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Composer

Composer

A composer is a person who writes music. The term refers particularly to someone who writes music in some type of musical notation, thus allowing others to perform the music. This distinguishes the composer from a musician who improvises. However, a person may be called a composer without creating music in documentary form, since not all musical genres rely on written notation. In this context, the composer is the originator of the music, and usually its first performer. Later performers then repeat the musical composition they have heard. The level of distinction between composers and other musicians also varies, which affects issues such as copyright and the deference given to individual interpretations of a particular piece of music. For example, in the development of classical music in Europe, the function of composing music initially had no greater importance than the function of performing music. The preservation of individual compositions received little attention, and musicians generally had no qualms about modifying compositions for performance. Over time, however, the written notation of the composer has come to be treated as strict instructions, from which performers should not deviate without good reason. This notion is often seen as a purist one. The term "composer" is often used specifically to mean a composer in the Western tradition of classical music. In popular and folk music, the composer is typically called a songwriter (since the music generally takes the form of a song.)

Lists of composers


- List of composers
- List of opera composers
- List of uncategorized composers
- List of soundtrack composers

By style, time period, or technique


- List of classical music composers
- List of 20th century classical composers
- List of 21st century classical composers
- List of modernist composers

By nationality, culture, or identity


- List of French composers
- List of Dutch and Flemish composers
- List of Indonesian composers
- List of Italian composers
- List of Russian composers
- List of Polish composers
- List of Indian composers
- List of female composers
- List of gay, lesbian or bisexual composers
- List of composers of African descent

By chronology


- [http://members.chello.nl/epzachte/Wikipedia/EasyTimeline/Introduction.htm Timeline of classical composers] Category:Classical music Composers Category:Occupations in music ko:작곡가 ja:作曲家 th:คีตกวี



Musical notation

Music notation is a system of writing for music. The term sheet music is used for written music to distinguish from audio recordings. In sheet music for ensembles, a score shows music for all players together, while parts contain only the music played by an individual musician. A score can be constructed (laboriously) from a complete set of parts and vice versa. Present day standard music notation is based on a five-line staff with symbols for each note showing duration and pitch in twelve tone equal temperament. Pitch is shown using the diatonic scale, with accidentals to allow notes on the chromatic scale, and duration is shown in beats and fractions of a beat.

Origins

There is some evidence that a kind of musical notation was practiced by the Egyptians from the 3rd millennium BC and by others in the Orient in ancient times. Ancient Greece had a sophisticated form of musical notation, which was in use from at least the 6th century BC until approximately the 4th century AD; many fragments of compositions using this notation survive. The notation consists of symbols placed above text syllables. An example of a complete composition — indeed the only surviving complete composition using this notation — is the Seikilos epitaph, which has been variously dated between the 2nd century BC to the 1st century AD. The Delphic Hymns, dated to the 2nd century BC, also use this notation, but they are not completely preserved (see photograph). Delphic Hymns Knowledge of the ancient Greek notation was lost around the time of the fall of the Roman Empire. Scholar and music theorist Isidore of Seville, writing in the early 7th century, famously remarked that it was impossible to notate music. By the middle of the 9th century, however, a form of notation began to develop in monasteries in Europe for Gregorian chant, using symbols known as neumes; the earliest surviving musical notation of this type is in the Musica disciplina of Aurelian of Réôme, from about 850. There are scattered survivals from the Iberian peninsula before this time of a type of notation known as Visigothic neumes, but its few surviving fragments have not yet been deciphered. Other types of notation date from the 10th century in China and Japan. In East Asia, as later in India and elsewhere in Asia, music was notated with the use of characters for sounds. Rhythmic motifs could also be prescribed in a similar way. In Europe, on the other hand, the foundations were laid for a purely symbolic notation of music, which does not seem to have been brought to existence anywhere else.

Standard notation described

Elements of the staff

A staff (in British English, also stave) is generally presented with a clef, which indicates the particular range of pitches encompassed by the staff. A treble clef placed at the beginning of a line of music indicates that the lowest line of the staff represents the note E above middle C, while the highest line represents the note F one octave higher. Other common clefs include the bass clef (second G below middle C to A below middle C), alto clef (F below middle C to G above middle C) and tenor clef (D below middle C to E above middle C). These last two clefs are examples of C clefs, in which the line pointed to by the clef should be interpreted as a middle C. In a similar fashion, the treble clef points to a G and the bass clef points to an F. In early music, the clef was written as a letter and its location on the staff was chosen by the writer. The treble clef and bass clef used today are stylized versions of the letters G and F, respectively. Their locations are now standardized. Unusual clefs are used for certain requirements, such as the low G clef used for classical guitar music and tenor parts in choral music. Following the clef, the key signature on a staff indicates the key of the piece by specifying certain notes to be held flat or sharp throughout the piece, unless otherwise indicated. The key signature is presented in the order of the circle of fifths, with flats B-E-A-D-G-C-F and sharps in the opposite order, F-C-G-D-A-E-B. Another common element of a staff is the time signature, which indicates the rhythmic characteristics of the piece. Time signatures generally consist of two numbers; the upper number indicates the number of beats per measure (or "bar"), while the lower indicates what sort of note constitutes a "beat". A time signature of 4/4 (also known as "common time" and sometimes indicated with a large "C" symbol) implies that there will be four beats per measure, with each beat constituting a quarter note. A signature of 2/2 (or "cut time", a "C" with a vertical slash) allows 2 beats per measure, with each half note lasting a beat. This is important, because the first beat of each bar is generally stressed. Less commonly, music that lacks rigid rhythmic organization is written without a time signature. Notes representing a pitch outside of the scope of the five line staff can be represented using leger lines, which provide a single note with additional lines and spaces. Octave (8va) notation is used, particularly for keyboard music, where notes are substantially above or below the staff. Multiple staves can be grouped together to form a staff system. A system is used where two staves are required to cover the range of the instrument (as with a keyboard instrument), or where multiple related instruments are played (as with three violin parts on a score). A score for ensemble music includes multiple systems, as does most organ music (where the pedals are written as a separate system). Various directions to the player regarding matters such as tempo and dynamics are added above or below the staff, often in Italian (sometimes abbreviated). For vocal music, lyrics are written. Here is a sample illustrating some common musical notation. :Italian :Image:Audiobutton.png Listen to this piece

Development of music notation

The earliest known music notation was encoded in cuneiform script in the region of Mesopotamia, with surviving examples dating as far back as the middle of the second millennium B.C.E. Later civilizations, most notably that of Ancient Greece, developed their own forms of notation, which were often written on sheets or scrolls of papyrus. The ancestors of modern symbolic music notation originated in the Catholic church, as monks developed methods to put plainchant (sacred songs) to paper. The earliest of these ancestral systems, from the 8th century, did not originally utilise a staff, and used neum (or neuma or pneuma), a system of dots and strokes that were placed above the text. Although capable of expressing considerable musical complexity, they could not exactly express pitch or time and served mainly as a reminder to one who already knew the tune, rather than a means by which one who had never heard the tune could sing it exactly at sight. To address the issue of exact pitch, a staff was introduced consisting originally of a single horizontal line, but this was progressively extended until a system of four parallel, horizontal lines was standardised on. The vertical positions of each mark on the staff indicated which pitch or pitches it represented (pitches were derived from a musical mode, or key). Although the 4-line staff has remained in use until the present day for plainchant, for other types of music, staffs with differing numbers of lines have been used at various times and places for various instruments. The modern system of a universal standard 5-line staff was first adopted in France, and became widely used by the 16th century (although the use of staffs with other numbers of lines was still widespread well into the 17th century). Because the neum system arose from the need to notate songs, exact timing was initially not a particular issue as the music would generally follow the natural rhythms of the Latin language. However, by the 10th century a system of representing up to four note lengths had been developed. These lengths were relative rather than absolute, and depended on the duration of the neighboring notes. It was not until the 14th century that something like the present system of fixed note lengths arose. Starting in the 15th century, vertical bar lines were used to divide the staff into sections. These did not initially divide the music into measures of equal length (as most music then featured far fewer regular rhythmic patterns than in later periods), but appear to have been introduced as an aid to the eye for "lining up" notes on different staves that were to be played or sung at the same time. The use of regular measures became commonplace by the end of the 17th century. It is worth noting that standard notation was originally developed for use with voice. Proponents of other systems claim that standard notation is less than ideally suited to instrumental music.

