Self-publishing my worship songs

I've talked about it forever, but this past weekend I decided to finally act.  I've setup a GitHub repository to which I intend to commit sheet music for the various Christian worship songs that I compose.  You can visit the project at:

https://github.com/cmpilato/worship-music

I've added the music from my recent "Shepherd of My Soul" composition (which my worship team at Providence introduced to our congregation brilliantly this past weekend, I might add!), plus a few other songs.  I also have placeholders for several other tunes that I'm committing to self-publish here, too.

Those who know me well know that I can be pretty outspoken about copyrights and licensing and such, especially as regards music written (at least ostensibly) "for God" or "for the Church".  This is why every worship song I've written carries a Creative Commons license.  But while it's all well and good to say, "My songs I offer without restrictive licensing," it matters little if there are other barriers to sharing and re-use.  This self-publishing effort is a way for me to remove some more of those barriers.  I genuinely want folks to take and use these songs with minimal impediment if they find them worth taking and using, and I'm willing to put in the extra effort to encourage as much.

My goal is to keep for each song MuseScore files with—at a minimum—lead sheets for the songs, plus MusicXML and PDF exports of the same.  I could, of course, just use PDFs, but that would discourage getting corrections submitted by folks who are far better at musical transcription than I am.  It would also prevent easy transposition of the songs into alternate keys.  At the moment, you can load the score into MuseScore, select the whole score (Control-A), and then use the Notes > Transpose... menu to put the song in whatever key you wish.  It's that simple!  Someday I may also include links to recorded demos of the songs, specific hints for individual instruments, etc.

May God bless this tiny little human's effort to make His praise even more widespread.

Bibles, copyright, and restrictive licensing

One Wednesday evening as Pastor John Cashwell wrapped up his sermon, I found myself staring at the binding of a pew Bible. "Holman Christian Standard Bible" … and then that big ol' ® (registered trademark) symbol. Recalling that in the past I'd read the New International Version (NIV) licensing statement, I flipped open the cover of the HCSB to read its own, and found stuff pretty similar to what I remembered the NIV's to be. You can quote the text, but not more than 250 verses, not quoting a whole book, and not using the quotes as more than 20% of the body of work in which you are embedding the verses.

Why do modern Bible translations carry restrictive licenses?

How can a publisher restrict the free distribution of a work that is, by its very definition, just a remix of some other, written-before-there-were-even-copyrights, text?

I Googled around a bit for some answers. My first hit was a FAQ entry on BibleGateway.com, which talks—among other things—about the cost and effort involved in creating an accurate Bible translation. It contains the following wrap-up summary:

To sum up, Bible versions are copyrighted to make sure that translators are fairly reimbursed for their hard work. Most copyrighted Bible versions have relatively lenient quoting rules that should cover most common situations. But if for whatever reason the copyright rules prevent you from using the Bible as you like, you're free to use a non-copyrighted Bible version.

The article also states that "there is nothing stopping you from creating your own Bible translation—there are online projects dedicated to doing just that!" This intrigued me. I'd never considered the idea of crowd-sourcing a Bible translation before, so I Googled again for "crowd-sourced Bible translation". This led me to a project called The Seed Company (theseedcompany.org). Initially, I was excited, but as I read on, I didn't see many obvious differences between the Seed Company and other traditional translation methods such as those employed by its sister company, Wycliffe Bible Translators. Some digging around further led me to a well-written set of blog posts which somewhat echoed much of what I was thinking (plus a bunch of stuff I'd not considered).

Dissatisfied, I tried a different search: "-wikipedia.org wikipedia style Bible translation".

Finally, I landed on something promising! The WikiProject Wiki Bible (http://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Wikisource:WPWB) is the project that I found myself wishing into existence.

"Pause" t-shirts, revisited ... by someone else!

A few months ago, I got an unexpected email from a lady named April Buse:

Hello,

We are from a church in South Dakota that puts on an annual winter retreat, much like the one you mentioned in your blog. It just so happens that the theme we chose this year is "pause." As we were googling images for our t-shirt designs, we saw your t-shirt design and LOVE the design, especially the glow in the dark GOD. We were wondering if you would mind if we used your creative design for our retreat t-shirts this year. So that we don't steal your original design, we would be willing to tweak it a little bit. Please let us know your thoughts as soon as possible as our winter retreat is in mid February. Thank you and God bless!

