Chapter 36 Exercises

No DAW required this week — this chapter's lab bench is a kitchen table, a browser, and the most valuable pen you'll ever uncap. The deliverables are documents and registrations, which means, unusually for this book, several exercises produce artifacts with real legal and financial weight. Do them with that in mind: real legal names, real percentages, real signatures. The Listening Lab is lighter than usual and aimed at one skill — hearing ownership: learning to notice samples, interpolations, and covers as property events, not just musical ones. Standing reminder from the chapter: all of this is education, not legal advice, and the US-specific mechanics carry their usual as-of-this-writing stamp.

If time is short, work in this order: C1 and C2 (the split sheet and the four-desk walkthrough — together they're the chapter's checkpoint in lab form), then C4 (the royalty-flow trace, which makes the taxonomy table permanent), then B1 to hear what thirty years of a bad split sounds like. Selected answers appear in the appendix "Answers to Selected Exercises"; exercises with a collapsible hint reward wrestling before peeking.

Part A — Conceptual

A1. The two-properties sort. For each item, name which copyright it attaches to — composition, master, or both — and one sentence of why: (a) the lyric sheet Demi marked up in Chapter 11; (b) the 24-bit WAV Jaylen printed in Chapter 31; (c) a karaoke backing track of "Static Bloom" recorded by strangers; (d) a TikTok video using twelve seconds of the actual release; (e) the "static bloom" pad patch designed in Chapter 14; (f) a sync placement of the song as re-recorded by the production's house band.

A2. The default nobody chose. Three people write a song; nothing is signed; the song earns. State the US default rule for ownership and one specific way it can produce an outcome all three writers would have rejected on day one. Then explain — mechanism, not moral — why the same conversation that takes twenty minutes before release becomes dangerous after the first real check arrives.

A3. Registration's teeth. Copyright exists automatically on fixation, yet the chapter still sends you to the Copyright Office. List the three concrete enforcement benefits US registration adds, identify which one makes small-artist enforcement economically possible, and explain the timing rule that determines whether you get it.

A4. Which desk pays this? For each event, name the royalty type triggered and the category of organization that collects it (US instance optional): (a) "Static Bloom" plays in a Columbus coffee shop; (b) someone streams it on-demand — name all streams triggered; (c) it spins on a non-interactive internet radio station; (d) a Netflix-style drama licenses it for a scene; (e) a wedding band covers it live at a licensed venue; (f) it plays on terrestrial FM radio in Ohio — and name the famous hole this last one exposes.

A5. Writer share, publisher share. A self-published songwriter joined a PRO two years ago, registered all her works, and collects steadily — but she never registered a publisher entity or claimed the publisher side. Explain what the two shares are, roughly what fraction of her performance money is at risk of sitting unclaimed, and the two routes (per the chapter) for fixing it. Why does the chapter call self-publishing "full ownership with admin duties attached"?

A6. Sample vs. interpolation vs. cover. Build a three-row table from memory: what each one uses, which licenses or legal mechanisms each requires, who can veto each, and one famous-or-fictional example apiece. Then answer the sharp question: why can a songwriter refuse your sample but not your cover?

A7. The de minimis myth, stated honestly. Your collaborator insists short samples are legal "because of de minimis." Write the three-sentence honest version: what the two federal appeals courts actually held (years and outcomes, no case-name memorization required), what that split means for predicting your own risk, and the famous seven-word instruction the stricter court wrote.

A8. Points, shares, and hats. Jaylen wrote the track, mixed it, and mastered it. Using the chapter's vocabulary, explain which of those three contributions earns composition percentage, which earn master-side compensation, and why the industry pays producers in "points" rather than splits in the traditional structure. What does the chapter mean by "same human, two hats, two properties"?

Part B — 🎧 Listening Lab

Lighter than usual, by design — this is ear training for ownership events. Keep the Chapter 4 journal habit: streaming versions are fine, and your notes should record what you hear plus what property question it raises. None of these drills asks you to confirm legal facts by ear; they ask you to notice borrowed material the way a supervisor or a clearance specialist would — before the paperwork question gets expensive.

B1. Thirty years in four minutes. Cue The Verve, "Bitter Sweet Symphony," then the Andrew Oldham Orchestra's orchestral recording of "The Last Time" (the 1960s album version — it's on streaming). Journal: identify exactly what was lifted — is the borrowed material the famous string hook itself, a bed under it, or both? Time-stamp where the sample's character is most exposed in the Verve track. Then write the two-licenses sentence: which property did each side of the dispute attach to, and which side cost the band the song? (Case study 1 has the full saga; do the listen first — the dispute makes more sense once your ears have measured how much of the record's identity rides on that loop.)

B2. Interpolation ear-training. Cue Ariana Grande, "7 rings," then Rodgers and Hammerstein's "My Favorite Things" (any cast or classic recording). The borrowed melody is re-sung, not sampled — an interpolation, openly credited. Then cue The Sugarhill Gang, "Rapper's Delight," against Chic, "Good Times": the story goes that the bassline was famously replayed by the studio band, and the writers of "Good Times" ended up credited after a dispute — early proof that re-performing ducks the master owner but never the songwriter. Journal for both pairs: name two audible clues that the borrowed material is re-performed rather than lifted (timing feel, timbre, room/era signature, fidelity mismatch — Chapter 4 and Chapter 26 vocabulary helps), and state which license each new record still needed.

B3. Sample-spotting with the answer key. Cue Daft Punk, "One More Time," then Eddie Johns, "More Spell on You" — a documented, credited sample source. Then pick any sample-built classic you love with documented credits (check the official writer credits on a streaming platform or the liner notes: inherited writer names from another era are the fingerprint of a cleared sample or interpolation). Journal: what does the producer do to the source — chop order, tuning, filtering (Chapter 13's toolkit) — and, property question: why do those transformations change the music completely while changing the clearance requirement not at all?

