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Last year when I kicked off the OpenTTD Music Replacement Project, I uploaded two sample packs to demonstrate how you could replace the original TTD music with something else. Earlier this year I officially licensed and published the Scott Joplin Anthology, and now it's time to do the same with the holiday music. I'm nearly done with the pack, I'm looking for a few more songs and need to write the .obm reference file.

UPDATED 11/10 - I've decided to narrow down to more traditional songs with the most original and best-sounding arrangements. I'm still waiting on clearances from composers/sequencers. Here are the songs which will be included FOR SURE:

• "All Through the Night" - a traditional Welsh carol recorded in 1784 by Edward Jones. Sequenced by Harry "Gitpicker" Todd and released through his family. http://gitpicker5.tripod.com/
  
  "Away in a Manger" - an American song, lyrics published by James R. Murray, and the music is credited to J.E. Clark's "St. Kilda" in 1885, but samples several other songs that came before it. Sequenced by Harry "Gitpicker" Todd and released through his family. http://gitpicker5.tripod.com/
  
  Jolly Old St. Nicholas - an American short poem credited to Benjamin R. Hamby sometime in the 1860s. The song is traditionally sung to an up-tempo arrangement of the first wave of Johann Pachelbel's "Canon in D. Major", 1680. I am selecting the entire "Canon in D Major" due to it's slower and more melodic arrangement. Sequenced by "Perfessor" Bill Edwards. http://perfessorbill.com/
  
  "Jingle Bells" - an English song originally published by James Lord Pierpont in 1857 as "On a One-Horse Open Sleigh", and also originally composed to a portion of Pachalbel's "Canon in D Minor". This arrangement is an original composition sequenced by Bob Barnes. http://www.ajsmidi.com/barnes/barnes_1.html
  
  "Auld Lange Syne" - a Scots song written by Robert Burns in 1788, the original music may be from any one of traditinal Scots folk songs. This arrangement is an original composition sequenced by Bob Barnes. http://www.ajsmidi.com/barnes/barnes_1.html
  
  "The Huron Carol" - a Canadian carol written by Jean de Brébeuf in 1643. The song was written by de Brébeuf, a Jesuit priest, to teach the native Canadian Huron peoples about the meaning of Christ and His birth. It is recognized as Canada's oldest Christmas carol. The music is based on the French folk song "Une Jeune Pucelle", which itself is based on other works traced back to the Italian ballad "La Monica" from 1465. Sequenced by Barry Taylor, "The Great Canadian Tunebook", http://members.shaw.ca/tunebook/
  
  "Good King Wencelas" - an English hymn written in 1853 by John Mason Neale, translated from a poem written by Czech poet Václav Alois Svoboda. The music is set to the 13th century Finnish tune "Tempus Adest Floridum". Sequenced by Melvin Webb and released through his family. http://kmelmidimusic.com/

Songs that I am still waiting for clearance from their composers or sequencers:

• Boar's Head Carol
• Carol of the Bells
• The Gloucestershire Wassail
• The Holly and Ivy
• Joy to the World
• Parade of the Wooden Soldiers
• Still, Still, Still
• O Tannebaum
• Toyland
• The Twelve Days of Christmas
• Up on the Housetop
• We Wish You a Merry Christmas

I may not be able to include the above if I cannot contact these composers and sequencers. Many of them have MIDI files that are widely traded over the Internet, but the authors no longer maintain a presence on the Web (many of them were hosted on Geocities and AOL member sites which no longer exist). If you're a MIDI composer and wish to contribute an original arrangement of a traditional song, please feel free to post it here, even if the song is not on this list. I am looking for arrangements which have at least two instruments and provide a quality listening experienced as opposed to just "boops and beeps" of a single instrument such as a piano or horn, which unfortunately many of these traditional songs fall victim to.

That reads like a nice winter or Christmas list. Listening to your last creating with joy, I'm truely looking forward to this - and hope that some people will manage to make more constructive posts than this

planetmaker told me on IRC that you probably need help with coming up with alternative non copyrighted names for those songs.

For Jingle Bells I've just brainstormed a couple of ideas that can probably be used to generate even better ideas:

• Happy bus ride
• A toy on the bus
• Toy-mobile (however, I would be surprised if this is not owned as a trademark by someone)
• My airbone taxi
• Dear deer taxi, please hurry
• Tram went of track

Zuu wrote:planetmaker told me on IRC that you probably need help with coming up with alternative non copyrighted names for those songs

We've been talking past eachother it seems I interpret kamnet's posting as a call for suggestions for further (royalty free) songs which could be composed as midi and complement the set.

Zuu wrote:planetmaker told me on IRC that you probably need help with coming up with alternative non copyrighted names for those songs.

Usually it is not the name of the song which is copyrighted but the actual lyrics/music. The song Happy Birthday belongs to Warner Bros. IIRC and thus if you use it on tv or a movie you need to pay them royalties, no matter how you call the song. I think it might be better to compose for OTTD instead of just picking already existing songs and putting them in there.

