Re: [Finale] Somewhat OT: How marked-up can/should rental parts be?
Blake Richardson wrote: On 22 Aug 2009 at 12:19, David Fenton wrote: What you get from New Yorkers is no nonsense, no chitchat, no false courtesy. As well as an amazing variety of profanity mixed in for good measure. I love generalizations. -- David H. Bailey dhbai...@davidbaileymusicstudio.com ___ Finale mailing list Finale@shsu.edu http://lists.shsu.edu/mailman/listinfo/finale
Re: [Finale] Somewhat OT: How marked-up can/should rental parts be?
On 21.08.2009 Daniel Wolf wrote: But the most immediate concern is that I just got a set of parts returned from a major European radio orchestra. They are completely marked-up, with bowings and much more. Should the orchestra have cleaned them up? Should I erase all of these marks, or should some of them be kept? Again, my calls to both publishers and librarians have been less than helpful. I get into this somewhat late, but I can tell you a little about this, since I hire parts for our orchestra on occasion: When we hire music, we usually get parts heavily marked up, often not even consistent. It can be a nuissance, but then we leave our markings in them as well. It is simply part of the process. As for prices, I find that they vary immensly from publisher to publisher. Personally I always prefer purchasing parts where possible, it quite often turns out to be cheaper. We just payed over 300 Euros for a complete set of opera parts, regardless of the fact that we only played three numbers out of the whole. One tiny Puccini Aria cost us 70 Euros with Riccordi. For that money I actually could have entered the music in Finale, yet copyright would have been a problem in this case. Personally I would, for a lot of the stuff we do, prefer digital parts which I can then print myself. It is simply the most flexible way to purchase orchestral music, and I am currently at work setting something like this up, although specialized in Facsimile parts of baroque and classical orchestral music. Johannes ___ Finale mailing list Finale@shsu.edu http://lists.shsu.edu/mailman/listinfo/finale
Re: [Finale] Somewhat OT: How marked-up can/should rental parts be?
On 22 Aug 2009 at 12:19, David Fenton wrote: What you get from New Yorkers is no nonsense, no chitchat, no false courtesy. As well as an amazing variety of profanity mixed in for good measure. ___ Finale mailing list Finale@shsu.edu http://lists.shsu.edu/mailman/listinfo/finale
Re: [Finale] Somewhat OT: How marked-up can/should rental parts be?
Blake Richardson wrote: On 22 Aug 2009 at 12:19, David Fenton wrote: What you get from New Yorkers is no nonsense, no chitchat, no false courtesy. As well as an amazing variety of profanity mixed in for good measure. Everyone needs a hobby. :) cd -- http://www.livejournal.com/users/dershem/# http://members.cox.net/dershem ___ Finale mailing list Finale@shsu.edu http://lists.shsu.edu/mailman/listinfo/finale
Re: [Finale] Somewhat OT: How marked-up can/should rental parts be?
And usually !...@#$ unoriginal. David, living there, may, like most NY'ers, become so used to it that it disappears. Noel Jones, AAGO 423 887-7594 noeljo...@usit.net www.thecatholichymnal.com Friends, life is short and we do not have much time to gladden the hearts of those who travel with us; so be swift to love and make haste to be kind. ___ Finale mailing list Finale@shsu.edu http://lists.shsu.edu/mailman/listinfo/finale
Re: [Finale] Somewhat OT: How marked-up can/should rental parts be?
On 23 Aug 2009 at 19:13, Blake Richardson wrote: On 22 Aug 2009 at 12:19, David Fenton wrote: What you get from New Yorkers is no nonsense, no chitchat, no false courtesy. As well as an amazing variety of profanity mixed in for good measure. Well, that entirely depends on which New Yorkers and the context. I honestly don't think New Yorkers swear any more than people anywhere else, if you account for context. -- David W. Fentonhttp://dfenton.com David Fenton Associates http://dfenton.com/DFA/ ___ Finale mailing list Finale@shsu.edu http://lists.shsu.edu/mailman/listinfo/finale
RE: [Finale] Somewhat OT: How marked-up can/should rental parts be?
