Genesis Tablature
Project Charter
Statement of Principles and Policies
Taken from the Rush Tablature Project Charter by Branden Robinson
Modified for the Genesis Tablature Project by Bryan McDonald
Ratified 29 April 1999
1.Mission Statement
The Genesis Tablature Project is an informal consortium of musicians dedicated to active
development of human-readable
transcriptions of the musical performances of the members of the English rock group
Genesis.
2.General Information
Many musicians, both amateur and professional, find it instructive to learn existing
pieces; particularly those they enjoy
listening to. In the absence of publicly available transcriptions of Genesis' music
endorsed by the band members, it falls
upon their fans to try to work out their parts for themselves. This is an inexact science
for a number of reasons.
The purpose of the Genesis Tablature Project is to create transcriptions, as authoritative
as can be, building consensus by
practicing musicians who are concerned about accurately reproducing the parts of the band
members. In the course of
this effort, and as a consequence, it is hoped that the tablature files generated by
theGenesis Tablature Project will be
considered authoritative and make their way to music and tablature archives around the
world.
The purpose of this document is to provide guidelines directing this endeavor.
3.Mailing List
To the above end, Bryan McDonald started a mailing list on April 29, 1999 to address the
absence of any organized effort on
the part of Genesis fans and musicians.
4.Web Site
The mailing list in turn spawned a web site, the Genesis Tablature Project, administered
by Bryan McDonald and activated
on April 29, 1999, to which, potentially, the whole world could turn to share in the
fruits of these labors.
5.Tablature Organization and Administration
Currently the Genesis Tablature Project archive is divided into three sections: guitar
tablatures, bass tablatures and drum
tablatures, to which keyboard tablatures would be added after the format of the tablature
is discussed among the members of the list.
To focus efforts on the large and ever-growing catalogue of Genesis music, each Genesis
song and instrument combination will
have a maintainer. A maintainer is a member of the mailing list who will, if necessary,
prepare existing tablature for the
parts of a Genesis song corresponding to a particular instrument (guitar, bass, drums or
keyboards) in a format
appropriate for the Project (see section 6, "Tablature Format") and be aware of
any discussion or suggestions made to
mailing list about the transcription for that song. The maintainer will then consider any
suggestions, and do one of three
things:
1.reject the suggestion as spurious
2.accept the suggestion, adding new information or replacing old information now judged to
be incorrect or
incomplete
3.agree to disagree, and include the suggestion in an appendix at or near the end of the
tablature file or in a separate
file
The maintainer should reject a suggestion if it consists of no worthwhile musical
information ("Phil usually grins at Mike
when he plays this part"), or if the information is in the maintainer's considered
opinion utterly incorrect ("an G5 chord in
the open position is the first chord in Firth of Fifth").
The maintainer should accept the suggestion if it is a clear improvement on older
information ("here's the solo to The Musical Box" when no solo was transcribed
before -- assuming the solo provided is not obviously bogus).
The maintainer should include the provided information, but not replace existing
information, when the suggestion has
merit but is still not quite, in the maintainer's considered opinion, correct. For
instance, if an enharmonic version of a riff
already tabbed is submitted, the maintainer may include the suggestion in an appendix,
located near the end of the
tablature file, or in a separate file also available at the web site. The maintainer may,
of course, swap the existing section
to the appendix and put the submitted version in the main section of the tab file if he or
she thinks this is appropriate.
In the event that hard visual evidence of how an appropriate member of Genesis plays a
particular part is available, that will
serve as a definitive "tie-breaker", and that method will be given preferred
status in a tablature file.
Maintainers are formally recognized by the mailing list and web site administrators and
will be listed in a file or HTML
document at the web site and/or in the FAQ for the mailing list. Maintainers may volunteer
for a particular song or group
of songs and will be duly appointed in the event of no contest. If more than one person
wishes to maintain a particular
song, it is suggested that the interested parties negotiate among themselves. If
necessary, a vote will be called on the
mailing list or (less likely) the mailing list or web site administrator will
dictatorially settle the issue. To date, no such
conflicts have arisen.
Maintainers are expected to stay abreast of the songs they have adopted as regards traffic
on the mailing list and any
formal publications of transcriptions. If a maintainer appears to have
"orphaned" one or more of his songs, it may be
reassigned. In the event of misconduct as regards the handling of their songs, maintainers
may also be impeached by the
members of the mailing list.
Formal procedures for many of the above activities have yet to be developed. It is hoped
that they will never become
necessary. In the presence of any great issues of contention among the members of the
Genesis Tablature Project, it will be
necessary for further formalize membership to permit voting through CGI at the web site.
