Unix "awk" scripts are available that will take ChordPro files and create simple ASCII lyrics-plus-chords files as chordpro.utils in the /music/programs directory at mirrors of the Music Archives.
![[4 bars of Evensong]](graphics/evensong.gif)
Unix "awk" scripts are available that will take ChordPro files and create simple ASCII lyrics-plus-chords files as chordpro.utils in the /music/programs directory at mirrors of the Music Archives.
A web-based search engine and index for the On-Line Guitar Archive
(OLGA) anonymous ftp archive mirrors described
below.
A great way to access the OLGA FTP archive, which includes
an acoustic guitar archive. If you have no luck finding what
you're looking for via a queried search, try browsing the archive
instead, making particular note that there is a separate "acoustic"
directory. This site is hosted by the
wonderful folks who maintain Harmony-Central.
NOTE: EMI has expressed concern that OLGA infringes on copyrights. Many OLGA-related sites have been closed until the matter is resolved, including this site. See the OLGA section for more information.
(USA)
(Germany)
This is a forms-based search interface to the LEO Music Archive at
the University of Munich, which mirrors OLGA and the Music archives
(described below), and many other music resources. "LEO" stands for
"Link Everything Online," which gives you some idea of the breadth
of this archive. The LEO archives has a home page in both
German
and
English
describing the vast contents of the archive.
(USA)
NOTE: As of May 1996, Adam's files have been take off the web due to a threatened lawsuit from anonymous lawyers. Visit the site to find the latest news on the situation; we hope short-sighted publishers get a little more sense and allow this site to re-open.
(France)
(USA)
,
hosts tunings, tablature and chords for songs by David Wilcox,
many of them copied from posts to the David Wilcox list server.
Some Lyle Lovett songs are archived there, too.
To find
out about the server (and other Wilcox resources on the net), take a look
at
L. Clator Butler's Home Page .
He runs the Wilcox list server.
Tablature for Contemporary Christian Music (CCM) that features
guitar playing. Mostly electric guitar tablature, but a few acoustic
pieces as well (most notably a couple of Phil Keaggy instrumentals).
This site is currently offline while permissions are obtained for
tabs; it should reopen by summer of 1997.
This archive was originally known as
The Nevada Guitar Archives,
due to its location at the University of Nevada's anonymous ftp server, once
notorious for being hard to access. Fortunately, there are now a number of
mirrors around the world that make the resources of this huge archive
more accessible, and its new name (due to Adam Schneider) reflects its
purpose rather than its location.
The archive contains guitar music (chords or tablature)
for about 10,000 songs, and other guitar-related information, including some
lessons and software for a variety of platforms. The original archive
had a predominantly electric focus; but Dean Gaudet's Acoustic Guitar
Archive (described below) is now part of OLGA.
README files will guide your explorations and
provide information about submissions. I believe
The Music Archives (see below) mirrors this site pretty closely.
OLGA is maintained by
Cal Woods 
, a philosophy student at Trinity College, Dublin.
The best place for up-to-date OLGA information is the OLGA Home Page.
Please note that the OLGA sites are currently under legal attack by EMI. As of Spring 1996, many OLGA mirrors have denied access, not only to users, but also to the archivists. The future of the OLGA sites is obviously in jeopardy; the sites listed here may not be available. You can learn more about this controversy from the following sources:
OLGA at Nevada:
The original OLGA site at Nevada was closed in February 1996 as
a result of legal threats from EMI. In the hopes it may reopen, here's
how to find it.
The Nevada OLGA site is at
ftp.nevada.edu in
/pub/guitar ;
access is sometimes difficult, although it has improved greatly since
the introduction of mirror sites. You'll probably have more success using
the
Nevada archive gopher server 
.
OLGA Mirrors:
One of the most popular and accessible
USA OLGA mirrors is
AOL's OLGA Mirror
at mirrors.aol.com .
A more recent one boasting of speed is the
UTexas OLGA mirror.
An accessible European mirror is at
ftp.uu.net .
We've compiled a
list of OLGA mirrors here at
FolkBook;
Adam Schneider has compiled
another list
of OLGA mirrors with a nice graphical interface.
OLGA Search Engines:
Finally,
Guitar
Music Archive Search and
The Searchable LEO Music
Index
(both described above) provide web-capable
search engines for the various OLGA mirrors.
Pierre Aubert's Serveur de
Partitions Guitar Tablature is also
(apparently) a web-based OLGA mirror with a French-language interface
(some English, too), and a
search page .
You'll find even more information about OLGA at Doc's Guitarland OLGA page.
; if
you can't connect, try the OLGA mirrors listed above.
A README and Index file document the archive. You can reach Dean at
dgaudet@hotwired.com
.
