ASWEGO INDEPENDENT ARTIST

What a week, hell what a summer. I keep wanting to get to the blog but it seems that there are only 24 hours in a day. You see this indieman is more than an independent musician/songwriter.

We are kind of diversified here on the homestead in our independent endeavors. The better half has been tied up for days writing arrangements for a local singer that has a very limited vocal range. Trying to write an arrangement they can sing is most difficult. Plus the wife will have to accompany her performance on piano. Loads of fun. LOL

Summer property maintence continues and even increases as the rainy season starts. The album should be distrbuted online in a week or two. I have sold a few copies from the website but have given most away as promo’s. To be honest I just haven’t had time to do much there right now. I have been busy nearly everyday in the workshop making kazoos. The response to our kazoos has been great and I have been focusing most attention there as they are bringing in money now.

I have just finished a complete facelift of the website including the addition of the Homestead Store where we are selling our kazoos and other traditional folk instruments I make in the workshop. I do plan on adding a very nice selection of vintage vinyl to the store soon.

Gonna be a great day!
Butch

Our game plan right now is to get 100 kazoos made for sale at a folk festival in Georgia this fall. I do believe they will sell very well there. I may even sell an album or two. We have come to the conclusion that it’s important for us to blend online and real life marketing of out folk art items. There are a couple of other folk art projects on the workshop table that we believe people will like.

So lesson learned so far. Diversify your indepent endeavors to include a variety. Which ever endeavor rewards the most give it the most focus, but do not abandon the others. Let them build upon each. Most important, have patience and visualize exactly what you want.

Well I better get up and moving, sun will be up soon and I have a long day ahead. First get a kazoo shippped then put on my homestead maintenance hat and finish up a repair job on our water well. Then to the workshop and continue working on kazoos.

Well I went and did it again and got sidetracked. Looks like I may need to change the title of this blog to “Monthly” vice “Daily”. Sorry I got carried away reading “The Adventures of Mixerman” LOL which is a great book by the way. I really enjoyed it. Sorry again I get side tracked LOL!! So I just changed the name to THE ADVENTURES OF INDIEMAN and I will post as often as I can for anybody out there that is interested.

I got sidetracked this time with a large kazoo order that had to be filled ASAP. For a Ladies Group of the Daughters of the American Revolution in Sumpter SC that need them for a pagent the third week of August and need then to practice. They received them yesterday and were very happy. Plus looks like they will be ordering more, which is a very good thing. I shipped them Monday and immediately began to update the website. Now I get a chance to catch up here. LOL

Not much going on at all with the album, but then I have had little time to do any online promotion. I have given away a half dozen copies around town complimentary to at least get some local exposure. Each has a business card with all the website addresses and such. I have gotten some great feedback there. It seems that most everybody’s favorite song is “My Little Garden” LOL. Now that tells you something about people in their 50’s LOL. Everything is on track with ROUTENOTE to distribute the album to Amazon, Itunes and Emusic the last of August.

I have been invited to play at a Unitarian Universialist meeting in September and plan on taking a half dozen copies to leave on the table for a contribution to their guest speaker. I have performed for them before and found them to be a great bunch of people my age. Always an interesting discussions there. Once again business cards in each with all website addresses. You just never know what might work and since I only have around fifty cents or so in each it’s cheap advertising.
One thing I do know is I really need to identify my audience and focus there. My YouTube viewers that leave feedback and come back often are of such a wide variety it’s hard to tell. Now that I am caught up on kazoo orders I will have more time to work on this.

The same thing applies to the kazoo sales. I have got to get those promoted better. I am of the feeling that setting up a sales booth at Live Folk Festivals will be my best method of marketing the kazoos and CD’s. The wife and I have been discussing this and we are tent campers so we have all the camping gear to do it cheap! LOL Cheap is important when you are on Navy retirement pay. Right now the game plan is to get 100 kazoos ready to sell and 100 nice CD’s with printed labels, Jewel Cases and Printed Inserts. The ones I am selling now are in paper sleeves with Songlist inserts. Ah my kingdom for a planner/jointer and a label maker. LOL It would be nice to have some printed copies of “The Final Dance” eventually but that project seems to remain at the bottom of the list. As it has for a decade now.

Still haven’t done much in the studio but sit down and pick a wee bit just to relax. When you get burnt out nothing you can do but ride it out. At least it goes that way for me. I’m kind of easing back in LOL. I did hear an old traditional song the other day performed by Johnnie Cash that I have been messing around with and want to do for a Sunday Video. Maybe this weekend.