6.Tablature Format
The following guidelines for submission of tablature files are mandatory:
1.Must be in raw ASCII format, utilizing no characters numbered above 127 decimal
2.Must have no more than 80 characters per line
3.Must have some indication of what song is being described
Most software has the above as defaults, so there is not much to worry about. The above
rules are to ensure viewability
of the files among the widest possible audience. Submissions that violate the above
guidelines may be rejected.
The following guidelines for submission of tablature files are recommended:
1.Use Unix-style line breaks (ASCII 10, or CTRL-J)
2.No tab characters (ASCII 9, or CTRL-I)
The above suggestions make life easier on the web site administrator, as he uses a
Unix-based system, and tab
characters are sometimes rendered differently on different systems, and could potentially
cause misalignment of the text.
Submissions that violate the above guidelines will be delayed getting into the archive, as
the administrator will have to edit
them by hand.
The actual representation of tab is highly variable due to software used and the
preferences of the person keying it in. As
such it is not advisable at this point to attempt to enforce some rigid standard of
tablature file format, as nice as that may
make the end result. Please see the guitar tablature FAQ by Howard Wright for some
pointers on writing understandable
tab.
That said, here are some suggestions from the web site administrator:
1.Have a header block at the top of the tab file similar to the following:
Genesis: The Battle of Epping Forest
From the album Selling Ebgland by the Pound (Atlantic Records)
Copyright 1973 Yellow Dog Music
Music & Lyrics by Genesis
It is important to identify the band and song in case the tablature file gets
re-distributed (which is what we hope).
The music copyright information is important as it acknowledges the author of the music in
question in a legal
sense.
Composition credits are interesting. It should be noted that for middle albums it may be
necessary to check labels
on vinyl for exact information (A Trick of the Tail to Abacab have songs written only by
one or two members).
If the song has a maintainer, a line will be added by the web site administrator
immediately after the header. For
example:
Comments/corrections to Sean Jones <seanj@execpc.com>
Transcription credits are important for acknowledging effort, but their inclusion is the
responsibility of the tab
submitter; the web site administrator will not have this information otherwise. It is
strongly suggested that only a
transcriber's name be included, and not that of any organization with which he or she may
be affiliated; we're
recognizing individuals, not colleges or companies.
The web site administrator is in the habit of generating his own header for
standardization purposes, which will
include the name of the group, the name of the song, the album on which the song can be
found, the record label,
the copyright information, and composition credits. If the song has a maintainer, that
information is provided also.
Any redundant information provided by the submitter is excised, but in no case is actual
musical data within the tab
file altered by the web site administrator without the express consent of the tab
submitter or maintainer.
2.After the header, get down to business and present the tab for the whole song
3.After the tab for the song, include an appendix that contains meritorious alternate
versions of riffs, if applicable. It
is also permissible to submit the appendix in a separate file of the same format as the
primary tablature file.
4.After the appendix (if present), include any relevant remarks or instructions not easily
included with the tab itself.
Discussions of effects used, variations in performance between studio and live versions,
acknowledgements of
weakness or uncertainty in parts of the tab, etc. are all appropriate here.
5.Finally, put the tab explanation -- most tab should be self-explanatory, so put the
explanation out of the way at the
end.
7.Legalese
Note that the following is a non-lawyer's perpspective. This is a layman's understanding
of the issues and thus
must not be construed as actual legal advice. I disclaim any liability for anything bad
that may happen to you
as a result of taking these interpretations as the gospel truth. If a Real Copyright
Lawyer would like to advise
me (pro bono) on these matters, please feel free.
Many people are under the impression that musical transcriptions unauthorized by the band
or its record company are an
infringment of copyright, and that those who create such transcriptions are susceptible to
legal attack from a Big Rich
Record Company.
In practice the situation is more complicated than that. If doing tabs is copyright
infringement (see below for clarification),
then the infringement is against the entity that holds the publishing rights to the songs,
not the company that owns the
copyright in the sound recording(s) that appear on CDs, cassettes and other media.
Typically, these are separate companies, which deal with copyright infringement
differently.
Record companies like EMI, Atlantic, Warner Brothers, etc., own copyrights in the sound
recordings of an act or artists
that not only already exist, but almost always the rights to any putative sound recordings
that might come into existence of
the act or artists while they are under contract to that record company. If you directly
duplicate/distribute without
permission a sound recording produced by the record company, that's "piracy"; if
you duplicate/distribute sound
recordings not held or released by the record company, say by gaining access to
"studio tapes", a recording of a concert
performance, or even a piece of music a musician did in his bedroom as a noodle, you're
"bootlegging". These are distinct
types of infringment, though record companies often conflate them in an effort to
manipulate public opinion. You'll notice
that when a musician under contract records with a musician on another label, the former
is usually credited as "appears
courtesy of Record Company". That's not just a "thank you", it reflects the
fact that the record company legally
sanctioned one of "their" artists to make music for another record company.