Rental parts are nothing but a means to make life difficult for any conductor who wishes to use them. This is exactly why I don't publish my works; dealing with publishers and editors and even rentals is something I do not want to be a part of...ever. If people want to buy my works, they simply contact me and I have a set made. They are copyrighted and notarized, so those roads are covered. You should contact Music Theatre International (MTI.com) (a musical rental company) and find out what they charge for a school or professional company. They have a by-month rate for any musical they rent out, which does not include the rights. It's like an insurance company (how many people in the cast, how many seats in your theatre, how many shows are you doing)...and then maybe you can formulate your answer from there. Call them up and ask for their librarian or musicologist; the receptionist people don't like long explanations; they WILL hang up on you (part of the rude population of NYC). Patrick J. M. Sheehan Music Director, Instructor: Woodlawn Arts Academy P. S. Music Host: The Saturday Night Blues on 89.5 WNIJ-FM, 9pm - 12am (CST) WNIJ.org 1-815-973-2317 (m) 1-815-285-4401 (f) patricksheehanmu...@gmail.com -Original Message- From: Daniel Wolf [mailto:djw...@online.de] Sent: Thursday, August 20, 2009 5:44 PM To: finale@shsu.edu Subject: [Finale] Somewhat OT: How marked-up can/should rental parts be? I need some collective wisdom from the Finale list about a practical publishing matter. The modest publishing cooperative I belong to has recently begun renting sets of orchestral parts. I'm completely new to this and many of the trade practices are all very mysterious to me and my conversations with both publishers and orchestra librarians have been cryptic, at best. I feel a bit like I've been caught in an eternal cat and mouse game about who is responsible for what and on what terms. All I wanted to do was provide a good set of parts at the going rate, but neither a good set of parts nor a going rate seems to have a public standard. Pricing, of course, is kept quite undercover. (One publisher wrote to me that it would be illegal for him to disclose his prices, to which my copyright attorney of course immediately replied that there was no such law under any jurisdiction of which he was aware, and that it was simply a trade practice (what would be illegal, as a restraint in trade, would be a rate schedule drawn up collectively and secretly by a group of major publishers); a pair of orchestra librarians replied that they would love to see tables of rates, although it seems obvious to me that if the librarians are in communication with one another about this, they ought to be able to recreate tables themselves and thus assure themselves a better bargaining position vis a vis the publishers.) But the most immediate concern is that I just got a set of parts returned from a major European radio orchestra. They are completely marked-up, with bowings and much more. Should the orchestra have cleaned them up? Should I erase all of these marks, or should some of them be kept? Again, my calls to both publishers and librarians have been less than helpful. Many thanks in advance for your collective advice, Daniel Wolf ___ Finale mailing list Finale@shsu.edu http://lists.shsu.edu/mailman/listinfo/finale
RE: [Finale] Somewhat OT: How marked-up can/should rental parts be?