Well I’m not getting anything done running on and on. Next week the mowing cycle starts and will eat up two days. You guys have a great weekend and take care of each other.

Butch

Well it’s been quite a while since I updated the blog area of the website. So since it’s a nice afternoon and I finally got a chance to sit down I thought I would restart posting here. It has been quite a busy couple months and I got a lot done but also kinda neglected some other stuff like the blog. So let me start from the beginning for anyone wanting to try to sell an independent album. Or at least my daily journal of this experience. Now you have to remember this album is on a strict budget. Thanks to somebody in Washington our mad money went south a year ago. Anyway I won’t get started on that one. This first CD budget is for 50 copies. This includes shipping materials, and shipping cost. I finished 20 copies today with printed song list inserts and such.

But I guess I should go back a couple weeks to the the studio and putting the final mix on each song in relation to each other on the album. One rule I learned is to never, ever think you are going to take 9 songs that were recorded over a period of a year and believe this is gonna be an easy task. I did and man was I wrong. I figured the songs were pretty good in the YouTube mixes and should only take a wee bit of tweeking and sure as hell need no re-recording. Just sit at the computer with a cup of coffee and engineer quietly and calmly. Eat donuts and mix the greatest master ever. That worked for the first day on the first couple songs. Then the song from hell came up on the work list. I just needed to redo the vocal, everything else was just fine. LOL
That was until the vocal was redone.

In no short time I was back in the recording mode again redoing this and that. Trying to find the mic I used on this song and losing this track on another song. Fustrating to say the least and my recording notes sucked. I had pretty good project files for mix set ups but gear was another subject. I had no idea of settings on stuff like my preamp, eq, or processor. But that was back then and now I use a old fashioned notebook and pencil with an eraser. Works fine.

So what I thought would be a weekend job turned into a month cause I was trying to keep a new Sunday Video up and run the online sales stuff more. Then on top of that rainy season arrived and my work outside on the homestead triples. My plate was really too full to focus on the album like I was gonna have to. Something would have to give or screw the album. One of those back up six and punt feelings!

Well I will pick this up tomorrow. Got stuff to do and the sun’s going down.
later,
Butch

This is a great forum discussion that I thought would be interesting for the blog this week.

