Thoughtful question Joe, and I'm glad you brought it up.

Let me begin by making a confession. When I first discovered this site I started by asking for (and receiving, by the way, from some wonderful 'Catters) some chords to some songs that I was having the devil of a time finding. I just do not have an "ear" for hearing the key of a song, and I don't understand chord progressions that well. Anyway, I deeply appreciate the assistance I received.

However, since that time I have read a lot of threads about the propietary rights of authors/musicians and it has given me pause. I know a lot of chord information is "what works" for certain people, not necessarily the original work of the creator. But if in passing along these lyrics and music information/chords we keep the creator for getting his/her due then we have defrauded them to that extent.

What I would like to see is that when there is a request for lyrics/chords, if someone knows of a source currently in print for that information, that the searcher is directed to that information. If the song/music is traditional, out-of-print, or otherwise impossible of next-to impossible to come by, then our wonderful warehouses of information such as we have here should help with those requests. Even if it is educational, such as providing the key to a song and then giving some advice as to how to "decipher" your own chords such would be better than saying - "here, I just copied this off of my sheet music, this is the original stuff".

Sitting down and working out an original composition is tough. We ought to encourage that by making sure, whenever possible, the creator of the music we are discussing gets his/her creative as well as financial due. If we can encourage someone to buy a whole songbook or a single piece of sheet music, then by all means let us do so in whatever way we can. Sometimes music is just out of print and unavailable. If that is the case, so be it. But let's not make things more difficult in our laziness.

just my .02 worth

Freightdawg