At 12:19 PM -0500 8/21/09, Patrick Sheehan wrote: You should contact Music Theatre International (MTI.com) (a musical rental company) and find out what they charge for a school or professional company. Or Rodgers Hammerstein Theatricals www.rnhtheatricals.com or Tams-Witmark ww.tams-witmark.com, the other two major licensing agencies for musical theater. They have a by-month rate for any musical they rent out, which does not include the rights. I'm not at all sure any of them will accept a contract that does not include performance royalties (which I assume is what you mean by rights), always payable up front. But all our dealings with them HAVE been for performances, so I might not be entirely up to date on this. I don't think, though, that you can get performance materials without scheduling and paying for performances, and the royalties ARE included in the contracts. It's like an insurance company (how many people in the cast, how many seats in your theatre, how many shows are you doing)...and then maybe you can formulate your answer from there. I'm not sure the number in the cast is part of the computation, since that differs for each show. It WILL control how many copies of the script/vocal score they provide in a standard rental. I'm looking right now at the RH homepage, and there are links for requesting (a) an amateur theater application, (b) a professional theater application, and (c) a perusal copy (which usually includes one script and one piano-vocal score). But Patrick's basic premise is correct: rental/performance fees vary according to a number of different parameters, and the only way to get a quote is to ask for a specific quote. That's what Grand Rights are all about. They have ABSOLUTE CONTROL and charge what the market will bear! One other thing the rental agencies try to do is reduce competition by not licensing performances of the same show within a certain time period in a certain geographical area. The summer we did Annie, we competed with a professional company and a semi-professional company in the area, and we got the rights because we were a totally non-professional community theater company (or so they told us). This summer we're doing Joseph the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat, and about the time we started rehearsals RH posted a notice that, For the foreseeable future, there will be no tours of JOSEPH in the U.S. and Canada. This means RH will now be able to license JOSEPH with an absolute minimum of restrictions. (Translation: the amateur productions are making them more money than the touring companies!) Call them up and ask for their librarian or musicologist; Musicologist??? You've got to be kidding! There should be such jobs for Ph.D graduates with literally no job prospects!!! And the librarians are not (generally) musicians and are incapable of answering any musical questions you might have! Nor are they interested in the slightest in getting errata lists or making any corrections in their parts, which would cost money, which means every new production is stuck with the same errors that every other production has tried to find and correct. And we all manage to miss a few. John -- John R. Howell, Assoc. Prof. of Music Virginia Tech Department of Music College of Liberal Arts Human Sciences Blacksburg, Virginia, U.S.A. 24061-0240 Vox (540) 231-8411 Fax (540) 231-5034 (mailto:john.how...@vt.edu) http://www.music.vt.edu/faculty/howell/howell.html We never play anything the same way once. Shelly Manne's definition of jazz musicians. ___ Finale mailing list Finale@shsu.edu http://lists.shsu.edu/mailman/listinfo/finale
RE: [Finale] Somewhat OT: How marked-up can/should rental parts be?
i seem to remember having come across catalogues online with rental prices but all the catalogues i saved back when looking at this same sort of thing are without rental prices listed... but maybe i am remembering having access to prices through a job i had in an arts library. i remember not seeing any example of parts costing more than 1000 (eur/usd) to rent. this price ceiling is what large-scale opera and some major orchestral works will cost. there can be 2nd performance (75%) and even 3rd performance (50%) discounts within a certain timeframe (a season?). mmm, i think the point at which sales become rentals is usually 15 performers: less = parts for sales, more = parts for rent. or maybe it was 10 performers... i know of one national music centre that waives rental fees if the composer requests this to be done for a particular group for economic or other reasons. for first performances i believe the rental fee is usually not charged. some ensembles/orchs will rent parts, receive the package, photocopy the material and their own markings made on the photocopies; when/if they play the piece again, they order/pay for the parts rental, leave the package unopened, perform from their copies and send the unopened package back after the performance. probably the best would be to speak to your friendly neighbourhood music librarian, they have no reason to not disclose the prices. you can also simply put in a pricing request for a number of works to any publisher who refuses to disclose prices to you another way. ___ Finale mailing list Finale@shsu.edu http://lists.shsu.edu/mailman/listinfo/finale
Re: [Finale] Somewhat OT: How marked-up can/should rental parts be?
also, i have never heard of clean up charges actually being applied, although i'm sure sometimes they are. i think the pricing is used to encourage the body renting the parts to return them free of markings under the threat of exorbitant clean up fees if the publisher has to do it. ___ Finale mailing list Finale@shsu.edu http://lists.shsu.edu/mailman/listinfo/finale
RE: [Finale] Somewhat OT: How marked-up can/should rental parts be?
--- On Fri, 8/21/09, Patrick Sheehan patricksheehanmu...@gmail.com wrote: Call them up and ask for their librarian or musicologist; the receptionist people don't like long explanations; they WILL hang up on you (part of the rude population of NYC). They have musicologists - tell me more. I'd love to find a job like that! -- Io la Musica son, ch'ai dolci accenti So far tranquillo ogni turbato core, Et or di nobil ira et or d'amore Poss'infiammar le più gelate menti. ___ Finale mailing list Finale@shsu.edu http://lists.shsu.edu/mailman/listinfo/finale
Re: [Finale] Somewhat OT: How marked-up can/should rental parts be?