To say that I was surprised would be quite an understatement. I am both honored and bewildered that some random person would stumble across a graphic design via my blog (you can see the post yourself at http://cmpilato.blogspot.com/2011/03/disciplenow-2011.html) and want to use the artwork. I mean, when I wrote that post, some part of me was thinking, "Hey, this idea seemed to work out well for us, and maybe somebody else will be inspired by it, too." But did I think that would really happen? Not hardly. I'm fairly certain that my blog readership peaks out at, like, three people. And I'm one of them.

After the wave of amazement and gratitude passed over, I confess I had less pleasant thoughts:

• April was asking permission to reuse the design. That's great, and polite, I suppose. But why was it necessary? Because we live in a culture where reuse, remixing, and recycling of ideas has become a bad thing that must be policed.
• She actually used the word "steal", as if her printing t-shirts would suddenly cause my own to disappear, the artwork files to be deleted from my computers, and the screens at the shirt printers' warehouse to turn to dust. I don't fault her for this — rather, I fault the loud voices in our culture that would have us to believe that copying is theft. (Psssst... it's not.)
• She used the term "original design". Now, nearly anybody would have used the same term. But what is originality? Is not every single thing of man's making just a remix of what can be found in nature already? Just a new spin on what God has already designed?

Fortunately, my grumpiness passed quickly and I was able to return back to amazement and gratitude. "Sure you can use the design," I replied, and even sent April my original artwork files. This was beneficial, as it turns out that some changes to the artwork were necessary to accommodate the specific design elements that her group needed for their shirts. I provided all the help I could, wished her luck, and that was that. Time passed and I eventually forgot about the exchange altogether.

Well, I heard back from April the other day. She mailed to say that the shirts were a hit, and even sent me a photo of her group wearing them:

The kids in the group even chose a day to wear the shirts to school as a way to generate buzz and maybe kickstart conversations with friends about the shirt's meaning and the Gospel message. How cool is that?!

If you are a generator of creative works — especially someone who might be inclined to credit God for your talent or claim to produce those works for His service — I beg you to consider the negative impact of restrictive licensing of those works. I beg you to understand that a copied idea only makes it bigger, makes it more impactful, makes it more influential; it doesn't take anything away from the "original". And finally, I beg you shoot straight with your consumers: if you do what you do merely to cash a royalty check, please don't call that an act of worship.

"Fill This Place"

A few weeks ago, my church (Providence Baptist Church in Harrisburg, NC) celebrated the opening of its new sanctuary building. Some months prior, Pastor John Cashwell challenged me to compose a song to be used in the dedication of the building. (And I don't use the word "challenged" here lightly — writing songs from scratch is a craft I have failed miserably to refine.)

After some initial brainstorming and prayer, it became clear to me that a new building is spiritually and socially disinteresting. It's what you put into the building that matters. Scratch that. It's who you put into the building that matters. And certainly for a church, if the Spirit of God isn't in that building — filling the atmosphere and the attendees with His presence — well... what's the point?

The song that resulted from those thoughts practically wrote itself. Here are the lyrics (sans repeated sections).

"Fill This Place"

We will gather here today
We will worship, we will pray.
We will sing in one accord
We will bow before You, Lord.
We will bring our tithes and offerings to You, Hallelujah!

You have called us, every one —
Called us daughters, called us sons;
Called us to receive your grace;
Called us to respond with praise.
Now we're calling out to You, Lord Jesus,
"Come, come and fill this place!"

Come, fill this place.
Lead us from the start and send us forth from here.
Send us forth from here.
Come, fill this place.
Lead us toward Your heart, and send us forth from here.
Send us forth to tell the whole world who You are!

We all need your new beginning here.
We all need your grace for living here.
We all need your help forgiving here.
Won't you come? Won't you come?
We all need your hope to heal us here.
We all need your love to free us here.
We all need to meet you, Jesus, here.

It's a simple song, really. But judging from the encouraging feedback I received after our worship team shared it during the Dedication Service for the new sanctuary, it served its purpose of helping our congregation focus on the real point of this beautiful building.