QUESTION
I use a vst (mpl1) and pushtec (90’s) in the master fader. Where should I set the master fader for volume, I have been putting at 6.9. I have read some other stuff, so I’m a little confused. I thought if I put it at 6.9 and no clipping I was good to go, but i’m not sure?
RESPONSE The actual number on the Master fader is sorta irrelevant by itself. If the individual channels are all pulled down to a low gain setting, then you will have to raise the Master to reach an optimum output.
Most folks around here use a rough measurement of a peak -3db on the Meter… not the numbers scale on the Master slot… In the olden days (analog) the rule of thumb was never raise an individual track fader higher than the Master. That was to prevent over voltage on the Master bus… But, with all the changes Digital brings, I see some folks don’t abide by that anymore… I say play around with it till it sounds good to you!
QUESTION
I feel like such a looser, but if i don’t put the master faders all the way up to 6.9 with my vst and (no clipping) aren’t I sacrificing volume
RESPONSE
As I stated, it’s not the numbers on either side of the fader that count… it’s the peaks the led meter shows… If you are worried about the ‘Loudness Wars’ I would import the finished track into Wavosaur or some other editor and try a limiter like Classic Master Limiter. play around with it…
ASWEGO
I use Classic Master Limiter in my last master slot and try to keep my fader at -1.5. This works for my style of mostly a vox and acoustic guitar. Helps me keep my finished songs at pretty much at the same volume levels. I never raise my individual waver sliders above -0-. I also like to use endorphin and glaceverb in master slots. I like Pushtech with the acoustic guitar and spitfish with vox as a general rule. But then my music is very simple and not nearly as complex as most of the other forum members. I also use Classic EQ quite a bit. In fact the entire Classic Series VST’s are my favoriate and most used VST’s. PushTech and Glaceverb too.
QUESTION
Do you think with the master faders set for “0″ instead of all the way up that might make it less muddy when I export it?
RESPONSE
Armed with what little I know…I usually set my individual track faders to -6.0 and the Master faders at -3.0 as a start. Generally I’ll try to get the loudest individual track set as close to 0db and reference all other tracks to that. All of this adjusts as the mix moves along but the individual tracks get more attention insofar as increase/decrease in levels than the master slot. Main intent is to avoid clipping & leave some room to adjust at the top end. In the Master slots I usually stick Kjaerhus Audio Classic Compressor, Classic Limiter & Glaceverb. I like the Classic series because they are freeware, simple in layout & just-plain-work. The compressor set at the ‘mix down’ pre set takes care of leveling tracks and the limiter on ‘Master CD’ sets a threshold as well as handles any maximizing of loudness that might be needed.
The ‘MPL1′ that you have is a limiter, yes? You should be able to take care of any loudness maximization using that. And the Pushtec is a pretty neat & colorful eq tool. If you have muddiness you might want to mess with the eq settings to see if you can brighten things up. External editors like Audacity and Wavosaur are great tools to get a better visual image than Kristal provides. Lets you get a clear look at the waveform.
Another tool that I think is indispensible is Voxengo Span, which is a spectrum analyzer. It lets you get a really good visual of the waveform so that you can immediately see which freq’s are doing what. Helps a lot when trying to balance sound & get a good eq thing going. Just my $.02 usd. YMMV as they say.
RESPONSE
I hope I’m not beating a dead horse here… but as far as the numbers on the channel/master faders are concerned, they are irrelevant….. they are starting points only. The important info is what the LED levels are. In Kristal, they report the db of the Tracks/Master: http://www.jimprice.com/prosound/db.htm
Here are a couple of short vids I put together to help visualize this concept:
Both use the same source track, and have the gain settings the same on Track/Master for ease of demo:
The first shows what db (level) is produced with a -6 on the gain… you will notice they hit +6db, and clip:
http://www.ttmbandroom.com/index.php?t=video_player&video_id=40&size=large
The second shows Full Gain on Track/Master, and shows well under 12db on the gain:
http://www.ttmbandroom.com/index.php?t=video_player&video_id=39&size=large
GC also makes a very good point about headroom… also defined as Dynamic Range. In the
Loud Music War going on in most pop labels today, that important factor is being ignored
in favor of making the piece louder/as loud as the next song played on the Radio..
Too bad most of the clarity and dynamics of the instruments are lost in this process…
JIM 50 COMMENT
All great info above!
Just so folks aren’t steered wrong in the terminology and meanings when we talk about dynamic range and headroom. I would just clarify that headroom is not the same as dynamic range. “Headroom” is the amount of gain that is ’still available’ above the maximum ‘peak’ level throughout a mix. Eg: there are 3 dB’s of headroom in this mix..meaning there is 3 dB room for gain before signal clips at “0″ DBFS. Whereas, “Dynamic Range” is a mix’s range of volume throughout a mix, from the lowest level to the highest peak of a mix is known as the “Dynamic Range”.. .. there can still be headroom in a mix that has, for example a dynamic range of 15dB (meaning the lowest level to the highest level in the mix is a total spread of 15dB) … with a ”mastered” mix that has been limited to say -3dB , this means there is still 3 dB headroom before clipping.

I hope that helps
JIM50

I have recently been reading lots on copyright law and how to protect my original works. It is really quite easy and affordable. And the wise thing to do for your original work.

First off I discovered that once I create an ORIGINAL video, a song, a poem, or whatever and put in to a tangable format, ie, cd, handwritten song written on a scrap of paper or an online release of that work it is automatically copyrighted by me. All I am doing with the Copyright Office is to register that specific copyright. You can register your copyright online for $35. You can register one song or a cd collection of songs for the same cost, $35.00. It is better to copyright each song individually in case you decide later to single out a song from a cd collection. But if you are on a budget the cd collection does protect your work.

Later if you decide to use a singe from the cd there are steps to take with the copyright office. I am still researching the details of this. You can find out more details yourself at the US Copyright Office.
Here is an interesting copyright case in Australia with Men At Work’s tune Down Under.
Australian Copyright Case

A good example of why you should copyright your original work. I went ahead and registerd a cd collection of my original songs. Best a well spent $35 bucks.

Later,
AWGOM

QUESTION

One of the greatest Albums released was “Genesis Lamb Lies Down On Broadway” and it sounds way better on the Vinyl than on the CD. I guess the digitizing process looses some signal thingy’s that made the music of yester year. What would happen if you took digital to analog to Vinyl ? I guess the Vinyl release’s are done that way, so would their sound different ???

