Getting Arrangements Published

[TUbajohn20J]

I'm a student majoring in tuba performance. I LOVE playing and also enjoy arranging music particularly for marching bands. I arranged a hip hop piece for the band at my previous school that our dance line wanted to dance to during half time. That turned out very well, and my band director told me he's gotten multiple emails from other directors wanting to buy that piece of music. I have also written many other pieces for marching band that are just as good. I have no clue where to start on getting these arrangements published. Of course, they are not original songs but i just arranged them in my own way for band..so I figure I would need to get permission from the original artists before doing this. But where do I start? Nobody can seem to tell me or give me a straight forward answer. Thanks

[pgym]

Permission to arrange must be obtained from the copyright holder or his/her/their designated agent.

Start your search for rights holders at Harry Fox Agency.

[Tom]

Good suggestion to start with the folks at Harry Fox.

Make sure you're well versed in copyright law, too. If you're working with copyrighted music (and especially if it is POPULAR copyrighted music), the services of a copyright laywer could prove invaluable to you.

ASCAP also provides resources for this sort of thing. Canada, just FYI, has their own version of ASCAP, but Canadians are also eligible to use ASCAP.

You may, unfortunately, discover that it is more trouble than it is worth to do this.

Good luck!

[imperialbari]

You may, unfortunately, discover that it is more trouble than it is worth to do this.

This is the very core of the problem!

The copyright has its reasonable sides, and it sometimes goes absurd.

A Danish couple, both performers and composers, had their records issued at a company, which also had a music edition branch. Their standard contract gave the copyright of the printed version to their own edition. Problem was that this edition neither wanted to issue the music nor wanted to sell the copyright back to the composers, so that this music ended in a black hole printwise. This coupled had that much success that they simply made their own record company. This was back in the vinyl days, not in an era where everybody can produce a CD.

Klaus

[UTSAtuba]

Also, keep it on the down low if you've already arranged someone's work. Most publishers/copyright holders DO NOT like that. I have a few things I'm working to get published, but honestly, you're much much better off writing original work.

Quick story: I've been trying to get my brass quintet arrangement of a certain popular piece published. Anyways, a certain (big) publishing company will not give me rights unless I have a publisher on standby. All the publishing companies I've contacted WILL NOT publish anything unless I have the copyright permission.

Talk about a shitty situation. I'm stuck in this constant loophole. But, if you're willing to self-publish, then you have a MUCH better chance at getting published. Yet, that means, you have to do a lot of advertising (and printing), which isn't the worst thing in the world.

Joseph "ymmv"