Some might wonder why I've posted these here instead of rushing them off to the U. S. Copyright Office and seeking a willing publisher. I'll tell you. I want to do my part to right what I think is a very large wrong in the artistic community in general and specifically the Christian music community. I'm talking about copyright assignment and restrictive licensing. How can a songwriter thank God publicly for his chart-topping worship song knowing that he sold the publishing rights to that song to a company that will slap a restrictive license on its playback and use? How does it make sense that corporations such as ASCAP, BMI, and SESAC can intimidate — or even prosecute — people who want to share worship music with each other? There is and has ever been exactly one Creator, and all man's works are mere remixes of the original. I'm not brave enough to restrict what's not mine to restrict. Because the laws of the land grant me the copyright on the songs I write automatically, I'll use those rights for good, freely licensing my songs so that others may benefit from them without fear of litigating, and encouraging their re-use by providing lyrics, recordings, and sheet music where I can.

UPDATE 9/5/2013: I've decided to post my original demo recording.  It's so unpolished and pitchy and ... well, that stuff just matters less to me than the freedom of the song.  So here's "Fill This Place":

"Sita Sings the Blues" comes to Cabarrus County

I was pleasantly surprised when I read the latest edition of In & Around Harrisburg (Issue No. 15, Jan. 13-27, 2011) and spotted a listing for an upcoming showing of Nina Paley's Sita Sings the Blues at the Davis Theatre in Concord, NC.

Why "pleasantly surprised"? It's not simply that this film is beautifully done, with all the bright colors of Indian culture vividly parading across the screen at a dazzling pace. It's not even just the hilarious, almost Monty-Python-esque narrators' dialogue. Nor is it the incredible soundtrack of Annette Hanshaw's 1920's-era tunes. Let's forget for a second that the story itself is a lovely one and is told here in a lovely way. I'm intrigued by the story behind the story.

Now, you can read for yourself the film's crazy history at the film's official website, http://sitasingstheblues.com. But the synopsis runs something like this: girl has cool, creative film vision; girl creates film to match her vision; girl runs smack dab into the ugly copyright culture's prohibitive approach to … everything; girl goes into more debt to get legally upright; girl then does something completely unorthodox — she gives her work away for free. Oh, and girl and film are arguably more popular now than they likely ever would have been under traditional distribution models.

As someone who makes his living writing (for the most part) free software — that is, software which itself costs nothing and for which the original source can be readily acquired and used and modified and redistributed by anyone who wants it — I constantly see the benefits of this permissive, sharing-oriented mindset. But it's been interesting to learn of Paley's own growing awareness, ultimate adoption, and now outright evangelism around the same permissive distribution model as applied to audiovisual works of art.

So if you find yourself looking for entertainment that's both fun and culturally educational (Sita… is a retelling of the epic Indian Ramayana tale), consider checking out this free showing of the film on January 20. For details, see the official showing information page at http://cabarrusartscouncil.org/news/?p=355. [Parents: It's been a few months since I saw the film, but I seem to recall that it had some elements that, in my family, at least, would earn it a PG-13 rating.]

The Internet is weird

WARNING: Some of the content linked from this post contains, shall we say, unnecessarily strong language.

Through a series of links traversed today, I was reminded of a cheesy rendition of a song I did some time ago (and posted on this blog). But it wasn't my song rendition that prompted me to write a blog post today. It was watching somebody I've never met lip-syncing to it that did the trick.

Man, the Internet is weird.

Dear Wal-mart, Welcome to the Digital Age

A week or so ago, I finally got my family to sit still in our living room long enough to snap a quick family photo for use on Christmas photo cards we planned to send out this year. After editing the image just a bit to fix some weird shadows, adjust the colors, and try to fake some depth, I called Amy up to inspect the results. She was pleased: "It looks good. It almost looks like a professional photograph." So, I uploaded the image to walmart.com, selected the photo card layout I wanted, and ordered a bunch of them. Here's the photo:

I got a call a couple of hours later from the local Wal-mart Photo Lab:

"Hello, Mr. Pilato?"

"Yes I am."

"We're sorry, but we can't print your photo cards unless you bring us a release form."

"But ... but ... I took the picture myself with my little Canon S410!"

"We've been looking at the picture for a while, and it really looks professionally done."

There ensued another few minutes of hassling here, some of which revealed that if our fireplace had been black instead of gold, it wouldn't have looked so much like a faux matte background. Finally, the Wal-mart employee gave up some critical ground:

"Mr. Pilato, if you could just make a release form giving yourself permission to print the image, we'll do it. We just have to cover ourselves. I'm sure you understand."