On Aug 21, 2009, at 2:00 PM, shirling neueweise wrote: i remember not seeing any example of parts costing more than 1000 (eur/usd) to rent. this price ceiling is what large-scale opera and some major orchestral works will cost. there can be 2nd performance (75%) and even 3rd performance (50%) discounts within a certain timeframe (a season?). FWIW, Kallisti Music Press offers all orchestral parts for sale only, not for rental. We (I) do this partly to make it easy on conductors (take as long as you want for rehearsal, and repeat the performance as many times as you like) and to encourage repeated programming of the work, since it will be in the orchestra's library indefinitely. I charge for these parts roughly the same sort of price one would expect for rental, usually between $80 and $400 depending on the length and instrumentation of the piece. I have found that orchestras are so unused to this idea that they have sometimes returned the parts to me after the performance, on the assumption that they were rentals. I therefore now include a note with every parts set ordered, emphasizing that the parts are not rentals, and that if the orchestra does not wish to keep them, they should be donated to a school, library, or community orchestra. If any of you out there think this is a good deal, by all means get in touch! Andrew Stiller Kallisti Music Press http://www.kallistimusic.com/ ___ Finale mailing list Finale@shsu.edu http://lists.shsu.edu/mailman/listinfo/finale
RE: [Finale] Somewhat OT: How marked-up can/should rental parts be?
i remember not seeing any example of parts costing more than 1000 (eur/usd) to rent. this price ceiling is what large-scale opera and some major orchestral works will cost. there can be 2nd performance (75%) and even 3rd performance (50%) discounts within a certain timeframe (a season?). FWIW, Kallisti Music Press offers all orchestral parts for sale only, not for rental. We (I) do this partly to make it easy on conductors (take as long as you want for rehearsal, and repeat the performance as many times as you like) and to encourage repeated programming of the work, since it will be in the orchestra's library indefinitely. I charge for these parts roughly the same sort of price one would expect for rental, usually between $80 and $400 depending on the length and instrumentation of the piece. I have found that orchestras are so unused to this idea that they have sometimes returned the parts to me after the performance, on the assumption that they were rentals. I therefore now include a note with every parts set ordered, emphasizing that the parts are not rentals, and that if the orchestra does not wish to keep them, they should be donated to a school, library, or community orchestra. If any of you out there think this is a good deal, by all means get in touch! Andrew Stiller Kallisti Music Press http://www.kallistimusic.com/ I also offer my orchestral parts for sale only, mainly to encourage repeat performances. I also prefer the presentation value of freshly printed parts; after parts are used and shipped around a few times, they deteriorate quickly, as anyone who has rented orchestral music knows. Plus, I'm not eager to add the hassle of tracking rental parts to my to-do list. However, once volume passes a certain point, practical realities may make the rental model inevitable for us POD people. I'm not there yet, but it's a problem I wouldn't necessarily mind having. BTW, as an orchestral librarian I've rented a lot of music, and the publisher ALWAYS asks that the parts be erased before returning, but are virtually always completely marked up when initially delivered. Lee Actor Composer-in-Residence and Assistant Conductor, Palo Alto Philharmonic Assistant Conductor, Nova Vista Symphony http://www.leeactor.com ___ Finale mailing list Finale@shsu.edu http://lists.shsu.edu/mailman/listinfo/finale
Re: [Finale] Somewhat OT: How marked-up can/should rental parts be?