. The
Music Archives Main Directory
(/pub/music/) is a general music
archive, containing lyrics, discographies, music, and other resources of
interest to musicians and lovers of music. Numerous
README files will guide your explorations and
provide information about submissions. This site, too, can be
hard to access. There is a
web search form that
lets you search the archive; e.g., you can type in a phrase from a song
and search for the song containing it.
(described above);
there is also
web access to this mirror ,
thanks to the folks at the LEO Archive.
(RMMGA)
and
text
formats.
and
rec.music.makers.guitar.tablature
Publishers monitor the reproduction of musical (and other) works, including reproduction on recorded media (CDs, cassettes, videos and other formats) and printed music. There are many music publishers; some with a particularly large and prominent clientele include Warner Publications, EMI, and Hal Leonard. The PROs are not publishers, and do not administer rights for the recorded or printed reproduction of music. The National Music Publishers' Association has established the Harry Fox Agency to act as a central clearinghouse and monitoring service for licensing musical copyrights. Their web site has a wealth of information about licensing copyrights both within and out of the US. For churches licensing music for worship, Christian Copyright Licensing International administers copyright licensing. Some publishers have web sites providing access to their catalog of published works, allowing you to check the copyright status of songs. See the list of publishers below.
The laws covering copyrights and performing rights appear complicated and subtle to non-lawyers (like the compilers of these web pages!); but the following online resources shed quite a bit of light on the issues of immediate relevance to songwriters and performing musicians. If you are interested in how these and other legal issues apply specifically to Internet media, you should visit the Cyberspace Law For Non-Lawyers site.
Works in the public domain can be performed and recorded without royalties. For information on Public Domain works, and a variety of other more general copyright information, visit PD Info: Public Domain Music.
Agencies in other countries that administer various performing, mechanical, and copyright rights include:
For some general background about PROs, see Everything You Wanted to Know About Music Performing Rights Organizations But Were Afraid to Ask!
See also "The Operating Dynamics Behind... The U.S. Performing Rights Societies," by Barry M. Massarsky (in HTML and ASCII text versions). For a more critical take, read guitarist/multi-instrumentalist Harvey Reid's ASCAP & BMI -- Protectors of Artists or Shadowy Thieves?.
Recently there seems to have been a lot of "negative energy" in the community of folk/acoustic musicians regarding PROs and how they serve the folk/acoustic community. There is good reason to hope the situation is not as bad as it has been made to appear, and that it may improve dramatically in the near future. PRO issues of direct relevance to folk/acoustic musicians are regularly discussed on the folk_music and FolkBiz list servers. Consult the digests for recent discussion. If you are looking for reasons for optimism, read this collection of posts from the folk_music/FolkBiz moderator, Alan Rowoth, and ASCAP's Assistant Vice President, Ron Sobel.
A similar document, specifically addressing legal concerns associated with digital distribution of recorded music (e.g., MP3), is Bob Kohn's Primer on the law of webcasting and digital music delivery.
Also, take a look at Terry Carroll's Copyright FAQ. It was regularly posted to the following newsgroups until 1993: misc.legal, misc.legal.computing, misc.int-property, comp.patents, misc.answeres, comp.answers, news.answers. It is lengthy but very informative, though it has not been significantly updated since 1994 (future updates are planned). If you have trouble accessing this site, here is a local copy in plain text format.
A useful document, "10 Big Myths About Copyright Explained" by Brad Templeton, regularly appears on the new Usenet users newsgroup. The version hosted here is from Spring of 1996.
The Songwriter Information page hosted by BMI contains links to various information of interest to songwriters wishing to copyright their work, including the following:
Stanford University's Copyright and Fair Use site is an electronic archive of information on copyright law focused particularly on issues related to interpretation of "fair use" of copyrighted material, on the Internet and elsewhere. The site contains the full text of court decisions, legislation and international copyright agreements, as well as related articles on the topic.
For definitive (though perhaps legalistic) information, check the United States Copyright Office at The Library of Congress (also here).
Copyright law; HTML provided by the Legal Information Institute:
The Writer's Guild of America provides a registration service that provides a record of when a work was completed. They accept lyrics. See their WGA Registration Services Page for more information.
Finally, the "Hit Me" Useful Pages site has information and links on copyright and trademark issues for musicians.
If your browser can display graphical background images, you may be wondering
what the music is that we used for a background for this page.
It's Phil Keaggy's "Evensong," from his 1978 instrumental release,
The Master and the Musician. You can find out more about
Phil Keaggy at
Way Back Home, the Phil Keaggy Home Page .
Tom Loredo
/
loredo@spacenet.tn.cornell.edu