Symbols used in modern musical notation

See also: Da capo, Dal Segno, Coda, Fermata, Accent. Terms for note durations in American and British English: In U.S. parlance, semibreve and minim are used only in discussions of early music; whole note and half note are used in other contexts. The breve is rarely used in baroque and later eras. When it appears, it is written as oo or |O|.

Effects

According to Philip Tagg (1979, p.28-32) and Richard Middleton (1990, p.104-6) musicology and to a degree European-influenced musical practice suffer from a 'notational centricity', "a methodology slanted by the characteristics of notation." "Musicological methods tend to foreground those musical parameters which can be easily notated...they tend to neglect or have difficulty with parameters which are not easily notated", such as Fred Lerdahl. "Notation-centric training induces particular forms of listening, and these then tend to be applied to all sorts of music, appropriately or not." Notational centricity also encourages "reification: the score comes to be seen as 'the music', or perhaps the music in an ideal form."

Other notation systems

Figured bass

Figured bass notation originated in baroque basso continuo parts. It is also used extensively in accordion notation, and for jazz. For continuo and jazz parts, it implies improvisation by the performer; for accordion, it is used to notate the bass button to be used.

Shape note

The shape note system is found in some church hymnals, sheet music, and song books, especially in the American south. Instead of the customary elliptical note head, note heads of various shapes are used to show the position of the note on the major scale. Sacred Harp is one of the most popular tune books using shape notes.

Popular music

Fake books (and the Real Books) utilize standard notation, but with key signatures only on the beginning stave, for the melodic line with letter notation for chord names, chord symbols, written above. Improvisation is implied and this system is used for jazz and popular music. See Berklee College of Music.

Letter notation

The notes of the 12-tone scale can be written by their letter names, possibly with a trailing sharp or flat symbol. This is most often used when speaking about music or writing about it. Letter notation is used to identify chords. In both cases notes must be named for their diatonic functionality. Tonic Sol-fa is a type of notation using the initial letters of solfege.

Solfege

Solfege is a way of assigning syllables to names of the musical scale. In order, they are today: Do, Re, Mi, Fa, Sol, La, Ti, and Do (for the octave). Another common variations is: Do, Re, Mi, Fa, Sol, La, Si, Do. These functional names of the musical notes were introduced by Guido of Arezzo (c.991 – after 1033) using the beginning syllables of the six lines of the Latin hymn Ut queant laxis. The original sequence was Ut, Re, Mi, Fa, Sol, La. "Ut" became later "Do". See also: solfege, sargam

Numbered notation

The numbered musical notation system, better known as jianpu, meaning "simplified notation" in Chinese, is widely used among the Chinese people and probably some other Asian communities. Numbers 1 to 7 represent the seven notes of the diatonic major scale, and number 0 represents the musical rest. Dots above a note indicate octaves higher, and dots below indicate octaves lower. Underlines of a note or a rest shorten it, while dots and dashes after lengthen it. The system also makes use of many symbols from the standard notation, such as bar lines, time signatures, accidentals, tie and slur, and the expression markings.

Cipher notation

In many cultures, including Chinese, Indonesian and Indian (sargam), the "sheet music" consists primarily of the numbers, letters or native characters representing notes in order. Those different systems are collectively know as cipher notations. The numbered notation is an example, so are letter notation and solfege if written in musical sequence.

Braille music

Braille music is a complete, well developed, and internationally accepted musical notation system that has symbols and notational conventions quite independent of print music notation. It is linear in nature, similar to a printed language and different from the two-dimensional nature of standard printed music notation. To a degree Braille music resembles [http://www.musicmarkup.info/scope/markuplanguages.html musical markup languages] such as [http://emusician.com/ar/emusic_xml_music/ XML for Music] or NIFF. See Braille music.

Integer notation

In integer notation, or the integer model of pitch, all pitch classes and intervals between pitch classes are designated using the numbers 0 through 11, as in modulo 12. It is not used to notate music for performance, but is a common analytical and compositional tool when working with twelve tone, serial, or otherwise atonal music. Pitch classes can be notated in this way by assigning the number 0 to some note - C natural by convention - and assigning consecutive integers to consecutive semitones; so if 0 is C natural, 1 is C sharp, 2 is D natural and so on up to 11 which is B natural. The C above this is not 12, but 0 again (12-12=0). Thus the system represents complete octave equivalency. One advantage of this system is that it ignores the "spelling" of notes (B sharp, C natural and D double-flat are all 0) according to their diatonic functionality. Thus the system represents complete enharmonic equivalency. One drawback is that pitches, intervals, and simultaneities (chords) are all notated in the same manner. 4, for instance, indicates the arbitrarily decided fourth pitch (E, if C=0), or two pitches four semitones apart (such as 0 and 4 or 2 and 6). 024 indicates a simultaneity or succession (such as a melodic fragment) consisting of three notes, each a whole tone apart (for example, C, D and E, or G sharp, B flat and C) and the first and last a major third apart. This notation may be used to represent all traditional permutations of a tone row or set in a matrix. The integer model of pitch is one of the basis of atonal or set theoretical techniques in musical analysis, which now may include diatonic set theory and tonal music. It carries an added advantage in that one is able to prove many things, within limits, about pitch or pitches, and even tonal constructs. Like integers, pitches may be evenly spaced and ordered from lower to higher (lesser to greater for integers), while many things are not true of both integers and pitch.

Tablature

Tablature was first used in the Renaissance for lute music. A staff is used, but instead of pitch values, the fret or frets to be fingered are written instead. Rhythm is written separately and durations are relative and indicated by horizontal space between notes. In later periods, lute and guitar music was written with standard notation. Tablature was again used in the late 20th century and early 21st century for popular guitar music and other fretted instruments, being easy to transcribe and share over the internet in ASCII format. Websites like [http://www.olga.net/ OLGA.net] have archives of text-based popular music tablature.

Klavar notation

Klavar notation is a chromatic system of notation geared toward keyboard instruments, which inverts the usual "graph" of music: the pitches are indicated horizontally, with "staff" lines in twos and threes like the keyboard. and the time goes from top to bottom. A considerable body of repertoire has been transcribed to Klavar notation.

Graphic notation

The term 'graphic notation' refers to the contemporary use of non-traditional symbols and text to convey information about the performance of a piece of music. It is used for experimental music, which in many cases is difficult to transcribe in standard notation. Practitioners include Christian Wolff, Earle Brown, John Cage, Morton Feldman, Krzysztof Penderecki, Cornelius Cardew, and Roger Reynolds. See Notations, edited by John Cage and Alison Knowles, ISBN 0685148645.

