Hello Everyone,
I have been slacking on the blog here, no doubt.
The news with the Yoginis is that we’re finally back in the recording studio, finishing the Jazz/Indian fusion album.
I am also finally finishing the mixing and mastering of the first Yoginis album Songbird, from which the samples on myspace were pulled. But alas, I had the hard drive mailed up from the original engineer who is now based in LA, and it seems there’s some problem accessing the files. So I have let a friend who is a retired computer forensics expert have a cursory look and tell me if the data is intact and if it is easily recoverable.
On the business side, it has finally come down to contract signing time with the non-profit organization that produced the Dalai Lama Renaissance documentary, which has been doing quite well at film festivals worldwide. Contract negotiating is not my favorite part of the biz, as you can probably understand, but it’s necessary so we have to do it.
A complicating factor is that my music was already copyrighted by me before we decided to submit it to the film’s producers and director. Normally, compositions are commissioned for a film beforehand, and the composer produces what is called a "work for hire” in which the producers own the rights to the music, and the composer is paid either a one-time fee or entitled to some royalty on the film sales.
But since I already had the India/Jazz project underway, with my own plans to promote it worldwide, and I already owned the copyrights, I stand in a different relation to the film.
So we have to find a contract agreement that allows them to use the music in the film, but doesn’t surrender my copyrights. It can be done of course, it will just take a little longer since it is a non-standard agreement falling outside the usual “work-for-hire” arrangement.
Ahh, Legalese – ain’t it great?
