Music publishing

Everyone who studies music and understands pitch, rhythm, and meter can write out music themselves if they have to. But music notation penmanship receives very little emphasis in musical training, in my experience. Whether the music is written by hand or using notation software, it is easy to make mistakes that make reading your music […]

“Wouldn’t that sound great on the [name your instrument]?” If you have picked up the habit of transcribing your favorite music for your instrument, then at some point you figured out how to get it into a readable format. During my college days, I kept an eye out for great staff paper. Composition was only

Let’s say you are a busy performer or college professor who has a knack for composing and arranging music. You have performed your own works or have friends and colleagues who have performed them. You know they are good; people have been asking you, “Can I buy that from you?” But maybe the parts are

We creative types have our specific talents. Some are good with words, some with melodies. Some take others’ work and make it useful to musicians who play other instruments. Some of us are introverts, and others gather their energies from being among other people. But whatever our strengths, a musician’s strongest need is for their

We musicians have it hard enough, with keeping our skills up, learning new notes for the next gig, making sure our instruments are in good working order, and dealing with the challenges of every new performance venue. We don’t need the aggravation of inadequate sheet music to read from. What goes into making a sheet

Whether you are a professional composer/arranger or a performing musician who does some composing and arranging on the side, you want to get your music played. But how does one do that? You need a publisher! But there are different kinds of publishers. Do you want to persuade an established publisher to sell your music,

Musicians are, in general, remarkably unaware of how copyright works. I can say that because, although I consider myself a fairly well-informed musician, I have learned a lot about copyright since I started my music publishing career.  Questions that I encounter: Q: If I wrote this arrangement of this copyrighted work, don’t I own the

Let’s say you have a new composition or arrangement and you have found a publisher who wants to publish your piece. It’s really good, and no one else has anything like it! You’re really excited about bringing your great music to musicians. What’s the next step?  Getting to yes: inside a publication agreement You and

“Wow, that was such a great concert!” Isn’t hearing that from audience members what we musicians live for? In the end, the musical experience that musicians bring to their audiences is the reason every one of us got into the music business. But getting there is a long story, with many threads. I love hearing

Music took hold of me at an early age. I remember my four-year-old self conducting the music playing on the record player with a Tinker Toy while standing on my little bathroom stool. When I was old enough to operate the record player, I played my parents’ small eclectic collection over and over. The trumpet