Parsons code

Parsons code is used to encode music so that it can be easily searched. This style is designed to be used by individuals without any musical background.

Systems not based on the standard 12-tone scale

Other systems exist for non twelve tone equal temperament and non-Western music, such as the Indian svar lippi, along with other alternatives such as Ailler-Brennink. Some cultures use their own cipher notations for those music. In ancient Byzantium and Russia sacred music was notated with special 'hooks and banners' (see znamennoe singing).Sometimes the pitches of music written in just intonation are notated with the frequency ratios, while Ben Johnston has devised a system for representing just intonation with traditional western notation and the addition of accidentals which indicate the cents a pitch is to be lowered or raised.

Alternative Music Notations that Use Chromatic Staves

Over the past three centuries hundreds of music notation systems have been proposed as alternatives to standard western music notation. A large number of these notations seek to improve upon standard notation (SN) by using a "chromatic staff" in which each of the 12 pitch classes has its own unique place on the staff. These notations do not require the use of sharps, flats, natural signs, key signatures, or different clefs. They also represent interval relationships more consistently and accurately than standard notation. The Music Notation Modernization Association has a website with information on (and links to) many of these new notations (NNs). http://www.mnma.org

See also


- Guido of Arezzo
- Znamennoe singing
- List of musical topics
- Music theory
- Time unit box system
- Scorewriters (computer software tools for publishing sheet music).

Source


- Middleton, Richard (1990/2002). Studying Popular Music. Philadelphia: Open University Press. ISBN 0335152759.
  - Tagg, Philip (1979).

External links


- [http://tonalsoft.com/enc/index2.htm?notation.htm Tonalsoft Encyclopaedia of Tuning]
- [http://www.philtulga.com/counter.html On-line activity that counts musical notes!]
- [http://www.music-notation.info Musical notation links]
- [http://ww2.lafayette.edu/~gilbertn/British.html Glossary of US and British English musical terms]
- ko:기보법 ja:記譜法

Performance

A performance comprises an event in which generally one group of people (the performer or performers) behave in a particular way for another group of people (the viewer or viewers, or audience). Sometimes the dividing line between performer and audience may become blurred, as in the example of "participatory theatre" where audience members might get involved in the theatrical event. Examples of performance genres include:
- musical genres:
  - concert
  - opera
  - operetta
  - musical
- theatrical genres:
  - play
  - opera
  - operetta
  - ballet and other types of dance
  - musical
- other genres:
  - circus acts
  - performance art performance art Performances might take place daily, or at some other regular interval. Similar activities can take place in a religious or occult setting whereby the performance becomes a ritual. In a scientific setting, the carrying out of predetermined actions in a controlled environment becomes the performance (execution) of an experiment. A music performance (a concert or a recital) may take place indoors in a concert hall or outdoors in a field, and may require the audience to remain very quiet, or encourage them to sing and dance along with the music. In a street concert by one or more street musicians (or, in British English, buskers), often the public consists of people who happen to pass by. Such performers do not require payment, but do welcome it. See extended technique. Similarly other street artists may carry out street performances, e.g. performing acrobatics. The same applies in other public places. The word performance may also describe the way in which an actor(ess), or artiste in such a production performs. Or in a solo capacity; such as a mime artist, comedian, conjurer, etc. conjurer] Performance, as in What a performance! is also used sarcastically in reference to an individual's overwrought or excessive emotional outbursts. ---- In engineering, performance relates to measuring some output or behaviour. Techniques for [http://wiktionary.org/wiki/Transwiki:Monitoring monitoring] performance include:
- sampling
- logging
- taking snapshots
- testing Computing performance provides a case in point for engineering performance - see:
- performance testing
- performance tuning Performance, in a business context, a sub-set of engineering performance, refers to the activity of a unit (be it individual, team, department, or division) of an organization intended to accomplish some desired result.

See also


- performance management
- performance improvement
- performance problem
- heat pump and COP Category:disambiguation ja:演奏

Musician

A musician is a person who plays or composes music. Musicians can be classified by their role in creating music, usually by role or instrument:
- A singer (or vocalist) uses his or her voice as an instrument.
- An instrumentalist plays a musical instrument.
- Composers and songwriters write music.
- A conductor coordinates a musical ensemble. Musicians may also dance or produce choreography. The concept of the musician and the status of the musician in society is culture-specific. Think, for instance, about your own concepts relating to "the heavy metalist"; "the folk musician"; "the DJ"; "the sarangi player"; "the female drummer"; and so on. Musicians may also be distinguished as amateur or professional. Professional musicians may work freelance, contract with a studio or label, or may be employed by an institution such as a church or business such as a bar. An amateur musician is one who is not currently employed or gigging. Amateur musicians solely rely on having fun. Songs may be produced by some animals, including birds. Although many would surely debate whether birds are musicians, their ability to produce variations on the characteristic song of their species is a subject deserving more research (though relating less to music and more to animal communication). The freestyle chatter of even common birds, although lacking the complexity of methods employed by human beings, must be regarded as having some relation to the origins of music. Human beings did not begin producing music by banging away on a keyboard, nor are they the only creatures which respond to (or produce) rhythm and melody.

Types of musicians


- Singer (vocalist)
- Composer
- Conductor
  - Bassist (Double bassist)
  - Bassoonist
  - Bouzouki player
  - Cellist
  - Clarinetist
  - Drummer
  - Electronic musician
  - Flutist (Flautist)
  - Guitarist
  - Hornist (Horn player)
  - Keyboardist (Keyboard player)
  - Oboist
  - Organ grinder
  - Organist
  - Pianist
  - Percussionist
  - Recorder player
  - Saxophonist
  - Sitarist
  - Timpanist
  - Trombonist
  - Trumpeter (Trumpet player)
  - Tubist (Tuba player)
  - Turntablist (DJ)
  - Violinist
  - Violist (Viola player)
- Arranger
- Orchestrator
- Record producer

Usage note

It should be noted that although in many cases the name of the player is made from the name of the instrument + "ist", it does not work for all instruments. Trumpetist for example is nonsense. There are also widespread differences in the acceptability of some of these terms: for example percussionist is in general and uncontested use whereas violist is not. Suggested reading:
- A. P. Merriam, Anthropology of Music, 1964
- John Blacking, How Musical is Man?, 1973
- Sheila Whiteley, Music, Identity & Sexuality, London: Routledge 2000

External links


- [http://www.vagalume.com.br/ Lyrics and Chords for Musicians] by Vaga-Lume
- [http://godspocketforums.net/portal.php God's Pocket Forums]

See also


- List of musicians by genre
- Performer Category:Occupations in music ko:음악가 ja:音楽家

Musical genre

A music genre is a category (or genre) of pieces of music that share a certain style or "basic musical language" (van der Merwe 1989, p.3). Music can also be categorised by non-musical criteria such as geographical origin. Such categories are not strictly genre and a single geographical category will often include a number of different genre. Categorizing music, especially into finer genres or subgenres, can be difficult for newly emerging styles or for pieces of music that incorporate features of multiple genres. Attempts to pigeonhole particular musicians in a single genre are sometimes ill-founded as they may produce music in a variety of genres over time or even within a single piece. Some people feel that the categorization of music into genres is based more on commercial and marketing motives than musical criteria. John Zorn, for example, a musician whose work has covered a wide range of genres, wrote in Arcana: Musicians on Music that genres are tools used to "commodify and commercialize an artist's complex personal vision." Other artists feel that it is an artist's fault themselves if they make a body of work that can easily be put into a class shared with others. Some genre labels are quite vague, and may be contrived by critics; post-rock, for example, is a term devised and defined by Simon Reynolds. Another example of this is video game music, which while defined by its media, can also represent its own style, as well as that of any other musical genre. Dividing music by genre does make it easier to trace threads through music history, and makes it easier for individuals to find artists that they enjoy. music history]] Although there are many individual genres, it is possible to group these together into a number of overlapping major groupings. The rest of this page attempts to do that for a number of widely agreed areas. These definitions are relatively short and simple, referring to further articles as needed. See also: List of music genres, Genealogy of musical genres, :Category:Musical genres

