toddbishop
Platinum Member
...the fact that the book has a copyright still doesn't answer the question:
at what point does a drum piece go from:
"not sufficiently original to meet legal copyright requirements"
to
"sufficiently original to meet legal copyright requirements" ?
Vinnie can play things are no one else can, but I don't think he owns copyrights on any his out-of-this-world licks.
If there is a line, where is it?
There's no originality requirement with other music, so I don't know why there would be one with drum music. Certainly there are a million copyrighted blues, country, folk, and other genres of tunes that are nothing but variations on clichés. All they need to be is different enough in the specifics to not be a direct rip-off of another copyrighted work.
I guess if Vinnie wanted to copyright his licks, he would have to register them as stand-alone compositions, which seems like a very sketchy proposition, since he always uses them as part of an arrangement of a song, or part of a larger drum solo. A copyright on a lick as a two-second composition might not apply when the same lick is used as part of the recorded arrangement of a song. If he did copyright the musical content of a drum solo, the copyright would cover the whole thing, and probably substantial excerpts, not individual licks. As I understand it, anyway. For all I know someone has already tried and failed at copyrighting licks or enforcing a copyright on them.
It would be fascinating to know if Wilcoxon/Ludwig have ever indeed been paid for performances.
I guess if ASCAP collects from institutions for recital performances, they've probably gotten paid. I'm sure they've gotten paid mechanicals for other sound recordings.