Licensing Music for Print…

I’ve been writing transcription books for nearly twenty years now. During that time, I’ve come to the inescapable conclusion that no matter how difficult the material you’re transcribing, the hardest part of the whole process is still getting everything correctly licensed. This year I went through the licensing procedure for a book called Bass Monsters (coming sometime in 2020), and although this time around obtaining copyright permission was a little smoother than usual, there were still many challenges. Given that I’m asked about this kind of thing a lot, I decided to write a short article about the process.

Licensing music for print can be difficult, and over the years I’ve learned to allow plenty of time for it to happen. In fact, I usually start the process of licensing music for a book at least a year before it’s due to be released. At the beginning of 2019 I already had two books licensed for release that year (Marcus Miller – Highlights from Afrodeezia and The Jamiroquai Bass Book – Volume 3), so I began planning what I’d like to release in 2020. On the 4^th January I submitted an application for a book tentatively titled ‘Bass Monsters’, which would feature some difficult music from some of the world’s finest bass players. My motivation behind writing this book was actually to force myself to finish some transcriptions that I’d been working on for years (such as Victor Wooten’s ‘The Lesson’), and I decided that building a book around these tunes would be a good way to do that. I made an initial list of eleven songs to include and submitted the application. Here’s the original list:

1. Suspense is Killing Me (Billy Sheehan)
2. The Lesson (Victor Wooten)
3. Country Music (Stuart Hamm)
4. Joe Frazier (Jeff Berlin)
5. Tommy the Cat (Primus)
6. Mr. Pink (Level 42)
7. Stone Cold Bush (Red Hot Chili Peppers)
8. Slam the Clown (Alain Caron)
9. Hikky Burr (Quincy Jones)
10. I Was Made to Love Her (Stevie Wonder)
11. What Is Hip? (Tower of Power)

You might be looking at this initial list and thinking that there are some missing artists. After all, how can you have a book called Bass Monsters and not include Stanley Clarke, Jaco Pastorius or Marcus Miller?! These artists (and others) were certainly not overlooked, but I decided not to include them as excellent transcription books already exist for each one. I know from experience that a licensing request is far more likely to succeed if it doesn’t conflict with something that’s already been published.

To my surprise, permission to include six of these songs was granted quickly, and I was told I’d need to deal with the artists directly for three others. The two remaining songs were problematic: the Primus and RHCP pieces had their permissions split between multiple companies (because they had multiple writers), so more work was needed. I went to great lengths to obtain permission to include these tracks, but was eventually forced to abandon them due to the first big problem with licensing – quite often the companies in question consider your application to be low priority, and you never hear back from them! In the end, despite months of persistence, I had to abandon these pieces. However, I had ten pieces licensed at this stage, so just needed a few more to make the book a good investment for potential customers. 

At this stage I decided to submit some requests I was sure would not be granted, if only to rule them out. I applied for permission for ‘Hot Fun’ by Stanley Clarke, ‘Hey Bulldog’ by The Beatles’, ‘Do I Do’ by Stevie Wonder, Marcus Miller’s version of ‘Teen Town’ and ‘The Ytse Jam’ by Dream Theater’. To my knowledge, bass transcriptions of the latter two pieces have never been released, which would make them excellent additions to the project. In the end, ‘Teen Town’ proved impossible to license due to a conflict over permissions, but to my amazement, ‘Do I Do’ and ‘Hey Bulldog’ were granted, although the inclusion of a Beatles song meant the cost of licensing all of the music was going to go up quite a lot. I was also informed that before the Dream Theater and Stanley Clarke pieces could be approved, the rights owners would need to see the transcriptions. This is rare, but sometimes happens if the copyright owners want to be certain that the work is of good quality. The problem was, I hadn’t done the transcriptions! I therefore spent a couple of weeks scoring out these tunes so that I could submit them. To my astonishment the Dream Theater piece was approved – I’ve been trying to license Dream Theater’s music for years and it’s almost impossible as the band (justifiably) keep a very tight rein on what is published. For the Stanley Clarke piece, I was told that I had been given incorrect information and that I would need to contact the artist’s management direct.

The book was taking shape, with the content list now as follows:

1. Suspense is Killing Me (Billy Sheehan)
2. The Lesson (Victor Wooten)
3. Country Music (Stuart Hamm)
4. Joe Frazier (Jeff Berlin)
5. Mr. Pink (Level 42)
6. Slam the Clown (Alain Caron)
7. Hikky Burr (Quincy Jones)
8. I Was Made to Love Her (Stevie Wonder)
9. What Is Hip? (Tower of Power)
10. The Ytse Jam (Dream Theater)
11. Do I Do (Stevie Wonder)

At this point I decided to add one of my favourite Anthony Jackson lines – ‘Clouds’ by Chaka Khan. This piece was granted without a problem and I switched ‘I Was Made to Love Her’ for another Jamerson line, ‘Home Cookin’’ by Jr. Walker and the All Stars. ‘Stomp’ by the Brothers Johnson and ‘Release Yourself’ by Graham Central Station were also added without issue. I also received the go-ahead from Stanley Clarke’s management for ‘Hot Fun’, although Stanley had wanted to look over the score himself before granting this. I never heard from him personally, but I assume he approved of the transcription.

At this point I was happy with the song list, which was now as follows:

1. Suspense is Killing Me (Billy Sheehan)
2. The Lesson (Victor Wooten)
3. Country Music (Stuart Hamm)
4. Joe Frazier (Jeff Berlin)
5. Mr. Pink (Level 42, Mark King on bass)
6. Slam the Clown (Alain Caron)
7. Hikky Burr (Quincy Jones, Carol Kaye on bass)
8. Home Cookin’ (Jr Walker, James Jamerson on bass)
9. What Is Hip? (Tower of Power, Rocco Prestia on bass)
10. The Ytse Jam (Dream Theater, John Myung on bass)
11. Do I Do (Stevie Wonder, Nathan Watts on bass)
12. Clouds (Chaka Khan, Anthony Jackson on bass))
13. Hot Fun (Stanley Clarke)
14. Stomp (Brothers Johnson, Louis Johnson on bass)
15. Release Yourself (Graham Central Station, Larry Graham on bass)

This list was finalised on 10^th October, which means that the whole process took almost ten months. I also had a rather large copyright bill, which I’m always happy to pay as it means that the artists are receiving their rightful cut of the publication. As I said earlier, obtaining permissions for the pieces in this book went relatively smoothly, but there have been books that I’ve worked on where this process has taken a couple of years. A lot goes on behind the scenes, even once the book is written. 

The book is not written. Did I mention that? As I write this, I have finished transcriptions for only four pieces, and partial transcriptions for the rest. But that was the point of this project: to make myself finish some pieces that I’ve worked on for years. I’ll be starting work on this project in early 2020, and I’ll be aiming to get the book ready for release in September. As well as full transcriptions of each piece, I intend to write detailed performance notes and an analysis for each piece, and if possible, interview the bass players themselves. A lot of work lies ahead, but it’s going to be a great book. 

I hope this article sheds some light onto difficulties involved with licensing music for print. In closing I’d like to thank Stuart Hamm, Jeff Berlin, Alain Caron and Stanley Clarke for agreeing to allow their music to be used and for making part of this process a little easier than it often is!

Stuart Clayton
5^th December 2019