Classical music (or art music)

The term classical music refers to a number of different, but related, genres. Without any qualification, the usual meaning of "classical music" in the English language is European classical music (an older usage describes specifically the Western art music of the Classical music era). It can also refer to the classical (or art) music of non-Western cultures such as Indian classical music or Chinese classical music. In a Western context, classical music is generally a classification covering music composed and performed by professionally trained artists. Classical music is a written tradition. It is composed and written using music notation, and as a rule is performed faithfully to the score. Art music is a term widely used to describe classical music and other serious forms of artistic musical expression, Western or non-Western, especially referring to serious music composed after 1950.

Gospel

Gospel is a genre that includes songs that have lyrics strong in religious terms, particularly Christian. Despite its religious context, gospel music is one of the most popular non-pop music genres. Even though Christian spirituals and hymns have existed for hundreds of years, gospel music didn't really come into being until the 1920s, when Thomas A. Dorsey recorded his first religious song, "If You See My Savior." Mahalia Jackson and the Soul Stirrers were major gospel acts of the 40s and 50s, which were also the years when gospel music became popularized. By this time, singers with gospel backgrounds became stars in the secular arena. These included: Elvis Presley, Jerry Lee Lewis, Ray Charles, Little Richard, and Sam Cooke (who was also a member of the Soul Stirrers). By the late 60s, a different type of gospel music called "Jesus music" was popularized by the youth, mostly among college students. Jesus music featured styles of white rock by such artists as Larry Norman. Andrae Crouch, however, was the most popular black gospel as well as mainstream artist of the 70s. By the late 70s and early 80s, Contemporary Christian Music had begun to replace black gospel music as the most popular style of gospel. Artists such as Amy Grant, Michael W. Smith, and Steven Curtis Chapman were artists that not only appealed to their Christian fans, but also found a mainstream audience. There has been is a revival of Southern Gospel Harmony and Family Groups such as The Freemans, The Staton's, The Crabb Family among others. Music that has quite a following, examples of Inspirational music was another popular type of gospel in the 1980s, led by artists like Sandi Patti and Dallas Holm, but it had largely been replaced by praise & worship in the 90s and 00s.

Jazz

Jazz is a musical form that grew out of a cross-fertilization of folk blues, ragtime, and European music, particularly band music. It has been called the first native art form to develop in the United States of America. The music has gone through a series of developments since its inception. In roughly chronological order they are Dixieland, swing/big band, bebop, hard bop, cool jazz, free jazz, jazz fusion and smooth jazz. Jazz is primarily an instrumental form of music. The instrument most closely associated with jazz may be the saxophone, followed closely by the trumpet. The trombone, piano, double bass, guitar and drums are also primary jazz instruments. The clarinet and banjo were often used, especially in the earlier styles of jazz. Although there have been many renowned jazz vocalists, and many of the most well-known jazz tunes have lyrics, the majority of well-known and influential jazz musicians and composers have been instrumentalists. During the time of its widest popularity, roughly 1920 to 1950, jazz and popular music had a very intimate connection. Popular songs drew upon jazz influences, and many jazz hits were reworkings of popular songs, or lyrics were written for jazz tunes in an attempt to create popular hits. The single most distinguishing characteristic of jazz is improvisation. Jazz also tends to utilize complex chord structures and an advanced sense of harmony. These characteristics in combination with the use of improvisation require a high degree of technical skill and musical knowledge from the performers. The art form today is a widely varied one, using influences from all of the past styles, although the root of modern jazz is primarily bebop. Modern jazz can also incorporate elements of electronica and hip-hop. Jazz was a direct influence on Rhythm and blues, and therefore a secondary influence on most later genres of popular music. Modern American art music composers have often used elements of jazz in their compositions.

Latin American

Latin American Music, music of Mexico, Central America, South America, and the Caribbean (see West Indies). The region of Latin America contains a rich variety of cultural and musical heritages, including those of lowland Native Americans in the Amazon River area and parts of Central America; those of highland Native Americans in Mexico, Guatemala, and the Andes; those of African Americans, especially in the Caribbean, Ecuador, Suriname, Guyana, French Guiana, coastal Venezuela, Colombia, and northeastern Brazil; and those of people of Spanish and Portuguese descent. Certain types of Latin American music represent fairly direct lines of continuity with the original cultural sources. Throughout the region there have been composers and musicians working in the European classical tradition since the colonial period (beginning about the 16th century), and there are also ballad, dance, and dance-drama traditions that can be traced directly from Europe. Various lowland and highland peoples maintain distinctive indigenous musical traditions, and African American populations continue to perform both sacred and secular music that is directly linked to specific West African and Central African traditions. The most prevalent musical styles in much of Latin America, however, are the result of various types and degrees of fusion of these different cultural heritages and musical resources.

Blues

Blues is a vocal and instrumental music form which emerged in the African-American community of the United States. Blues evolved from West African spirituals, work songs, field hollers, shouts and chants and has its earliest stylistic roots in West Africa. This musical form has been a major influence on later American and Western popular music, finding expression in ragtime, jazz, big bands, rhythm and blues, rock and roll and country music, as well as conventional pop songs and even modern classical music . Due to its powerful influence that spawned other major musical genres originating from America, blues can be regarded as the root of pop as well as American music.

Rhythm and blues

Rhythm and blues is a name for black popular music tradition. When speaking strictly of "rhythm 'n' blues", the term may refer to black pop-music from 1940s to 1960s that was not jazz nor blues but something more lightweight. The term "R&B" often refers to any contemporary black pop music. Early-1950s R&B music became popular with both black and white audiences, and popular records were often covered by white artists, leading to the development of rock and roll. A notable subgenre of rhythm 'n' blues was doo-wop, which put emphasis on polyphonic singing. In the early 1960s rhythm 'n' blues took influences from gospel and rock and roll and thus soul music was born. In the late 1960s, funk music started to evolve out of soul; by the 1970s funk had become its own subgenre that stressed complex, "funky" rhythm patterns and monotonistic compositions based on a riff or two. In the early to mid 1970s, hip hop music (also known as "rap") grew out of funk and reggae (see below). Funk and soul music evolved into contemporary R&B (no longer an acronym) in the 1980s, which cross-pollinated with hip-hop for the rest of the 20th century and into the 21st century.