JIM50 REPLY

Now you’ve got me goin’ ……

This is a topic that can be quite controversial… and I do want to stress that this is just my opinion… and I’d like to share a few thoughts, if I may. take it or leave it -it’s all good

You’ve raised some good points.

I agree that Genesis - Lamb Lies down….. is a great sounding record…as many of the albums coming out at that time was at the height of Vinyl production….and the tech who mastered and CUT the grooves made fantastic sounding products… the record execs in suits knew no different…and trusted the guys who did the cutting to do their thing.

Here’s a KEY point

One of the limitations of records..vinyl… is that “BASS” frequencies were very VERY carefully engineered in the mastering process to ONLY BE SO LOUD and not one dB louder …. why…???
Because Vinyl has physical limitations… what happens when you put too much bass frequencies into a master that’s destined for vinyl production?? the vinyl grooves from the bass become so large and wide, that a stylus (needle) can’t ride in the groove… and you have mush. Record producers knew this at the time, and everyone agreed on a standard, (see RIAA etc) so the ‘cutting’ of records were technically very refined… and audiophiles LOVED the sound… the dynamics in tact, the overall balance of EQ perfected. The bass was only so loud, and consumers tone controls and equalizers would beef things up if need be (hence the great big SMILE curve, in the graphic equalizers).

Enter Cassettes… aha…. now the record producers can make the sound bigger, and fatter, and LOUDER… they can saturate the tape with rich warm BASS and not have to worry about the size of the grooves… so cassettes got mixed one way, and the vinyl another…now we have 2 EQ curves (or more) that become standards in the music production industry.

Enter Digital Tape and CD’s : AAAHHHHHAAAAAA !!!!
now the dynamic range is wider than it’s ever been, as close to reproducing ‘the recorded event’ with almost the same dynamics, same frequencies as the original performance… what a wonderful GIFT digital was.

Spoiling a GIFT.. enter the young, ‘record’ producers of the digital age (who don’t know what a record is, let alone produce one)… now we can make CD’s that sound so clear, so dynamic.. and we can make it LOUD, by getting so close to “0″ DBFS and smacking the whole thing with a Brick wall Limiter ..and you have a really loud CD that is going to sound better than the one before it because it’s 2 dB louder… and people interpret louder as BETTER…the NON audiophiles that is.

Next thing you know, almost all of today’s engineers are ‘directed’ to make it LOUD and don’t know any different…slam that sucker against the wall because we simply can’t AFFORD to have a product that sounds ‘weakish’ compared to the competitor. $$$$. Make it LOUD or you’re GONE!

It’s a shame that the dynamic range that’s possible to achieve on CD’s has been ignored by so many suits in the ‘commercial’ music industry, creating a “Loudness War” that has spanned 20 + years. (Some of the early CD Masters were done VERY well, IMO, and it wasn’t till later that the dynamics got sucked out of the product so it could sound as mushy ..rrr.. loud as the next guy.

Now Enter VINYL again…. what’s going to happen to the way things are Mastered… will the bass still be a pumpin’ and thumpin like the way it’s mixed for CD’s…. or will the smart engineers realize the only way to make good sounding records is to GO BACK TO THE 80’s and earlier, and study those techniques and practices, and put the same dynamic range and frequencies BACK into the product… and we’ll have GREAT sounding records again.

If the suits decide “hey keep that bass up in the mix and make it FAT”…. those records are DOOMED!!! IMO

Oh… yah, I don’t really like to listen to RE Mastered works either… I’ll take the pops, clicks, ticks and hiss that analog has… over the same thing digitally reproduced and slammed to the wall with 20dB of limiting. I also come from the analog world and when I operated my commercial recording studio, I used to think Limiting more than 6 dB was really pushing it, and that was for the loud rock bands I’d record. So, for me to hear that much of today’s CD’s have been made with 12 , 18, 24 dB of limiting is just mind boggling. Losing all that dynamic range for the sake of sounding loud…

I’m glad there seems to be a grass roots movement in the recording industry to start looking at what has happened to quality of music production … and how everyone is getting short changed in the process. … but there is awareness now starting to spread… maybe.

It will all turn around when someone realizes there’s $$$$ to be made in restoring the dynamic range and making Masters that sound good.

Hey, maybe an equivalent of something like ‘carbon credits’ can be made… you know, pay the producers to NOT kill the dynamic range…. ummm “decibel credits” we could call them!

