For those wondering about the approach that I have been using to compose the Sonatas (2019) for toy piano. I have been using this twelve-tone grid to generate the tones and rows. It may look like I randomly chose the pitch classes for each row at first glance. However, I created each row by applying the discrete trichord, or three-pitch class, cell of  (013). In keeping with the rules of twelve-tone serial composition, the sonatas that I am writing--which are actually sonata da camera in the Baroque sense, with "A" and "B" sections-- must adhere to the following:

- No octaves.

- Each tone of a given row must be used once before moving onto the next row.

- No repeated tones, except for motivic repetition.

I do, however, change things up to try and break the monotony of the music (Because, let me be honest. Twelve-tone music can grow boring fast: especially if composers use just one row for a piece or movement.).  I often include two different tone rows at the same time. Sometimes, I bend the rules a bit and move some of the tones of a given row out of order to try to avoid instances of octaves or repeated tones. This approach usually works for me when constructing intervals and chords. 

Concerning how to write these pieces, is it better to compose the music and precompositional grid (like the one above) by hand? Or, should composers rely on music notation software to complete their works? My answer is to try and apply both methods to this kind of composition. I would also suggest to write both by hand and with software when composing other types of pieces as well. Why? Writing music by hand, even if the music is just a fragment, can serve as a guide for what composers write in the notation software program (See photograph below). Of course, composers need to initially research the instrument for which they are writing to avoid committing errors with clefs and ranges. If a certain instrument does not exist in a music notation software, it helps to ask a musician when knows how to play the instrument instead of blindly guessing how to write for it. Remember that, before I started writing the toy piano sonatas, I had to conduct some research about the toy piano and its specifics. I write these pieces realizing that I do not have access to a toy piano or the actual sound of the instrument in music notation software. However, after studying the instrument, I also know that the music that I am composing for it will not include unplayable notes that are out of range.   

Last year, I hosted a Twitter music forum via Musochat dedicated to commissioning and collaboration etiquette and netiquette. While I and the participants mentioned several good key points to consider when working with  commissioners or musicians, I neglected to mention another related situation: specifically, one that people must avoid at all costs if they want to be perceived as the professionals that they are (or should be). I am talking, of course, about "ghosting." It is that one social media tactic guaranteed to enrage people both online and in reality.

What exactly is ghosting? Let me put it this way. Imagine if you had been conversing with someone online for one or several days, and that person suddenly disappeared. They just stopped talking to you, left and deleted their profile for what seemed like no reason at all. Then, when you tried to reconnect with that person who disappeared, you got blocked. That is ghosting. It often demonstrates severe immaturity, because it means that the person with whom you are are communicating (or trying to) refuses to act like an adult. Ghosting is commonly encountered in situations involving online dating and social media and is completely unacceptable in workplace environments.

What does ghosting have to do with commissioning new music and collaborations. Plenty, actually. In the forum last year, I posed the question of composers or commissioners should do if the person with whom they are collaborating has not responded to their messages or updates in over one week. To summarize, I mentioned that people need to send a gentle reminder instead of angry responses and publicly telling everyone online what a jerk the person is. Ghosting falls along these same lime. Like Internet "flame" messages, ghosting your commissioner of collaborator (or vice versa) also  comes off as unprofessional and immature. Remember that there are better, more tactful ways of declining projects than randomly leaving and deleting your contact information. If a currently commissioned piece or project is not working, then the composer and commissioner or collaborator need to work together and explain why the music does not work. More importantly, they need to create a solution to prevent future problems.     

    

Back in December last year, I released two posts where I briefly explained notation and performative problems associated with the Finale music notation software program. Some reader might remember how I talked how this program tends to jumble notes and dynamics together to create sloppy visual presentation. I also mentioned that Finale audio playback frequently (mis)interprets notes that are out of range as “playable” tones. Reflecting on these previous posts, I now realize that I forgot to discuss another crucial detail that deserves mention. That is, composers who use Finale must realize that the “Instrument List”—while expansive—still excludes many other musical instruments.