Rock

Rock, in its broadest sense, can refer to almost all popular music recorded since the early 1950s. Its earliest form, rock and roll, arose from multiple genres in the late 1940s, most importantly jump blues. Although invented by Chuck Berry, it was first popularized by performers like Bill Haley, Buddy Holly, and Elvis Presley, who fused the sound with country music, resulting in rockabilly. In addition, gospel music and a related genre, R&B (rhythm and blues), emerged later in the decade. R&B soon became one of the most popular genres, with girl groups, garage rock and surf rock most popular in the US, while harder, more blues-oriented musicians became popular in the UK, which soon developed into British blues, merseybeat, mod and skiffle. Starting the mid-1960s, a group of British bands that played variations on American R&B-influenced blues became popular on both sides of the Atlantic -- the British Invasion, a catchall term for multiple genres. These groups, including the Beatles, fused the earlier sounds with Appalachian folk music, forming folk rock, as well as a variety of less-popular genres, including the singer-songwriter tradition. Early heavy metal and punk rock bands formed in this period, though these genres did not emerge as such for several years. The most popular genre of the British Invasion was psychedelic music, which slowly morphed into bluegrass-influenced jam bands like the Grateful Dead and ornate, classically-influenced progressive rock bands. Merseybeat and mod groups like The Yardbirds and The Who soon evolved into hard rock, which, in the early 1970s specialized into a gritty sound called glam rock, as well as a mostly underground phenomenon called power pop. In the early to mid-1970s, singer-songwriters and pop musicians led the charts, though punk rock and krautrock also developed, and some success was achieved by southern rock and roots rock performers, which fused modern techniques with a more traditionalist sound.

Country music

Country music is usually used to refer to honky tonk today. Emerging in the 1930s in the United States, honky tonk country was strongly influenced by the blues, as well as jug bands (which cannot be properly called honky tonk). In the 1950s, country achieved great mainstream success by adding elements of rock and roll; this was called rockabilly. In addition, Western swing added influences from Swing and bluegrass emerged as a largely underground phenomenon. Later in the decade, the Nashville sound, a highly polished form of country music, became very popular. In reaction to this, harder-edged, gritty musicians sprung up in Bakersfield, California, inventing the Bakersfield sound. Merle Haggard and similar artists brought the Bakersfield sound to mainstream audiences in the 1960s, while Nashville started churning out countrypolitan. During the 1970s, the most popular genre was outlaw country, a heavily rock-influenced style. The late 1980s saw the Urban Cowboys bring about an influx of pop-oriented stars during the 1990s. Modern bluegrass music has remained mostly traditional, though progressive bluegrass and close harmony groups do exist, and the sound is the primary basis for jam bands like the Grateful Dead .

Electronic music

Grateful Dead Electronic music started long before the invention of the synthesizer with the use of tape loops and analogue electronics in the 1950s and 1960s. Well known examples include the theme music to the TV series Doctor Who, recorded in 1963 by Delia Derbyshire and Dick Mills. Some subcategories of electronic music include electronic dance music, space, new age, ambient, and the catch-all "electronica," which can sometimes include all of the above electronic sub-genres, but usually refers to electronic music without lyrics. One of the first people to popularize the synthesizer was Wendy Carlos who performed classical music on the synthesizer on the recording Switched-On Bach. Space music was popularized by the group Tangerine Dream, among others, as a precursor to new age music. New age music served to support and perpetuate the values of the new age movement. Though there is some overlap between the various sub-genres of electronic music, Brian Eno, the creator of ambient music, claimed that ambient had a bit of "evil" in it, whereas new age music did not. Eno's creation was less values-driven than new age; his goal was to create music like wallpaper, insofar as the listener could listen to or easily ignore the music. Naturally, many people have met electronic music also in the form of video game music.

Electronic dance music

Although many artists in the 50s and 60s created pure electronic music with pop structures, fully formed electronic dance music as we know it today really emerged in 1977 with Giorgio Moroder's From Here to Eternity album. There are now many subgenres of electronic music, these include: techno (mechanical sounding dance music featuring little melody and more noise), trance music (with a distinct style of instrumentation focused on complex, uplifting chord progressions and melodies), Goa trance (spawning from industrial music and tribal dance, focusing on creating psychedelic sound effects within the songs), house music (fully electronic disco music), big beat (using older drum loops and more melodic elements sampled and looped), drum and bass (an offshoot of hardcore and Jamaican dancehall, utilizing quick tempos with sampled break beats, most notably the amen break and the funky drummer), gabber or gabba, (a Dutch development on techno, which features extremely high tempos and lots of overdrive and distortion on the music, especially the base drum being distorted into a square wave tone), happy hardcore (a slightly more palatable version of Gabba, fusing elements of drum and bass as well), synthpop (features strong pop songwriting/melodies with roots in 1980's dance music), and electro. Of these subgenres, trance and house are probably the most widespread. Electronic dance music is often composed to fit easily into a live DJ set.

Electronica

Electronic music that does not fall into the new age, techno or dance categories are often referred to as "left-field" or "electronica" (although there are critics who maintain that the term "electronica" is an invention of the media). Styles of electronica include ambient, downtempo, illbient and trip-hop (among countless others, see list of electronic music genres), which are all related in that they usually rely more on their atmospheric qualities than electronic dance music, and make use of slower, more subtle tempos, sometimes excluding rhythm completely. IDM (an abbreviation for intelligent dance music) is an elusive and confusing genre classification that can only be truly defined by flagbearers and flagburners like Aphex Twin and Autechre. All electronic music owes at least its historical existence to early pioneers of tape experiments known as musique concrète, such as John Cage, Pierre Schaeffer and Karlheinz Stockhausen, as well as early synthesists like Wendy Carlos, Jean-Michel Jarre, and Morton Subotnick . (See electronic art music).

Melodic music

Melodic music is a term that covers various genres of non-classical music which are primarily characterised by the dominance of a single strong melody line. Rhythm, tempo and beat are subordinate to the melody line or tune, which is generally easily memorable, and followed without great difficulty. Melodic music is found in all parts of the world, overlapping many genres, and may be performed by a singer or orchestra, or a combination of the two. In the west, melodic music has developed largely from folk song sources, and been heavily influenced by classical music in its development and orchestration. In many areas the border line between classical and melodic popular music is imprecise. Opera is generally considered to be a classical form. The lighter operetta is considered borderline, whilst stage and film musicals and musical comedy are firmly placed in the popular melodic category. The reasons for much of this are largely historical. Other major categories of melodic music include music hall and vaudeville, which, along with the ballad, grew out of European folk music. Orchestral dance music developed from localised forms such as the jig, polka and waltz, but with the admixture of Latin American, negro blues and ragtime influences, it diversified into countless sub-genres such as big band, cabaret and Swing. More specialised forms of melodic music include military music, religious music. Also video game music is often melodic. Traditional pop music overlaps a number of these categories: big band music and musical comedy, for example, are closely allied to traditional pop.

Reggae, dub, and related forms

In Jamaica during the 1950s, American R&B was most popular, though mento (a form of folk music) was more common in rural areas. A fusion of the two styles, along with soca and other genres, formed ska, an extremely popular form of music intended for dancing. In the 1960s, reggae and dub emerged from ska and American rock and roll. Starting the late 1960s, a rock-influenced form of music began developing -- this was called rocksteady. With some folk influences (both Jamaican and American), and the growing urban popularity of the Rastafari movement, rocksteady evolved into what is now known as roots reggae. In the 1970s, a style called Lovers rock became popular primarily in the United Kingdom by British performers of ballad-oriented reggae music. The 1970s also saw the emergence of Two Tone in Coventry, England, with bands fusing ska and punk, as well as covering original ska tracks. Punk band The Clash also used Dub and reggae elements. Dub emerged in Jamaica when sound system DJs began taking away the vocals from songs so that people could dance to the beat alone. Soon, pioneers like King Tubby and Lee Scratch Perry began adding new vocals over the old beats; the lyrics were rhythmic and rhyme-heavy. After the popularity of reggae died down in the early 1980s, derivatives of dub dominated the Jamaican charts. These included ragga and dancehall, both of which remained popular in Jamaica alone until the mainstream breakthrough of American gangsta rap (which evolved out of dub musicians like DJ Kool Herc moving to American cities). Ragga especially now has many devoted followers throughout the world. Reggaeton is a fusion of reggae and rap, popular in Latin America, but gradually appearing in the mainstream charts.