I'm not sure anyone is going to get any useful information about CONCERT music rates from a company specialising in GRAND RIGHTS, which typically run 2 to 4 times as much as concert rights, or even more. Rodgers and Ham charge way more than other companies, because they can. I would call ASCAP (SOCAN in Canada, or your country's local performance rights organisation) and ask them. At least they are interested in what you are doing with the info, which is more than I can say for MTI and their ilk. BTW, I totally concur with John's assessment of their staff. Christopher On Aug 21, 2009, at 2:00 PM, John Howell wrote: At 12:19 PM -0500 8/21/09, Patrick Sheehan wrote: You should contact Music Theatre International (MTI.com) (a musical rental company) and find out what they charge for a school or professional company. Or Rodgers Hammerstein Theatricals www.rnhtheatricals.com or Tams-Witmark ww.tams-witmark.com, the other two major licensing agencies for musical theater. They have a by-month rate for any musical they rent out, which does not include the rights. I'm not at all sure any of them will accept a contract that does not include performance royalties (which I assume is what you mean by rights), always payable up front. But all our dealings with them HAVE been for performances, so I might not be entirely up to date on this. I don't think, though, that you can get performance materials without scheduling and paying for performances, and the royalties ARE included in the contracts. It's like an insurance company (how many people in the cast, how many seats in your theatre, how many shows are you doing)...and then maybe you can formulate your answer from there. I'm not sure the number in the cast is part of the computation, since that differs for each show. It WILL control how many copies of the script/vocal score they provide in a standard rental. I'm looking right now at the RH homepage, and there are links for requesting (a) an amateur theater application, (b) a professional theater application, and (c) a perusal copy (which usually includes one script and one piano-vocal score). But Patrick's basic premise is correct: rental/performance fees vary according to a number of different parameters, and the only way to get a quote is to ask for a specific quote. That's what Grand Rights are all about. They have ABSOLUTE CONTROL and charge what the market will bear! One other thing the rental agencies try to do is reduce competition by not licensing performances of the same show within a certain time period in a certain geographical area. The summer we did Annie, we competed with a professional company and a semi- professional company in the area, and we got the rights because we were a totally non-professional community theater company (or so they told us). This summer we're doing Joseph the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat, and about the time we started rehearsals RH posted a notice that, For the foreseeable future, there will be no tours of JOSEPH in the U.S. and Canada. This means RH will now be able to license JOSEPH with an absolute minimum of restrictions. (Translation: the amateur productions are making them more money than the touring companies!) Call them up and ask for their librarian or musicologist; Musicologist??? You've got to be kidding! There should be such jobs for Ph.D graduates with literally no job prospects!!! And the librarians are not (generally) musicians and are incapable of answering any musical questions you might have! Nor are they interested in the slightest in getting errata lists or making any corrections in their parts, which would cost money, which means every new production is stuck with the same errors that every other production has tried to find and correct. And we all manage to miss a few. John ___ Finale mailing list Finale@shsu.edu http://lists.shsu.edu/mailman/listinfo/finale
Re: [Finale] Somewhat OT: How marked-up can/should rental parts be?
On 8/20/2009 6:43 PM, Daniel Wolf wrote: bargaining position vis a vis the publishers.) But the most immediate concern is that I just got a set of parts returned from a major European radio orchestra. They are completely marked-up, with bowings and much more. Should the orchestra have cleaned them up? Should I erase all of these marks, or should some of them be kept? It depends what your rental agreement says. When I rent music from publishers, the agreement usually stipulates that parts should be returned free of markings, and that a fee may be charged if they are not (to cover the publisher's time in erasing them). This implies that the publisher sends out clean parts, the renter marks them, uses them, and cleans them, and then sends back clean parts. In practice, just about all the rental parts I get arrive with lots of markings in them. I erase those markings, add my own, use the parts -- and then return them with my markings still in. The net effect on my time is the same: one cycle of marking and one of cleaning. I have never complained to a publisher about markings already in the parts, and I have never been charged by a publisher for leaving markings in. In part, this works because of what you suggest. It can actually save me time if parts arrive with bowings and such already in them, unless I have strong preferences for a different set of markings. But I never rent assuming that the parts will have usable markings. Sometimes a set arrives with half the parts marked one way and half another. Sometimes a set actually arrives clean! You as the publisher need to decide which way you want to handle this. And if your agreement states that parts should be returned clean, and you decide to hold renters to this, then you should also make sure that you send out the parts clean. Pricing is a whole other issue. You're right that none of the publishers like to talk about this directly. My experience has mostly been with renting music on behalf of small to medium sized dance and opera companies, and in general I assume that one way or another I will wind up paying about 10% of the potential gross of the concert for rentals and royalties. Aaron. ___ Finale mailing list Finale@shsu.edu http://lists.shsu.edu/mailman/listinfo/finale
Re: [Finale] Somewhat OT: How marked-up can/should rental parts be?