Publishing rights are something else entirely, which is one reason "covers" are
so commonplace. You don't generally, as
far as I know, need specific "permission" to perform a rendition of an existing
piece of music, but you must be prepared
to render what are known as "mechanical royalties" for that performance to the
publishing company in question. You'll
notice that the sisters(?) who wrote "Happy Birthday to You" still get credited
in movies and such where that song
appears. I believe that until fifty years after the death of the last surviving author,
such mechanical royalties, and certainly
citation of the copyright, are due. It's up to the publishing company to pursue
infringements of this nature; and in practice
for rock music, many (most?) artists own their own tiny little publishing company (Core
Music Publishing, Vomit God
Music, Flames of Albion Music, etc.) which holds the publishing rights -- and this is
usually completely separate from the
record company said artists may be under contract to. This is why in albums with lyric
sheets you almost always see
"lyrics reprinted by kind permission" or some similar disclaimer. The record
company actually has to have permission
from the publishing company, which they generally don't own, to reprint lyrics.
Sheet music, and hence tablature, falls under a similar restriction. In practice, musical
artists form mini-companies to hold
publishing rights because of what happened to the Beatles in the 1960's, before they
formed Apple. For Lennon,
McCartney, and Harrison's pre-1968 catalog, the band members (or a surviving widow) don't
hold the publishing rights,
because their record company sold the rights to their songs. So it became common practice,
to the irritation of the record
companies (who like to own "their" artists lock, stock, and barrel), for
musicians to form their own publishing companies
which retain the rights to their songs, in and of themselves.
EMI, I believe, is one of the few remaining holdouts, and for any act under contract to
them on whom they can bring
leverage to bear, they (not the artists' publishing company) hold the rights to the songs.
This is why EMI is in a position to
crack down on this terrible epidemic of freelance "tabbing" and song lyric
archiving. EMI holds the publishing rights for
the songs of most of their artists, and generally grant exclusive contracts to the other
kind of "publishing company", those
who actually print sheet music in paper form and sell it.
For almost all non-EMI popular music artists, it's up to the musicians' little publishing
company to bring suit against
freelance transcribers. The record companies have nothing to do with it. And in practice
most musicans (and even their
lawyers) have bigger things to worry about than guitar tab on the Internet. Many of them
may even (gasp!) quietly
condone the activity; if you're in it for the money, you don't become a musician; you go
to work for the record company.
On 2 January 1998, Joe White, a member of the Rush mailing list, passed along the fruits
of some legal legwork. Here,
in edited form, is what he had to say.
The Copyright Act of 1976 is title 17 of the United States Code.
According to Section 106, in which all paragraphs concern us, the owner of the copyright
has lots of rights (read the file).
Section 501 states that it is an infringement of copyright to violate any of the rights
stated in Section 106. That's the bad
news. Here's the good news:
Section 107 is the fair use section. It applies to the distribution of tabs and sound
files (derivitive works) as long as they
are used for educational purposes. Paragraph 4 is the important part (for us, anyway), as
we are not disturbing the
commercial potential of the product (Rush albums). Paragraph 1 is also important: we must
make sure that it is clear to
everybody that this archive (the RTP) is for educational pruposes only.
Section 108 is the archives and library section. Paragraph A states that it is not
infringement to make copies of derivitive
works for research, preservation, and archival reasons. But, it must be available to the
public (which the RTP is) or to
people specializing in the field (which it is).
In conclusion: we're not breaking the law.
8.Ratification and Amendment
This charter may be amended at any time by its author(s) for formatting, file format
(HTML, plain text), spelling or minor
grammatical errors. Any change with significant meaning, however, must be submitted to the
rush-tabs mailing list for
discussion. Discussion periods will last for two weeks following the submission, and
following that, if the amendment is
still a subject of significant disputation, a vote must be called. Amendments may be
withdrawn within the discussion
period, but any significant change in the meaning of the amendment will begin the
discussion period anew. Further, no
vote is necessary if no opposition to the amendment on the part of any maintainers is met;
in such a case the amendment
is automatically ratified at the end of the discussion period. All tablature maintainers
of that status as of the beginning of
the voting period possess the right to vote on amendments, and any amendment must be
ratified by a two-thirds
supermajority to pass. Furthermore, a maintainer participation of at least seventy-five
percent is required for the vote to
have validity. The same procedure governs the initial ratification of this charter in
toto.
Thanks to Branden Robinson <branden@ecn.purdue.edu> for the use of this charter.