Punk music

Punk rock is a subgenre of rock music. The term "punk music" can only rarely be applied without any controversy. Perhaps the only bands always considered "punk" are the first wave of punk bands, such as The Clash, The Sex Pistols and the Ramones. Before this, however, a series of underground musicians helped define the music throughout the 1970s -- see Forerunners of punk music. Punk is often considered especially important for its "Do-it-yourself" philosophy. Many punk musicians encouraged their fans and audience members to learn to play instruments and form their own bands, and doing so was implicitly encouraged by the apparent simplicity of the music. Since punk bands were often ignored by major labels, the definitions of the many sub-genres, and the question of which groups belong in which sub-genres, is often a subject of heated debate. These "sub-genres" can be roughly grouped into four general styles -- hardcore punk, New Wave, post-punk and alternative rock. See those articles and their associated categories (look near the bottom of the article pages) for more information on the many punk sub-genres.

Hip hop / Rap

Hip hop music (also commonly referred to as "rap") can be seen as a subgenre of R&B tradition (see above). Hip hop culture, the movement from which the music came, began in inner cities in the US in the 1970s. The earliest recordings, from the late-1970s and early 1980s, are now referred to as old school hip hop. In the later part of the decade, regional styles developed. East Coast hip hop, based out of New York City, was by far the most popular as hip hop began to break into the mainstream. West Coast hip hop, based out of Los Angeles, was by far less popular until 1992, when Dr. Dre's The Chronic revolutionized the West Coast sound, using slow, stoned, lazy beats in what came to be called G Funk. Soon after, a host of other regional styles became popular, most notably Southern rap, based out of Atlanta and New Orleans, primarily. Atlanta-based performers like OutKast and Goodie Mob soon developed their own distinct sound, which came to be known as Dirty South. As hip hop became more popular in the mid-1990s, alternative hip hop gained in popularity among critics and long-time fans of the music. De La Soul's 3 Feet High and Rising (1989) was perhaps the first "alternative hip hop" blockbuster, and helped develop a specific style called jazz rap, characterized by the use of live instrumentation and/or jazz samples. Other less popular forms of hip hop include various non-American varieties; Japan, Britain, Mexico, Sweden, Finland, France, Germany, Italy and Turkey have vibrant hip hop communities. In Puerto Rico, a style called reggaeton is popular. Electro hip hop was invented in the 1980s, but is distinctly different from most old school hip hop (as is go go, another old style). Some other genres have been created by fusing hip hop with techno (trip hop) and heavy metal (rapcore). In the late 1980s, Miami's hip hop scene was characterized by bass-heavy grooves designed for dancing -- Miami bass music. Horrorcore, or Acid Rap is mainly credited to Detroit and the Midwest. There are also rappers with Christian themes in the lyrics -- this is Christian hip hop. Perhaps the most recent development in hip hop is the Backpacker sub-genre. Charachterized by a renewed focus on poetry and Hip Hop Culture, it includes artists such as Sage Francis, Atmosphere, and Eyedea and Abilities.

Contemporary African music

Since the 1960s, most African popular music incorporates traditional local vocal, instrumental, and percussive styles, but also draws heavily on rock, reggae, and/or hip hop. For example raï, which originated in Algeria and spread throughout North Africa and to the North African diaspora, especially in France, began with topical songs based in the local traditional music, but, starting around 1980, began to incorporate elements of hip hop. Other notable contemporary African genres include Zulu jive (South Africa), highlife (Ghana) and in Nigeria jùjú music (now nearly a century old, and constantly evolving) and Afrobeat. Many African countries have also developed their own versions of reggae and hip hop.

Subjectivity

One of the problems, though, with the grouping of music in to genres and genres in general is that it is a subjective process that has a lot to do with the individual's personal understanding and way of listening to music. This is especially true in sub-genres. One example is the band Green Day. They can be called punk, and they could also be called pop.

References


- van der Merwe, Peter (1989). Origins of the Popular Style: The Antecedents of Twentieth-Century Popular Music. Oxford: Clarendon Press. ISBN 0193161214. Category:Musical genres Category:Genres

Copyright

:For copyright issues in relation to Wikipedia itself, see Wikipedia:Copyrights. Copyright (symbol ©) is a set of exclusive rights granted by government for a limited time to regulate the use of a particular form, way or manner in which an idea or information is expressed. Copyright may subsist in a wide range of creative or artistic forms or "works" and subject matter other than works. These include literary works, movies, musical works, sound recordings, paintings, photographs, software, live performances, television or sound broadcasts and in some jurisdictions industrial designs. Copyright is a type of intellectual property; designs or industrial designs may be a separate or overlapping form of intellectual property in some jurisdictions. industrial designs Copyright law only covers the particular form or manner in which ideas or information have been manifested, the "form of material expression". It is not designed or intended to cover the actual idea, concepts, facts, styles or techniques which may be embodied in or represented by the copyright work. Copyright law provides scope for satirical or interpretive works which themselves may be copyright. For example, the copyright which subsists in relation to a Mickey Mouse cartoon prohibits unauthorised parties from distributing copies of the cartoon or creating derivative works which copy or mimic Disney’s particular talking mouse, but does not prohibit the creation of artistic works about talking mice in general. Other forms of intellectual property may impose legal restrictions where copyright does not.

History of copyright

:Main article: History of copyright Authors, patrons, and owners of works throughout the ages have tried to direct and control how copies of such works could be used once disseminated to others. Mozart's patron, Baroness von Waldstätten, allowed his compositions to be freely performed, while Handel's patron (George I, the first of the Hanoverian kings) jealously guarded "Water Music." Access control was always used as a measure to disallow works from being copied without the consent of the author/owner. The Library of Alexandria (a.k.a. “The Kings Library”) was not a place that an average person could walk into and borrow a book from. Ptolemy III paid the sum of fifteen talents of silver to be allowed to copy the works of Aeschylus, Sophocles and Euripides. Two major developments in the 14th and 15th centuries seem to have provoked the development of modern copyright. First, the expansion of mercantilist trade in major European cities and the appearance of the secular university helped produce an educated bourgeois class interested in the information of the day. This helped spur the emergence of a “public sphere,” which was increasingly served by entrepreneurial “stationers” who would produce copies of books on demand. Second, Gutenberg's development of movable type and the development and spread of the printing press made mass reproduction of printed works quick and cheap. Before these two developments, the process of copying a work could be nearly as labor intensive and expensive as creating the original, and was largely relegated to monastic scribes. It appears publishers, rather than authors, were the first to seek restrictions on copying printed works. Given that publishers now obtain the copyright from the authors as a condition of mass reproduction of a work, one of the criticisms of the current system is that it benefits publishers more than it does authors. This is a chief argument of the proponents of peer-to-peer file sharing systems. While governments had previously granted monopoly rights to publishers to sell printed works, the modern concept of copyright originated in 1710 with the British Statute of Anne. This statute first accorded exclusive rights to authors rather than publishers, and it included protections for consumers of printed work ensuring that publishers could not control their use after sale. It also limited the duration of such exclusive rights to 28 years, after which all works would pass into the public domain. The Berne Convention for the Protection of Literary and Artistic Works of 1886 first established the recognition of copyrights between sovereign nations (copyrights were also provided by the Universal Copyright Convention of 1952, but today this agreement is largely only of historical interest). Under the Berne convention, copyrights for creative works generally are not granted, but rather automatically assumed; an author does not have to "register" or "apply for" a copyright. As soon as a work is "fixed", that is, written or recorded on some physical medium, its author is automatically entitled to all exclusive rights to the work and any derivative works unless and until the author explicitly disclaims them, or until the copyright expires.

