see who sings each piece best, and use that one.

I don't sing. Seriously. It is for your own good, most likely.

Me, for one. And Sir Emeth is right, if we get enough musicians they'll each probably record a couple of the songs, so it won't all be done by one person. And there's got to be a least a few people on here who sing.

Um...gee...how to say this ....
I kinda don't want my poem "lullaby" associated with the song if it can be helped. I wrote "lullaby" as a poem with the intent that it would remain such. Evening asked permission to put it to music and I gave it. Your music is amazing Evening, but is there a chance that perhaps the CD could use a strictly instrumental version of it like the samples you sent me? We could call it "Evening Lullaby" and that way my poem isn't associated with it. Hope I'm not ruining everything, I'd just rather keep my poem from being turned into lyrics. And I have to say that the essence I got from listening to the instrumental versions is much closer to the original essence of the poem than it would be if it were sung
In Christ,
Jordan

*disappointed*
Of course, an instrumental version is completely possible, we just need an instrument to do the melody line instead of a voice. Violin, flute, something like that. (anyone play violin or flute?)

I play flute.

I love flute. Do you have any way of doing good recordings?

I love flute too! It is so pretty.

Actually, after praying about it last night and sleeping on it, I decided it would be ok to use the words to "Lullaby" after all

LOL, Seer.
May I have your permission then to do a recording of this (harp and voice) when Evening finishes posting the sheet music?

So you don't need me after all? :'(



I can do fairly good recordings. If you end up needing a flute for anything else, I can attach a recording of my playing so you can see if the quality is good enough.

Fear not Raven! Flute is a very magical instrument, and if you can do recordings we'll find something! We will want some instrumental tracks on here too, right? For diversity?