I first encountered this problem with Finale several years ago while working on my dissertation piece. At that time, I was writing music for folkloric instruments (the Puerto Rican cuatro and tiple), which were not included in the program. Determining how to create parts for these instruments and their notations also required contacting members of the ensemble that I was writing for so I could get their parts correct. That meant creating the parts in Finale from scratch and completely ignoring the audio playback in the program (because the cuatro and tiple used different sounding ranges).

That was back in 2015 and 2016. Flash forward to 2019, and I am faced the same compositional problems… albeit, with a different instrument. In February, I began composing a set of short sonatas for toy piano that apply Twelve-Tone Serialism (As some may have seen in my previous post, I just completed the third of what I hope will be five sonatas: at least, for now). The problem that I find with these pieces is not the compositional technique, however. The problem—or, problems—lie in the fact that Finale does not have a toy piano in their “Instrument List” in the “Setup Wizard” and “Window” sections. I had to briefly conduct some research on the toy piano and encountered the following:

• Toy pianos vary by the number of keys, which determine and affect their range: from 18 keys (small), to 36 keys (full).

 

• A full, 37-key toy piano has a range of F3 to F6.

 

• Toy pianos do not have foot pedals.

 
Taking these points into consideration, I chose to write for a full toy piano because of the larger range of keys. Composing for toy piano also means that the parts for both the right and left hands use a treble clef. Concerning Finale playback, I had to substitute a celesta for the sound of the toy piano because the other keyboards listed in the program did not even match. I say this to illustrate, once again, why composers should not rely heavily on Finale MIDI realizations of instrumental parts. I am writing these sonatas while also paying attention to the range of the toy piano. I also compose these pieces knowing full well that the substituted sound of the celesta will not do the sonatas justice because the celesta cannot truly replicate the sound of a toy piano. I understand that these pieces will have a different aural effect when performed by a human being. 

​​​(This video works best when viewed in the mobile version of YouTube. The "Desktop" version produces a white background in "Standard" mode, while the "Full Screen" mode uses a black background.)

Just when I thought that the problems with the YouTube copyright claim debacle were over, I encountered more obstacles. I contacted YouTube over the phone a few days ago to try and explain the situation with SGAE_CS: primarily, how the fake company has been falsely claiming copyrights against YouTube content creators for years. Instead, the phone number that I called led directly to the main office at Google (because Google owns YouTube). The irony is that the initial search results do not mention that part. To contact YouTube, people need to press "5." At that point, they will receive instructions telling them to contact YouTube Creator Support... via e-mail.   

Attempting to dispute a copyright claim against a company (even if they are fake) tends to do more harm than good. YouTube creators need to prepare themselves and research the claimed content before disputing it, because counter-claims can backfire and later be used against them if they do not. Copyright claim disputes involve a four-step process, which YouTube creators must carefully follow to avoid making mistakes. YouTube also provides examples at the outset for what they do not consider acceptable for disputing copyright claims. Owning a copy of the video, mentioning that the video is not not generating revenue and crediting the copyright owner do not qualify as valid reasons for disputing and resolving copyright problems (See screenshot below on the far-left).

The second step requires choosing the appropriate type of category to dispute. By this point, I found that I was unable to dispute the copyright claim. Why? After searching for the score to the Satie "Prelude en Tapisserie" on IMSLP, I noticed that it was not Public Domain in the United States. Even though Satie wrote the piece in 1906, it was published after 1923 (See last two screenshots). 

The only option left for me was to contact the publisher of the "Prelude en Tapisserie." i found that, by the 1950s, Rouart, Lerolle et Cie. was was sold to the Salabert music publishing company. That meant that I had to contact Salabert online (specifically, the "Copyright Manager") and inform them that SGAE_CS was claiming their copyright to music by Satie. I e-mailed them on Friday and expect a response from Salabert by sometime tomorrow in hopes that they can resolve the problem. 

​​(This video works best when viewed in the mobile version of YouTube. The "Desktop" version produces a white background in "Standard" mode, while the "Full Screen" mode uses a black background.)