United Kingdom copyright methodology

:Main article: Copyright law of the United Kingdom English law states that an individual's work is placed under copyright law as soon as it leaves that person's mind and is placed in some physical form, be it a painting, a musical work written in manuscript or an architectural schematic. Once in physical form, as long as it is an original work (in the sense of not having been copied from an existing work, rather than in the sense of being novel or unique), copyright in that work is automatically vested in (i.e. owned by) the person who put the concept into material form. There may be exceptions to this rule, depending on the nature of the work, whether it was created in the course of employment and the purposes for which the work was created. Evidentiary issues may arise if the person who authored a work has only their word to prove that the work is original and their own work. The author of an unpublished manuscript or little-known publication, which is remarkably similar to a popular novel, will have an uphill battle convincing a court that the popular novel infringes the copyright in their obscure work. Taking some precautionary steps may help to establish independent creation and authorship. For example, when a web designer designs a webpage (based upon his own work) under a contract for services, the webmaster owns the copyright in at least the underlying code of that website. A common and simple practice to obtain evidence in favour of authorship is to place the copyright material in a envelope or package together with a document signed by several people stating that they have examined the work prior to it being sealed and that in their opinion it is original. Once this is done the package is mailed to the owner by recorded delivery, which helps to establish when the work was created, who the originator of the work is and that there are signatory validators prepared to state that it is original. Once this process is complete the package and contents may be able to be used in a court of law as evidence if necessary.

United States copyright law

:Main article: United States copyright law Article I, Section 8 of the Constitution for the United States gives the United States Congress the power “to promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts, by securing for limited Times to Authors and Inventors the exclusive Right to their respective Writings and Discoveries.” Congress first exercised this power with the enactment of the Copyright Act of 1790, and has changed and updated statutory copyright law multiple times since. The Copyright Act of 1976, though it has been modified since its enactment, forms the basis of copyright law in the United States today.
- Title 17, U.S.C., Section 105, witholds copyright protection from all publications produced by the United States Government, and its agents or employees while in their employment. The specific language is as follows:
- "Copyright protection under this title is not available for any work of the United States Government, but the United States Government is not precluded from receiving and holding copyrights transferred to it by assignment, bequest, or otherwise."
- However, nothing in the law prohibits the United States Government from limiting commercial access to any work produced under 17USC105, and there are specific prohibitions against automatic access to work otherwise covered under 17USC105 for commercial purposes.

Obtaining and enforcing copyright

Typically, a work must meet minimal standards of originality in order to qualify for copyright, and the copyright expires after a set period of time (some jurisdictions may allow this to be extended). Different countries impose different tests, although generally the requirements are low; in the United Kingdom there has to be some 'skill, originality and work' which has gone into it. However, even fairly trivial amounts of these qualities are sufficient for determining whether a particular act of copying constitutes an infringement of the author's original expression. In Australia, it has been held that a single word is insufficient to comprise a copyright work. In the United States, copyright has relatively recently been made automatic, which has had the effect of making it more like a property right. Thus, as with property, a copyright need not be granted or obtained through official registration with the government. Once an idea has been reduced to material form, for example by securing it in a fixed medium (such as a drawing, sheet music, photograph, a videotape or a letter), the copyright holder is entitled to enforce his or her exclusive rights. However, while a copyright need not be officially registered for the copyright owner to begin exercising his exclusive rights, registration of works (where the laws of that jurisdiction provide for registration) does have its benefits: serving as prima facie evidence of a valid copyright and enabling the copyright holder to seek statutory damages and attorney's fees (whereas in the USA, for instance, registering after an infringement only enables one to receive actual damages and lost profits). The original holder of the copyright may be the employer of the actual author rather than the author himself if the work is a "work for hire". Again, this principle is widespread; in English law the Copyright Designs and Patents Act 1988 provides that where a work in which copyright subsists is made by an employee in the course of that employment, the copyright is automatically assigned to the employer. Copyrights are generally enforced by the holder in a civil law court, but there are also criminal infringement statutes. Criminal sanctions are generally aimed at serious counterfeiting activity, but may now become more commonplace as the copyright collectives like the RIAA are more and more targeting the file sharing home Internet user. Thus far however, these cases have usually been settled outside of court, with demands of payment of several thousand dollars accompanied by nothing more than a threat to sue the file sharer, thus such cases do not even make it to civil law courts in reality. Absence of the copyright symbol does not mean that the work is not covered by copyright.

Copyright notices

In some jurisdictions, in order to obtain a copyright when a work such as a book or movie is created the work generally should contain a copyright notice. This notice is comprised by a letter c inside a circle (i.e., ©), or the word "copyright", followed by the year(s) of the copyright and the name of the copyright holder. Certain alternative formats were permitted for certain types of works. A copyright notice serves to inform any potential users that the work is copyrighted. This requirement was generally the result of previous United States statutory requirements, but since 1989 in the U.S., the use of copyright notices has become optional. With the exception of a small number of countries which still require notices to be on works, this requirement is generally optional except for works which were originally created before the particular country became a member of the Berne Convention (the members of which are collectively known as the Berne Union). A copyright notice is no longer required for a work to be covered by copyright in jurisdictions which have acceded to the Berne Convention. In most jurisdictions a work may be copyrighted from the moment of its creation regardless of whether or not it bears a copyright notice. However, the existence of a copyright notice may make it easier to claim certain damages for infringement in legal proceedings, as a defendant may be presumed to have ignored the notice and intentionally infringed copyright. The symbol, ©, is Unicode symbol 00A9 in hexadecimal, and can be entered into (X)HTML as ©, ©, or ©

Year of copyright

The year(s) of copyright are listed after the © symbol. If the work has been modified (i.e., a new edition) and recopyrighted, there will be more than one year listed.

"All rights reserved"

The phrase, All rights reserved, was a formal notice that all rights granted under existing copyright law are retained by the copyright holder and that legal action may be taken against copyright infringement. It was provided as a result of the Buenos Aires Convention of 1910, which required some statement of reservation of rights to grant international coverage in all the countries that were signatory to that convention. While it is commonplace to see it, this notice is now superfluous, as every country that is a member of the Buenos Aires Convention is also a member of the Berne Convention, which requires copyright to be valid without any formality of notice. This phrase is sometimes still used even on some documents to which the original author does not retain all rights granted by copyright law, such as works released under a copyleft license. This is a habitual formality and is unlikely to have legal consequences.