Daniel Wolf wrote: I need some collective wisdom from the Finale list about a practical publishing matter. The modest publishing cooperative I belong to has recently begun renting sets of orchestral parts. I'm completely new to this and many of the trade practices are all very mysterious to me and my conversations with both publishers and orchestra librarians have been cryptic, at best. I feel a bit like I've been caught in an eternal cat and mouse game about who is responsible for what and on what terms. All I wanted to do was provide a good set of parts at the going rate, but neither a good set of parts nor a going rate seems to have a public standard. Pricing, of course, is kept quite undercover. (One publisher wrote to me that it would be illegal for him to disclose his prices, to which my copyright attorney of course immediately replied that there was no such law under any jurisdiction of which he was aware, and that it was simply a trade practice (what would be illegal, as a restraint in trade, would be a rate schedule drawn up collectively and secretly by a group of major publishers); a pair of orchestra librarians replied that they would love to see tables of rates, although it seems obvious to me that if the librarians are in communication with one another about this, they ought to be able to recreate tables themselves and thus assure themselves a better bargaining position vis a vis the publishers.) But the most immediate concern is that I just got a set of parts returned from a major European radio orchestra. They are completely marked-up, with bowings and much more. Should the orchestra have cleaned them up? Should I erase all of these marks, or should some of them be kept? Again, my calls to both publishers and librarians have been less than helpful. Yes, the orchestra should have erased all the markings. However, since many people would use the same bowings, a lot of people leave them simply so the next people don't have to reinvent the wheel. Unfortunately it seems that groups who would use similar bowings seem to leapfrog over groups who would use different bowings. As the person controlling the material, only you can decide if you wish to erase all the marks, or only some of them. Which ones to leave would require a careful perusal of whether they make the most musical sense and so would simply be put back by the next group. When I was in school we used to rent parts to musicals, mostly from Tams-Witmark, with dire threats from the music teachers that we had to erase all our markings before the parts were handed in or we would be billed extra from Tams-Witmark. Of course, the first time we looked through the parts, all the markings the former groups hadn't erased were still there, so if Tams-Witmark did actually charge the unerased parts surcharge they didn't spend it on having the parts erased, they simply pocketed it as additional profit. Librarians can't really get together and come up with tables of rates because they're never charged the same for the same piece. So much is based on annual budget size of the orchestra, size of the concert hall, number of performances, so it remains as mysterious as airlines' pricing practices where you may be in a $99 seat while the person next to you is in a $250 seat for the same flight. There is no bargaining position for performers when it comes to renting music -- the copyright monopoly gives the publishers carte blanche to do what they feel like. The bargaining position is this You want to perform this music, you have to pay us $. And the only counter-bargaining position is Okay, we'll pay it. Or We won't pay that, we'll find another musical work to perform. And that's what I feel more and more groups should be doing -- there's a whole world of wonderful music being written which is just as good as the major-name warhorses which are locked up with publishers, and performers, when confronted with exorbitant prices for renting a specific piece should simply say No thank you, I'll find something else. If everybody did that the publishers would have to figure out a different way of doing business. But far too many performers want to perform specific works which forces them to pay whatever the publishers demand. If your orchestra is hell-bent on performing Appalachian Spring there's only one place to get that music and the publisher is not restricted by any law from charging whatever it wants. And you have to pay it if you're going to perform that piece. -- David H. Bailey dhbai...@davidbaileymusicstudio.com ___ Finale mailing list Finale@shsu.edu http://lists.shsu.edu/mailman/listinfo/finale