Last week, I devoted a lot of time to discussing the absurdities surrounding copyright claims of classical music performances. Some readers might recall how I mentioned that I would need to go back and edit the piano recital video that featured the Satie Gnossienne No. 5 (which had been claimed by Naxos of America). True to my word, I used the Movie Maker film editing program last Friday to remove the segment of the recital video that initially caused the trouble. This process was necessary because, after I removed that track from YouTube, I still needed to fix the entire video because YouTube muted the majority of the Gnossienne No. 5 in my original video: an omission that became too obvious the more that I saw and heard it.

Fixing the video in Movie Maker meant applying the "Split" tool  to the original video. Doing this required locating good starting and ending points and deleting that segment from the video. I found this tool more practicable than the "Trim" tool, because "Trim" had the tendency to accomplish the opposite: deleting everything else from the video and leaving the problematic muted section that I needed to erase. I uploaded the fixed version of the video to YouTube, albeit with an additional disclaimer in the video description explaining why I had to delete the Satie Gnossienne No. 5. I also decided to keep the original on my channel because the recital involved years of practice and hard work. I was not planning on taking down that video, anyway.

I thought that I had resolved the problem by re-uploading the video without the claimed content. That was, until I received an e-mail message about my re-uploaded video about a half-hour later that same day.

At this point, I grew both frustrated and suspicious. I felt frustrated because I just spent time trying to fix the copyright claim problem, but I was also suspicious because I needed to know more about this "SGAE_CS" (I had seen their name before in a similar message that I received back in May after I removed the claimed piece from the original video.). Upon checking the detail, this company had claimed the rights to the Prelude en Tapisserie (another Satie piece that I performed on my recital). Out of curiosity, I Googled "SGAE_CS" and found that the they are a fake company that scams YouTubers by establishing false copyright claims. What is worse is that this scam has been happening for years to many YouTube content creators. I recently tweeted to YouTube about this problem, but they have yet to respond. It may be time for me to dispute a copyright claim against SGAE_CS. Just saying...

I did not intend to create a follow-up post concerning copyright rules on YouTube and classical music. However, after seeing my previous blog entry has been gaining a lot of attention, I feel that I must create another one. This decision is necessary because I realize that I neglected to mention a few significant points about copyright on YouTube. While I mentioned these points on other social media pages the other day, I wanted to be able to explain them here in a little more detail: specifically, for those who are not familiar with how YouTube and explains  copyright problems.

Let me begin by saying that the situation involving my student recital was not the first time that I encountered issues with copyright. In fact, I started getting copyright claims for videos of my piano performances that I uploaded to YouTube in 2010: the year that I launched my MoltoRubato88 channel. Other record labels claimed that they owned the copyright to music by Mozart and Grieg. However, I did not need to delete these videos from my channel. I decided to keep them and mark them as "Private."   

If a YouTuber has a copyright claim on a specific video on their channel, than the notification of that claim will appear in the "Videos" section of the YouTube Studio (YouTube Studio is currently still available as a beta version.). From there, the user can check the details concerning the copyright claim: who claims the music in question and possible options for monetizing the video. These options usually involve sharing the profits (accrued from advertisements on the video) with the copyright holder. Of course, monetizing videos on YouTube only works through establishing an advertising account from Google. With regard to the third screenshot shown above, a copyright claimed video on YouTube can still stay on a channel. What this means is that the video (in certain cases) cannot be monetized by a YouTuber on their channel, because the video was claimed by someone else.

It deserves mention that a copyright claim does not mean the same thing as a copyright strike. A copyright strike often caries more severe penalties for YouTubers, specifically for those who intentionally upload copyrighted materials to their channel without permission from the copyright holder(s). A copyright strike can often prevent a YouTuber from monetizing and live streaming videos on their channel. YouTube implements a "Three-Strike" policy in their "Community Guidelines." Three copyright strikes on a YouTube channel result in permanent negative effects: account termination, the removal of all uploaded videos on the affected channel and banishment from the YouTube community. In other words, while a copyright claim is frustrating and requires certain procedures to fix, it is not as damaging as having a copyright strike.