The exclusive rights of the copyright holder

Several exclusive rights typically attach to the holder of a copyright:
- to produce copies or reproductions of the work and to sell those copies (including, typically, electronic copies)
- to import or export the work
- to create derivative works (adapt the work)
- to perform or display the work publicly
- to sell or assign these rights to others The phrase "exclusive right" means that only the copyright holder is free to exercise the attendant rights, and others are prohibited from doing them without the consent of the copyright holder. Copyright is often called a "negative right", as it serves to prohibit people (e.g. readers, viewers, or listeners) from doing something, rather than permit people (e.g. authors) to do something. In this way it is similar to the unregistered design right in English law and European law. There is however a critique which rejects this assertion as being based on a philosophical interpretation of copyright law as an entity, and is not universally shared. There is also debate on whether copyright should be considered a property right or a moral right. Many argue that copyright does not exist merely to restrict third parties from publishing ideas and information, and that defining copyright purely as a negative right is contrary to the public policy objective of encouraging authors to create new works and enrich the public domain. In the United States, the terms "copyright" and "patent" do not appear in the Constitution; they are merely the forms of exclusive rights that the American legislature is constitutionally empowered to secure to accomplish the stated purpose of promoting the progress of science and useful arts (e.g. according to Article I, Section 8, Clause 8: "Congress shall have Power [...] To promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts, by securing for limited Times to Authors and Inventors the exclusive Right to their respective Writings and Discoveries."). The right to adapt a work means to transform the way in which the work is expressed. Examples include developing a stage play or film script from a novel; translating a short story; and making an arrangement of a musical work.

Limits and exceptions to copyright

:Main article: Limitations and exceptions to copyright

Idea-expression dichotomy and the merger doctrine

:Main article: Idea-expression divide A copyright covers the expression of an idea, not the idea itself — this is called the idea/expression or fact/expression dichotomy. For example, if a book is written describing a new way to organize books in a library, a copyright does not prohibit a reader from freely using and describing that concept to others; it is only the particular expression of that process as originally described that is covered by copyright. One might be able to obtain a patent for the method, but that is a different area of law. Compilations of facts or data may also be copyrighted, but such a copyright is thin; it only applies to the particular selection and arrangement of the facts, not to the particular facts themselves. In some jurisdictions databases are expressly covered by statute. In some cases, ideas may be capable of intelligible expression in only one or a limited number of ways. Therefore even the expression in these circumstances is not covered. In the United States this is known as the merger doctrine, because the expression is considered to be inextricably merged with the idea. Merger is often pleaded as an affirmative defense to charges of infringement. That doctrine is not necessarily accepted in other jurisdictions.

The first-sale doctrine (exhaustion of rights)

:Main article: First-sale doctrine Copyright law does not restrict anyone from reselling legitimately obtained copies of copyrighted works, provided that those copies were originally produced by or with the permission of the copyright holder. It is therefore legal, for example, to resell a copyrighted book or CD. In the United States this is known as the first-sale doctrine, and was established by the courts to clarify the legality of reselling books in second-hand bookstores. Some countries may have parallel importation restrictions that allow the copyright holder of their licensee to control the aftermarket. This may mean for example that a copy of a book that does not infringe copyright in the country where it was printed does infringe copyright in a country into which it is imported for retailing. The first-sale doctrine is known as exhaustion of rights in other countries and is a principle which applies to other intellectual property rights. Of course, it may be wondered why the exclusive right to sell copies of one's work needs to be specifically provided for by law, as the sale of unauthorized copies necessarily means the copyright holder's exclusive right to produce such copies has been breached. In addition, copyright, in most cases, does not prohibit one from acts such as modifying, defacing, or destroying his or her own legitimately obtained copies of copyrighted works, so long as duplication is not involved. However, in countries that implement moral rights, a copyright holder can in some cases successfully prevent the mutilation or destruction of a work that is publicly visible.

Fair use and fair dealing

:Main articles: fair use and fair dealing Copyright does not prohibit all copying or replication. In the United States, the fair use doctrine, codified by the Copyright Act of 1976 as 17 U.S.C. Section 107, permits some copying and distribution. The statute does not clearly define fair use, but instead gives four non-exclusive factors to consider in a fair use analysis. In the United Kingdom and many other Commonwealth countries, a similar notion of fair dealing was established by the courts or through legislation. The concept is sometimes not well defined, however in Canada, private copying for personal use has been expressly permitted by statute since 1999. In Australia, the fair dealing exceptions under the Copyright Act 1968 (Cth) are a limited set of circumstances under which copyright material can be legally copied or adapted without the copyright holder's consent. Fair dealing uses are research and study; review and criticism; news reportage and the giving of professional advice (ie legal advice). Under current Australian law it is still a breach of copyright to copy, reproduce or adapt copyright material for personal or private use without permission from the copyright owner. Other technical exemptions from infringement may also apply, such as the temporary reproduction of a work in information technology. In the United States the AHRA (Audio Home Recording Act Codified in Section 10, 1992) prohibits action against consumers making noncommercial recordings of music, in return for royalties on both media and devices plus mandatory copy-control mechanisms on recorders. :Section 1008. Prohibition on certain infringement actions :No action may be brought under this title alleging infringement of copyright based on the manufacture, importation, or distribution of a digital audio recording device, a digital audio recording medium, an analog recording device, or an analog recording medium, or based on the noncommercial use by a consumer of such a device or medium for making digital musical recordings or analog musical recordings. Later acts amended US Copyright law so that making 10 copies or more is considered commercial, and the Digital Millennium Copyright Act effectively permits DRM (Digital Rights/Restrictions Management) to prevent manufacture, importation, or distribution of recording devices if the device bypasses an access or copy control. It is absolutely vital to remember that copyright regimes can differ greatly between countries. It would be dangerous to assume that an activity permitted by the laws of one country is necessarily permitted elsewhere.

Critiques

:Main article: Philosophy of copyright Critics of copyright as a whole fall broadly into two camps: Those who assert that the very concept of copyright has never been of net benefit to society, and has always served simply to enrich a few at the expense of creativity; and those who assert that the existing copyright regime must be reformed to maintain its relevance in the new Information society. Among the latter group, there are also some who continue to agree with copyright as a concept to grant authors rights, but feel that it "outlives its welcome" by granting copyright for too long, far beyond the lifetime of the author, and is therefore of little direct benefit to him or her. This is typically attributed to corporate lobbying. To most critics, the general problem is that the current (international) copyright system undermines its own goal (Boyle 1996, 142). The concepts of the public domain and the intrinsic freedom of information are necessary precepts for creators to be able to build on published expression. But these are gradually being eroded, as copyright terms are repeatedly extended to last beyond the lifetime of the audience which experienced and knows of the original work. Other copyright scholars believe that irrespective of contemporary advances in technology, copyright remains the fundamental way by which authors, sculptors, artists, musicians and others can fund the creation of new works, and that absent legal protection of their material interests, many valuable books and pieces of art would not be created. This interest is arguably served even by repeated extension of copyright terms to encompass multiple generations beyond the copyright holder's life, not only because many "authors" and copyright holders are corporations, but also because the right of an author's heirs to continue to profit from a copyrighted work may provide a substantial part of the incentive to create. Another effect of the repeated extension of copyright term is that current authors are shielded from competition from a wide public domain. By the time works currently enter the public domain, they almost always have become obsolete. The recent success of free software projects such as Linux, Mozilla Firefox, and the Apache web server has demonstrated that quality works can be created even in the absence of copyright-enforced monopoly rents[http://www2.cio.com/consultant/report2214.html]. Instead, these products use copyright to enforce their license terms, which are designed to ensure the free nature of the work, rather than securing exclusive rights for the holder for monetary gain; such a license is called a copyleft or free software license. Copyrighted works replicated onto digital media are easily and trivially copied via file sharing. Attempts to prevent this have been largely unsuccessful, and file sharing almost never results in severe consequences for the violators. Producers of copyrighted material often attribute losses in their sales to online copying, yet they generally cont