I should end here…I wouldn’t want to ramble…

CHears

QUESTION:

What is the implication of laying a track over another on the waver screen? I notice with drum you get a boost every so often. It is best to avoid multilayering and open new Session say for extra needed tracks.

JIM50 REPLY

There is nothing ‘wrong’ with what I call ’stacking’ tracks.

This practice can have merit, and enhance certain elements to a track.

For eg: if you want to increase the intelligibility of a vocal, you can copy the track - move it down to another open waver, process it with EQ or even efx if you want, and then export it, so it renders the track, then import it back into the same track that the ‘original’ is on… and then, adjust the volume of EACH track via WAVER window, and simply balance the two tracks to taste - and you can get some very nice ‘treatments’ this way. Why not just do it on another track and leave it there? … good question, - by doing the treatment, exporting, then re importing to the original track, you can save a lot of CPU, control mix elements, create interesting fx.

Here’s a “J50 Tip” to try out that involves stacking:

Let’s say you want to make a vocal go from dry during a verse and you want the chorus to slowly fade in some reverb into the vocal part… simply copy the vox to another track as above, then add reverb, export and re import then stack the track on top of original vox, and then on the reverb track, cut out the verse by lowering the volume all the way, then where the chorus starts, use the FADE IN feature to slowly fade in the reverb … and there you have it, a vocal track where the reverb automatically fades up!

Or try stacking 4 copies of a vox on top of each other and lower each copy by 3 dB more than the last one … and drag each track back by equal amounts (say 1/4 sec) and you’ll have a ‘custom made’ echo. (I just used that effect for Bad Fingers vocal track on Like A Friend, on the Smurf Tribute Song … where the word ‘gone’ echoes…

The down side could be, if you don’t sit the track in the exact right spot, you could end up with phasing issues (depending on the content of the track and it’s frequencies) … or if you stack too many elements on one track you could cause a lot of ‘frequency residual buildup’ where some frequencies will combine to make spikes happen.

I’ve recorded 4 or 5 tracks for backing vocals, and then stacked them after treating them, to make a backing vox track that’s easy to manage. The key is in the details along the way prior to the ’stacking’ IMO.

This ’stacking’ treatment may not always sit well with all instruments and tracks, and I have noticed through trial and error that ‘mono’ signals seem to stack well, like a kick drum, or vocal, …. Whatever works, … trust your ears!

Hope this helps.
Happy Recording

Chears
JIM50

QUESTION FROM SMURF:

Just a quick question for everyone. I use my 3 sets of headphones, MS16 Monitors, 2 sets of computer speakers, and a boom box when listening back to tracks from this section, time allowing. When I listen on my main system I use the Windows Media Player with the EQ set to Default-Flat, and this system is where use the headphones & MS16’s.

On all the other systems they are left where either myself or the other half have set them for listening to radio, CD, tapes, etc..I also work hard to keep the levels equal between the systems, but of course factor in the old ears, room etc…and there are going to be differences.

My question really is about the EQ settings you use…do your purposely set it to a “neutral” setting when listening to other peoples material, or do you leave it where it sounds “best” for what you normally listen to…..or does it matter to ya?

Just tossing it out there…..

REPLY FROM JIM50

This is a most excellent thread … and a topic that shouldn’t be taken lightly.. especially if you post tunes for ‘feedback’ purposes, and OR if you are providing feedback to someone who posted a tune……
I use my:
Phillips, SOny and JVC headphones, all set flat.

Koss Dynamite Book shelf (near field) Monitors set flat…

Listening room, usually set and kept EQ to where it sounds good for the type of music and the room … which is just a small bit of gain on the bass, and a smidge on the treble (maybe 3 dB)… tone controls only, no multiband EQ on my listening system.

It’s possible that alot of people miss the importance of this! There’s actually alot of ramifications when you start to think about it - posting mixes for ‘feedback’ purposes - having your mix played on various systems in various EQ, playback, and monitoring setups.

If we take comments at face value, we could easily be misled and go off track…. IMO
When someone provided feed back and says - it sounds a bit too ‘bassy’ for my ears… or, it sounds shrill and tinny to me. …

With comments like the above, one has to question many things, like: how is the playback done?,

through what medium?? (media player, DAW, etc)

what equipment is employed, speakers, headphones, both, ??

What amps, Eq’s, are used?

Is there a Sub woofer in the listening system???

- what is the EQ set at?

