You are quite right about the education — there is so much for a fledgling musician. Your gentle and firm approach is appreciated, along with all you are contributing to the field already.

I am not, however, crazy about the idea of changing the song’s title to fit your purposes. The intention of the song was not “we”, but in fact, “I” — singular. For me, the crowd affects the mood and changes the intention of the song and takes it left of center in it’s mood and aloneness. So I cannot support this change and ask you not to do so again. This is why we copyright our songs so that people cannot change what’s called the ‘intellectual property’ by law. It’s true that I write my songs for the world, but not to be changed by the world.

I know that this is done a lot in our world today, but I fight against it. I gave a song once to a choir called the Turtle Creek Chorale to sing in concert who not only recorded it without my permission, but rewrote the second verse very poorly which they substituted on the recording. The new verse’s rhymes were not perfect rhymes and the verse was clearly not up to the integrity of the rest of the song. They kept this information from me for over 7 years. I finally found out and my lawyers put a stop to their selling the entire CD — unfortunately far too late.

I know your situation has far far less ramifications. I only speak of this other example to illuminate my consternation with the problem. By law you cannot change a single word of my song. Nor will I ever allow it. Occasionally, if someone calls me first and asks permission, if it’s for a good cause and is usually for a single performance only, I will do a rewrite. But I would never let someone else re-write my work. Believe it or not, this is a little like someone operating on a parent’s child without the parent’s permission.

I’m glad you brought this up and thank you for your forthrightness. It gives me an opportunity to address a problem that haunts us composers.

Bottom line to everyone: Ask first. It’s not your song. By law you are not allowed to change a note or a word if it’s under copyright. Ask first. It’s the mannerly and polite thing to do.

I appreciate your writing in and addressing this. Sometimes these things are simply a matter of education. Thanks for giving me the opportunity to respond.

Tell me, please, who did you intend as “I” in your song “I Was There”?

I sang that as a solo in church a year or so ago. (No, I haven’t bought the music yet, as we had no accompanist then, and I just sang it from memory and reading the pamphlet with the words that comes with the CD.)

I took the liberty to adapt the words to make sense to me at the time, as the artistic license sometimes comes. It was announced as “We Are There”, and the lyrics were yours throughout except for the new pronoun and verb tense. As in “Picture yourself with me in the moments of the story.”

Reflecting about it later, the “I” didn’t have to be like a narrator, whom I had taken to be perhaps a disciple who was there. Maybe the “I” was the Christ, or even God. There are different possibile acting roles here.

Could you share what you were thinking when you wrote it? Perhaps with the intention of leaving lattitude to the listener?

Thank you again for your thoughts old and new.

Steep