It’s that time of year again! I’ve just updated my marching band mini-site – head over and check out the new shows for 2014 at marching.alexyoder.net!
Category Archives: Marching Band
Ask the composer for sync rights? Why thank you!
Something happened a couple days ago that genuinely increased my level of hope for the human race. Someone from the Indiana State School Music Association contacted me because they wanted sync rights to a couple of my unpublished pieces which were being performed by marching bands this fall. For those that don’t know, sync rights include things like recording audio/video (at least I think so, although I’m no copyright expert, so don’t quote me). For the record, no one from that organization or any other state school music organization has ever contacted me about sync rights. I thought it was a nice gesture on their part, and it was obvious to me that they were trying to do the right thing. I told them how refreshing it was to see an organization doing something like this.
There is a pretty large debate going on right now about copyright law, who owns music, how it gets shared, who can do what with music, etc. For whatever reason, I’ve always been more interested in observing and analyzing all sides of these types of issues than actually forming opinions myself, so I often wondered what I’d think if something ever happened to me regarding my music and copyrighting. For example, I’ve never been active about finding video companies that record bands playing my music to stick them with a copyright violation for not getting sync rights, but there are some composers that do. This isn’t because I’m a spineless hermet, its because there is so much grey area surrounding copyright right now that I don’t feel the need to get involved in causing controversy. Its a very nebulous subject.
Either way, in the meantime, I think its great that organizations like ISSMA are trying to do their part to keep the composers happy. After all, we can’t keep track of every performing group in the world.
Marching time is here
I was thinking of that Charlie Brown tune “Christmas Time is Here” when I wrote the title to this post, and then I thought about how awful a movie that would be, and then I realized I’m too lazy to go back and change it even though I took the time to write the rest of this sentence……….are you still reading?
I’m headed up to Northwood High School in Nappanee tonight to meet with their new director (who happens to be a friend) Eric Criss about their fall marching show. I owe a lot to Eric for putting so much trust in me when we first started working together when he was at Columbia City. I’ve learned a lot from being able to essentially design their entire show (except for guard stuff) for 2 years. Its taught me about working with the strengths and weaknesses of small band programs. They didn’t march a drumline, for example, so I had to rely on the pit for a lot of the pulse and drive throughout the show (which they handled quite well at the performances I was able to catch).
Beyond that, I’m trying to get Carroll High School’s show finished as well. Right now I’m writing for three bands (possibly four) and several other bands are performing previous compositions of mine. At some point though, I think I’m going to have to set a limit on the number of shows I write. I worry about taking on too many clients and not doing my best work. I would say 5 to 8 would be the maximum amount I’d want to have. I want to be able to focus on my wind ensemble and other writing and not use up all of my ideas with marching band. Plus, I have some major problems with the direction of modern competitive marching band that I won’t go into right now.