- and WHY is it set that way???.. is it to offset the lack of frequencies, or to cut the standing waves, in the listening environment, … or is the EQ applied simply because the listener likes lots of bass etc. ??

Also, is the ‘listener’ able to hear accurately - it puts a whole new light on a comment that ‘the cymbols aren’t loud enough” when you find out later that the listener has tinitus and can’t hear very well in the 6KHz to 11 KhZ range. … or a comment that the mix sounds thin, but then again, I’m listening on my lap top speaker.

I’ve posted threads about this very topic …. if we all have different coloured glasses on, and we all look at the same thing, …we will all see things ‘differently’ … according to the colour of glasses we have on.

My suggestion was that we should all take off the coloured glasses (make the EQ FLAT) while listening to other’s tunes AND PROVIDING FEEDBACK…otherwise, the feedback is pretty much pointless, unless you know that the listener can accurately hear, and that the system he heard it on, is accurately reproducing the sound you mixed.

This is an ‘idealistic’ approach … and not very practical, I realize this.

At the same time, it’s good to know that I’m not the ONLY one who listens with the system set to FLAT … so you are hearing something a bit closer to what the original mix sounded like.

A very interesting topic indeed!

That’s my 2 cents!

Chears
Jim50

Today’s Question

I have been using a VST master compressor, but what do you think of using it for east individual instrument? For example my guitar teacher listened to my song and thought the bass was muddy so he told me to try using compression on the bass instrument. I did and it has a better sound.

Did I just get lucky?

JIM50’s Reply

It’s actually quite common to use a compressor on individual tracks, especially bass, vocals, and tracks that are hard to ‘tame’. Your question is a good one!

Next to EQ, compression is one of the most important tools to understand when it comes to audio processing. It’s also one of the most misunderstood tools as well.

A compressor is basically like having an extra pair of hands on the input signal fader… very quick hands… it brings the lower level of the signal up and can make a soft passage much louder, and it also can lower the signal level very quickly so it doesn’t go over a certain limit that you’ve set.. it also can affect the ‘tails’ of things like bass notes, guitar sustains, kick drums, etc and actually shape the beginnings (attack time) and ends (release time) of the tails of those notes by adjusting the signal gain up or down and how quickly to adjust it, depending on how it’s been set by the user or ‘preset’… so you can get things like more ‘clarity’ ‘punch’ ‘depth’ ’spread’ ‘presence’ of a sound, and also shape the way the signal starts and ends in milliseconds of course.

It’s best to experiment with various compression settings with various tracks/instruments, to gain an understanding of what you can, and cannot do with a compressor. You could go the route of calling up a preset and then fine tweaking from there, and seeing what your adjustment does to the sound of the track. Try it ’soloed’ and also with the rest of the mix.

Going a little deeper, it’s ultimately best to learn what the ‘attack’ and ‘release’ times do to the signal… allowing you to really get in there and ’shape’ the sound of not only each track but the final “master’ as well. You’ll also want to know about other parameters of a compressor like ‘ratio’ and threshold, soft knee, hard knee, as well. Once you know what these parameters do, you can really get a grasp of how you can manipulate the sound, hopefully, in a good way.

A word of caution, if not used in the correct manner, overuse of compression can make a track become flat, lifeless, and lacking in dynamics. Artifacts such as ‘pumping’ and ‘breathing’ can also result. You can also look up ‘dual band’ or multi band compressors, which act on specific frequency ranges of a track or mix.

The main thing is, trust your ears!

Here’s a couple links that might help …on the use of comps.

http://www.kristalusers.net/viewthread.php?tid=5705#pid43887

http://www.kristalusers.net/viewthread.php?tid=4559#pid29664

this one has some good info of the basics too..
http://www.kristalusers.net/viewthread.php?tid=5364#pid39602

I hope this helps
Cheers.
Jim50

Good Morning,

Nice frosty morning here in Florida. Hope you are staying comfortable. Last evening I was searching for public domain video to use in a project and I came across an online petition that I signed regarding legislation on public domain/copyright law.

“RECLAIM THE PUBLIC DOMAIN”

I personally agree with what this petition says, and I think you might
agree, too. If you can spare a moment, please take a look, and consider
signing yourself.

http://www.PetitionOnline.com/eldred/

This certainly doesn’t address all the issues associated with the public doman and copyright law but I believe it is a step in the right direction.

Warm regards from Florida,
AsWeGo Old Man