qnpdub is the code repository to eventually run qnpdub.org.
The project mission is to enable and foster amateur musicians to play along or dub to great music.
As a hobby musician you often have no time or like-minded people around to jam or start a band with. Many give up on playing music all together, some play all by themselves to music they like.
Let's change that and jam together across space and time!
Hi, my name is Martin. Some years back I inherited a conga and started fooling around with it. I have fun playing it, but nobody ever heard me play. There was never really an occasion.
I wanted to share what I love with people in my life and hopefully find others to jam with - in a 3-degrees of Kevin Bacon kind of way.
After failed attempts I invested into some cheap gear and started recording. Great open source software, like Ardour, Blend, FFmpeg and Linux, allowed me to record, edit and mix audio and video.
In one week I learned the basics and recorded over 14 hours of me playing to music. It is not all good, but I had my moments and some parts turned out OK. It's a hobby. So far, so good!
Sharing the finished media files provides some problems, that cannot be easily solved.
Sharing the audio is possible enough by itself. But nobody I know plays conga and would have a clue what to make of it by itself. If mixed with the original track, some people suggest to turn the track down, some want to hear it together. Any of it is already potentially a copyright violation, when shared publicly.
Many people however are visually oriented. Especially my father - he needs prescription hearing aids, but never wears them. So I had some fun creating collages of me playing to some videos I dubbed to, for him and others to experience it in their own way. I found NPR Tiny Desk concerts with Jon Batiste and Jake Blount, that he liked. I also recorded a KNOWER video I love and improvised to the new STARBLASTER video in my Youtube suggestions.
Sharing big video files privately is not easy. Dropping it into a chat or an email severely limits the length and quality. File sharing makes some aspects easier, but requires some cooperations on part of the receiving end (my parents wouldn't know what to do). On to of that, clicking on a link in an email, to visit some website, to download and play a video, is not something my parents could and most friends would do. It should not be as pushy as an invitation to an amateur art exhibition.
Uploading to Youtube is the most obvious and trivial solution. You can even share it privately with other Google accounts, but that has similar problems as with file sharing. The other options both share it publicly, which opens a whole new Pandora's box (of worms!): Copyright.
If you take copyright serious you accept defeat immediately. You would need to know all rights holders, track down their representatives, get their contacts, explain your project and hope for the best. My favorite DJ confirmed my suspicion, that artist also just do it and see what happens.
There are tons of copyrighted songs on Youtube, that were uploaded by users without any rights at all. This appears to be tolerated due to different reasons. Some videos might be considered fair use. Other times the Track-ID system lets copyright owners still profit. Or because nobody raised any objection yet.
I tried sharing videos on Youtube naively, before reading up on the details of fair use, to experience this status quo. After two accepted fair use claims, for an individual Jamiroquai song and a Prince song as part of a 2 hour mix, I felt bold and wrote to NPR for advice regarding my Tiny Desk concert collages. I hoped somehow for an answer that affirms this status quo. Something like: it's not strictly OK and we reserve our rights to block the content at any time, but as long as it is like that we wont take action regarding our video rights.
My project would generally not be seen as fair use, although it could be seen as commentary, promotion and has some educational aspects for me. Even dancing or whistling publicly to a copyrighted song could get you in trouble, if it rises to a performance. In the end nobody wants to give any advice other than to talk to a lawyer you cannot afford. Any lawyer would then advise you to stop, because the worst case is not just a take down request for a video, but financial damages to be replaced.
The solution could at first be a simple web page that explains the status quo and how to navigate it. All whilst carefully avoiding giving out legal advice. It could grow to an international non-profit to foster creativity in this digital age of unreformed and potentially draconian copyright laws.
There is much to learn before publishing your own dub. We want to prepare, provide and link relevant information, to ease the on-boarding process of new dubbers. This entails technical aspects like hardware and software, the copyright situation, experience reports which publishers are open for projects like this or how to best ask for permissions.
Besides that we can highlight the alternative to copyrighted works. We can collect and create a repository of public domain and creative commons licensed work. A remastered Irving Berlin record with the Peerless Quartet, a separate piano and conga dub track can be remixed to a new work, that others can use.
We can discuss this project with artist and publishers and come to a mutual understanding. If we can get rights, even if restricted to remixing with absurd caveats, for not only one but other all conforming projects on our platform, it would be a huge win. It would even be OK if rights holder say: You won't get any rights and we reserve our rights to take down your work, but (and this is the important bit) we will not sue you form damages! That would be fair enough and affirms the status quo, but renders it harmless.
On the other hand partners would amplify and multiply views and reach of their art. We ideally have a web based widget that can synchronize and live mix the original video and a dub. Then both the original work and the dubber get hit (This might need some cooperation from youtube, I am not sure yet). Then most youtube centered publishers would already be in favor. Every aunt and granny will watch and re-watch the new Scary Pocket Jam with their niece on guitars.
We could also get some mutual support from like minded copyright lawyers that are close to the cause (think organizations like EFF, Creative Commons and lawyers taking Lawrence Lessig seriously).
We could at some point get sponsors on board like obviously shops for recording equipment (thomann), or public media outlets (ARD, BBC, NPR, etc.).
For dubbers we can provide some services to organize projects, discover and contact rights holders, manage and document permissions, network and collaborate with other dubbers.
We can provide some custom project specific preconfigured Ardour and Blender templates. If the resources allow, we can provide a low traffic upload, archive, render, publish and preview system to showcase works to rights holders or to provide better collaboration tools.
For rights holders we can offer a interface to review and manage their requests and permissions. We can provide an API to check uploads ids against registered works in our database.
This project should be run with creative and without commercial interests. However, investing time to developing a project has already costs associated. At first it can be my hobby, then if others start to contribute we can sort out specifics with all collaborators. Depending on the scope this project might someday need a legal entity, resources and dedicated staff.
Some public non-profit (in Germany allgemeinnütziger Verein) are not only tax exempts, but can even get government grants, depending on memberships numbers. Sponsorships, Donations and Patronage are other ways to raise money. Then we could, as a community, monetise on collaborative works based on the public domain or with consent of the rights holders, or even do virtual fund-raiser concerts.
If we end up with too much money we won't pay agencies to maximize the funding stream, but must instead start programs to educate and donate hardware and instruments to communities in need.
(c) 2023 Martin Schnabel
Software written for this project should be published under a permissive BSD 2-Clause license. The logo, web-design and text content should be licensed as cc-by-nc-sa.
All I wanna do is feel some joy. I have my reasons. I'm not the only guy.