According to Wikipedia, "Happy Birthday" copyright runs out in 2016 [EU] (70 years after death of last co-author (1946)), possibly 2030 [USA] (95 years after copyright registration (1935))

I think I'm pretty locked in on the selected songs, although I am open for suggestion. The main thing to keep in mind is whether or not the song is still covered under copyright. All of the selected pieces are currently in the public domain. The newest is "Parade of the Wooden Soldiers", published in 1922. Next is finding MIDI files that actually sound good. Next I focused on finding a good balance between all the songs - both religious and secular, traditional and non-traditional, and a few oddball ones like "Kris Kringle March" and "Reindeer Ragtime". I was particularly impressed with "The Huron Carol", which I had not heard before but is said to be Canada's oldest Christmas carol. Finally, these files have to SOUND good. For the most part I've largely disfavored MIDI files with just one or two instruments in favor of songs that present a richness of instruments.

quick list of copyright expiration research results [based on EU law, 70 years after death of author]:

• Carol of the Bells - Mykola Dmytrovych Leontovych (January 23, 1921) -> 1991
• The Nutcracker Suite - Pyotr_Ilyich_Tchaikovsky (October 25 (jul.)/November 6 (greg.) 1893) -> 1963
• Deck the Halls(*) - Deck the Halls "The tune is Welsh dating back to the sixteenth century"
• Good King Wenceslas(*) - John Mason Neale (1886) -> 1956
• The Huron Carol(*) - Jean de Brébeuf (March 16, 1649), English lyrics written in 1926 and still under Copyright (but this doesn't concern us, since it's MIDI)
• Jingle Bells - James Lord Pierpont (August 5, 1893) -> 1963
• Jolly Old Saint Nicholas(*) - i could not find reliable information about this song, other than lyrics and melody
• Joy to the World - Lowell Mason (August 11, 1872) -> 1942
• Kris Kringle March(*) - again no reliable information
• Ma'oz Tzur(*) - Ma'oz_Tzur "The present melody [...] has been identified [...] as an adaptation [of an] old German folk-song [...] it was widely spread among German Jews as early as 1450."
• O Tannenbaum - O Tannenbaum "Die Melodie ist eine seit dem 16. Jahrhundert bekannte Volksweise"
• Parade of the Wooden Soldiers(*) - Leon Jessel (January 4, 1942) -> 2012
• Pat-a-Pan(*) - Bernard de La Monnoye (October 15, 1728) -> ...
• Reindeer Ragtime(*) - Joseph Lamb (September 3, 1960) -> 2030
• Babes in Toyland(*) - Victor Herbert (May 26, 1924) -> 1994
• The Twelve Days of Christmas(*) - Frederic Austin (April 10, 1952) -> 2022 [depends if modern arrangement is used]
• The Wassail Song(*) - no reliable information
• We Wish You a Merry Christmas - We Wish You a Merry Christmas "is a popular secular sixteenth-century English carol"

I take no responsibility over correctness or completeness of this list.
(*) I don't actually know this song, so take information extra cautious

Yeah, I can't help EU's laws. My work is based on where I'm at, USA, which is technically a little more screwed up, but for all of these songs they were published in the USA before 1925, which makes them all public domain.

"The Copyright Act of 1976 maintained this until February 15, 2047, which was subsequently extended by the Sonny Bono Copyright Term Extension Act to the same date in 2067. As a result, no sound recording can reliably be considered in the public domain in the United States before that date, even if the recording was in existence before 1923 and even if it originated in another country where it has entered the public domain." [1]

Yay for American law, but... it's even more screwed up than you think, don't you think?

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/US_copyrig ... _copyright

kamnet wrote:they were published in the USA before 1925, which makes them all public domain.

Unfortunately only for you, copyright is a "strictest rule 'wins'" in an international environment. If you upload e.g. one of the songs not expired to this forum or the OpenTTD content server, technically both the provider and the domain owners can be sued for a breach of copyright.

Rubidium wrote:"The Copyright Act of 1976 maintained this until February 15, 2047, which was subsequently extended by the Sonny Bono Copyright Term Extension Act to the same date in 2067. As a result, no sound recording can reliably be considered in the public domain in the United States before that date, even if the recording was in existence before 1923 and even if it originated in another country where it has entered the public domain." [1]

Yay for American law, but... it's even more screwed up than you think, don't you think?

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/US_copyrig ... _copyright

I perfectly realize just how screwed up it all is. Thank you, Sonny Bono, for looking out for your own wallet as a washed-up entertainer instead of the best interest of the public that you served. Apparently it wasn't enough that he was also a US Senator who was set to live off a taxpayer-funded pension and taxpayer-funded carte-blanche free health care for the rest of his life.

planetmaker wrote:

kamnet wrote:they were published in the USA before 1925, which makes them all public domain.

Unfortunately only for you, copyright is a "strictest rule 'wins'" in an international environment. If you upload e.g. one of the songs not expired to this forum or the OpenTTD content server, technically both the provider and the domain owners can be sued for a breach of copyright.

Yep, I know, which is why, unlike Scott Joplin Anthology, I won't be putting this one on BaNaNaS. It will be privately hosted on my own server.

Rubidium wrote:[...] sound recording [...]

mind you, the sound recording copyright is something completely different from the underlying sheet music copyright.

In the EU, sheet music, text, etc. is based on death of author plus 70 years, while recordings are based on day of publishing plus 50 years [afair this number was subject to change recently, don't remember if that was increased]

a very nice idea i hope that you release an early version, which we can test so you can add more songs till 24.12

A small bump, update to the first post, now also looking for others interested in contributing their own sequences.