"Wait. You want me to what? You know what — nevermind. I'll do it. Thanks."

I hung up the phone, paused for a moment to verify that I wasn't dreaming all of this, and fired up OpenOffice Writer. The following is the release letter I took with me when I picked up the photo cards the next day:

Even though I find it completely ridiculous that I have to do such…

I, C. MICHAEL PILATO, do hereby grant unlimited printing release to MYSELF for the following:

One (1) photo of my own family (Mike, Amy, Gavin & Amy), taken by myself with my own Canon Powershot S410 Digital ELPH camera (serial number **********) in my own living room, with the camera set to use the 10-second shot timer while sitting on a 6-inch mini-tripod atop one of my TV stands, in front of my fireplace – which is gold even though my wife wants it to be black (because that's what the previous homeowners liked, we suppose) – and Photoshopped on my wife's computer to crop the original image, brighten the photo, adjust the colors a little bit, and fake some depth by slightly blurring everything in the image except the human subjects in the foreground.

This release is fully transferable by the above named FOR ANY REASON WHATSOEVER, and a copy of this document should be considered adequate proof of release.

Note for printer: While I am not a professional photographer, I am a pretty darned good image editor, and pride myself on making photos taken with a sub-professional, non-SLR camera look as if they were taken by more advanced equipment. However, if further information or verbal confirmation is needed per your company policy, please do not hesitate to call me at ***-***-****.

I guess this bit of sarcasm is on file somewhere at Wal-mart now, protecting them from the threat of a copyright-related lawsuit.

Control at Any Cost, Revisited

In Control At Any Cost: Copyright vs Christian Rock, I told the story of my school-of-hard-knocks introduction to the Internet, copyright, and the often ugly places where the two collide. Judging by the banner I saw today atop pwarchive.com — a popular Christian praise and worship music website — I'd say that not much has changed in the decade since those events occurred.

Pwarchive.com is a site similar in some ways to OLGA or the old CCM Guitar Music Archives, but much more technologically advanced. The site maintains a database of common Christian praise songs, and tracks separate bits of metadata about each song (such as its lyrics, chords, stanza information, etc.). You can hide or show each class of metadata independently of the others as you see fit, and — perhaps the handiest feature of all — you can even dynamically transpose those chords into arbitrary keys.

Pwarchive.com has — for as long as I've been aware of it, anyway — been sensitive to copyright matters. Many of the songs don't allow you see the lyrics at all, but instead display floating guitar chord names atop the spots where lyrics would have appeared. If you're familiar with such a song, that tends not to be much of a problem, especially since you can generally find the song's lyrics elsewhere online pretty easily. But I call out this fact about pwarchive.com to make a point: the folks running it appear to be genuinely trying behave within the bounds of current copyright law.

And so it was disappointing to me to find the following notice near the top of pwarchive.com's pages today:

Here's what that pink notice box says:

Notice
Pwarchive has been contacted by the Church Music Publishers Association and have been asked to remove all lyrics from the site due to copyrights. Over the next few days, work is going to be done to comply with this. Please join the mailing list for all future updates. Want to help?

Additional details on this matter can be found on the copyright page which will contain future updates. Sign the petition to as CMPA members to grant licenses to Pwarchive.

I'm well aware of many of the criticisms leveled at the so-called Christian music industry. I'm familiar also with the "Christian artists have to pay bills, too" defense of this type of pre-litigation action. And, as the fine folks over at QuestionCopyright.org can attest, notices of this sort are (unfortunately) common indications of "business as usual" in the Digital Age. Few — if any — industries are exempt from the complexities of copyright law and its enforcement.

But I struggle to understand what causes a mostly evangelical subculture to actually go out of its way to prevent the most widespread dissemination of its message possible today via the Internet. Why are Christian musicians giving up their rights to publishers like this? Or at least, why are they doing so in ways that permit those publishers to restrict the viral expansion of music and lyrics penned — if the artists themselves are to be believed — to honor God and reach others with Christ's story of sacrifice? Jesus' made some observations about the ultimate extent of true loyalty, found in Matthew 6:24 (and again in Luke 16:13): "No one can serve two masters. Either he will hate the one and love the other, or he will be devoted to the one and despise the other. You cannot serve both God and Money." Which master is being served here?

I signed the petition. If you, too, think the CMPA isn't doing "what Jesus would do", perhaps you'll sign it, too.