SureIsHandOutside

I hope this video finds you at your most sleep deprived.

There are a number of questions online dealing with this subject, but many answers are contradictory, or aren’t familiar with what a soundfont is, and few seem to acknowledge that—according to the US Copyright Office at least— you can’t copyright a recording of an individual note (See the Compendium of U.S. Copyright Office Practices Chapter 300, Section 313.4 (B)). That said, I was only able find one Reddit thread where someone brought up specific cases tied to the issue, and there was still some confusion within that thread.

I’m making original compositions, and I still want to properly credit the website I got a soundfont from, because I think that’s the right thing to do, though it’s not required. The site offers them for free and seems to have all its own rights in order. To my knowledge, all of the recordings were explicitly made for use in this manner, not ripped from other copyrighted material, but it would put my mind at ease to be sure someone couldn’t change their mind years later and have grounds to sue me for royalties because somewhere buried in the individual recordings of individual notes is, like, a piano where the c-sharp is especially pianoish.

I’d like to believe I’m in the clear, but am I misunderstanding anything here?

(Tried to ask this on Reddit’s music production sub and the post was removed without explanation. Never heard back from mods when I reached out. Very strange.)

Thank you for your time.

Countless firsthand accounts of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan have disappeared across the last decade, and it may speak to larger issues with the historical record in the digital age.