Musician Archive
Thread: composing your own music
I remember from the first Fan Fest when the desire was expressed the devs pretty much said that it wouldn't happen because it can run into copyright issues.
Khristen wrote:I remember from the first Fan Fest when the desire was expressed the devs pretty much said that it wouldn't happen because it can run into copyright issues.
It seems to me that copyright wouldn't be an issue as noone is making or losing royalties out of this.
Sure - if you made a recording of a "performance" in game and tried to sell it you might have an issue.
In the UK a venue can buy a licence so that bands/artists can perform there, and perform covers of other peoples songs with no issues.
I think this might be worth revisiting with the devs, it would certainly bring new life to the profession.
Dark_0ne wrote:
Khristen wrote:I remember from the first Fan Fest when the desire was expressed the devs pretty much said that it wouldn't happen because it can run into copyright issues.
It seems to me that copyright wouldn't be an issue as noone is making or losing royalties out of this.
Sure - if you made a recording of a "performance" in game and tried to sell it you might have an issue.
In the UK a venue can buy a licence so that bands/artists can perform there, and perform covers of other peoples songs with no issues.
I think this might be worth revisiting with the devs, it would certainly bring new life to the profession.
The problem with copyright is a much larger issue.
Yes, site licenses are available for certain venues, however sites in cyberspace are not able to be licensed. Adding the ability to license for a "site" like a game involves developing a new royalty structure to these licenses and the revision of existing agreements with labels and artists. This process is not an easy one and is only done for large potential income such as revisions that were done in the past for public performances of videos being separate from movie theatres or the distribution of music electronically vs traditional retail sales.
Sony is a large copyright holder in many different media including the record industry. They cannot just do something that may be a copyright issue without seeing that if they do it, other developers may decide to do the same thing and abuse their rights on music.
Virtual community site licenses may be something that is developed in the future, but push for it will have to come from some large scale implementation that the copyright holders will see as a profit potential.
Fragpuppie Uber
Master Musician/Master Entertainer
Dark_0ne wrote:
Khristen wrote:
I remember from the first Fan Fest when the desire was expressed the devs pretty much said that it wouldn't happen because it can run into copyright issues.
It seems to me that copyright wouldn't be an issue as noone is making or losing royalties out of this.
Sure - if you made a recording of a "performance" in game and tried to sell it you might have an issue.
In the UK a venue can buy a licence so that bands/artists can perform there, and perform covers of other peoples songs with no issues.
I think this might be worth revisiting with the devs, it would certainly bring new life to the profession.
Someone creates "Wish You Were Here" by Pink Floyd in SWG. They run the macro, everyone says, "Oh cool, can you email the macro to me?"
Eventually, the person who has created this macro sees the potential for profit.
They run an Ebay auction for $1.00 to buy the song macro and they'll email it to you, or they offer it over their own site.
Does the artist have the right to demand royalties for these sales? They wrote the song originally, after all.
Conversely, let's say you write something using SOE's music tool. You play it in-game - and you build up an entire album's worth of material. Then you transcribe it and sell the music to some bands, so they can play it. Do you owe SOE money for your creation, because their game was used and was the inspiration for the songs? It's stated very clearly that everything in-game is the property of SOE, does that include songs generated by their theoretical music tool that let you create your album?
It's an issue that I think SOE is just smart to avoid. First of all, there's too little defined regarding these issues...and second, I do NOT want to be playing a Star Wars gameand seesome annoying bone-thin human female in hotpants dancing to some Britney Spears song and thinking they're clever.
Total musical freedom would be a very bad thing. Sure, you may think rockin' out with your Rodian playing Metallica is super sweet, but it doesn't fit into Star Wars at all.
lol and I wouldn't have dreamt of recreating pink floyd or metallica (although I see your point that a lot of people would), but I would have liked to have done something a little more creative than the current music system.
I just can't play some of the songs any more because I got so mind numbingly fed up with them the first time I did musician - still gotta love Funk !!!
:-D
Well, rumor has it we will soon be able to manipulate "blocks" of music, to allow for more creative freedom in creating "songs."
So stay tuned. No idea when that's happening, or if it's happening, but a Dev mentioned it to an online gaming site not long ago.
AT least some kind of midi composition would be great...
Phonelesscord wrote:
It would be alot better than the limited crap we have now. Endless bad recordings of a vamp, technically, its really not music, especially with the gaps between each phrase.
AT least some kind of midi composition would be great...
They get endless if you play them endlessly, yes hehe... How are they bad? I'd agree with the gaps and such, but those are hard to remove since it's still gonna be blocks of sound you put together.
The new thing is going to be like a visualized flourish macro... if you understand what i mean...
Ever used one of those simple music apps?
Where you see about 12 channels and oyu have all these samples at the bottom?
Drag a couple of samples here and there and click play...
You've got yourself a song...
The gaps are there because every flourish is a separated sound file, but i bet you knew that already. Imagine you have a band consisting of 4 band members playing...
With 4 different instruments, after every flourish it has to load up 4 sounds from each instrument and play them synchronized along with the other sounds... But i'm sure you knew that aswell...
I doubt the gaps can get fixed, maybe if they gave Star Wars Galaxies a new game engine that runs smoother than this EverQuest one...
Phonelesscord wrote:
It would be alot better than the limited crap we have now. Endless bad recordings of a vamp, technically, its really not music, especially with the gaps between each phrase.
AT least some kind of midi composition would be great...
I just noticed that you talked about midi, true, that'd be eliminating the gaps between the music loops, but it wouldn't sound star wars on everyone's or on anyone's machine... It would just sound like some synth-pop from the eighties...
And you havent noticed? Some of the sound's used in the songs are midi or synth (midi keyboard) Midi's can sound exactly like a piano, or mock alot of other instruments.