B4. One composition, two masters. Cue Dolly Parton, "I Will Always Love You," then Whitney Houston's version. Same composition; two masters owned by different parties, decades apart. Journal three production-era differences (arrangement density, vocal treatment, space — Chapters 16, 24, 29 vocabulary), then write the money map for the Houston version: who earns on the master side, who earns on the composition side, and why the story goes that the writer's refusal to sell her publishing was the best business decision in the whole tale.

B5. The re-recording masterclass. Cue any Taylor Swift original-album track against its "Taylor's Version" twin — same writer, same composition, new master. Journal: list every audible difference you can catch (tempo feel, vocal age and treatment, mix-era loudness and width — Chapters 25, 29, 33), then answer in one paragraph: which copyright made the re-recording legally possible, which copyright was the project designed to recapture, and what does the pair teach about where a recording's identity lives versus where a song's identity lives?

B6. The transformative cover. Cue Bob Dylan, "All Along the Watchtower," then the Jimi Hendrix Experience's version — a cover so definitive that Dylan himself has long performed the song closer to Hendrix's arrangement, a fact he's acknowledged admiringly over the years. Journal the production gulf in band vocabulary (density, space, electric arrangement, vocal placement — Chapters 16, 24, 25), then write the money map: who owns each master, where every performance royalty for both versions flows on the composition side and why, and what the pair proves about the compulsory license's bargain — the writer can't veto your cover, and in exchange, your cover earns them money every time it plays. Close with one sentence: which version would a supervisor license for a war film, and which two parties would they need to pay?

Part C — 🎛️ Desk Lab

Ground rules: real names, real information, documents you'd be willing to show a collaborator or a supervisor. Save everything into your session's admin folder (Chapter 2's hygiene — make a _business subfolder next to _masters). Several labs end in actual registrations; do those soberly, once, correctly.

C1. Draft your split sheet. Use the chapter's template, field for field, for the track you've built all book. Collaborators: hold the kitchen-table conversation for real — pizza optional, signatures not — walking the composition line by line (melody, lyrics, chords, hooks; track-as-composition acknowledged; performance and engineering honored on the master table instead). Solo: fill it out anyway, both tables, including the samples line — your five-minute ownership record and sync one-stop answer. Deliverable: the signed sheet (or solo declaration), photographed, filed in _business, plus a three-sentence note on the hardest line to fill and why.

C2. The four-desk walkthrough. Research and document — then execute when ready — the registration evening for your situation: (1) your country's open-enrollment PROs: current fees, writer + publisher mechanics, and which you'd join and why (two sentences, not twenty tabs); (2) your mechanical collective (US: The MLC) — eligibility and what work data it wants; (3) your digital-performance organization (US: SoundExchange) — and every role you'd register in; (4) copyright registration — find the current fee and the group-registration option for unpublished works. Deliverable: a one-page checklist with links replaced by organization names, fees as of your writing, and a calendar date for execution relative to your release.

C3. Registration reconciliation audit. Line up three documents side by side: your split sheet, your distributor's metadata (Chapter 35's writer-credit fields), and your PRO work registration (or the draft of it). Check character for character: legal names, splits, song title. Deliverable: a discrepancy list (even if it's "none") and the fix for each. If you released anything before this book, audit one old release too — leaks live in back catalog.

C4. The royalty-flow trace. Pick three events for your own track: one on-demand stream, one hypothetical bar/coffee-shop play, and one hypothetical TV placement. For each, draw the river: every royalty triggered, which copyright it attaches to, who collects it, and — the audit step — whether you, today, are registered to receive it. Mark each flow ✓ (positioned to collect), ✗ (leaking), or — (not applicable). Deliverable: the three diagrams plus your leak list, ranked by which registration fixes the most flows.

C5. The sync-readiness audit. Inventory your track against the chapter's sync-ready package: instrumental printed? Clean version (if needed)? Stems exported and labeled (Chapter 19)? Broadcast-quality master at arm's reach? Metadata answering BPM/key/mood/themes? Ownership answerable in one sentence (your C1 sheet)? Deliverable: a one-page "sync one-sheet" for your track — title, artist, contact, one-stop statement, sample status, BPM/key, three mood tags, available versions — the document you could send a supervisor within the hour.

C6. The sample audit, paid off. Chapter 13 flagged it; settle it now. List every non-original sound in your track: loops, one-shots, vocal chops, presets with baked-in audio, anything borrowed. For each: source, license status (original / licensed pack / cleared / interpolated / unresolved), and where the receipt or license text lives. Read one of your sample packs' actual license — the whole thing, it's a page — and note one permission it grants and one thing it prohibits. Deliverable: the audit table, filed with the split sheet; any "unresolved" row gets a decision in writing.

C7. The cover-flow dry run. Pick a released song you'd genuinely cover. Document the exact path to legality through your distributor's category: where the cover gets declared, how the mechanical licensing is handled in their model (fee? deduction?), what metadata must say (their names as writers, not yours), and the two boundaries that would knock you out of the compulsory zone (video; transformation). Deliverable: a five-step checklist you could hand a bandmate. Don't release it — this lab is the paperwork rehearsal.

C8. The session-release kit. Draft a one-page session musician release for your own use: fee acknowledged, rights in the recorded performance assigned/waived, credit spelled out, signatures and date. Plain language beats legalese you don't understand — and per the chapter's honest list, a real work-for-hire situation with real stakes is lawyer territory; this kit is for the fifty-dollar-bassline afternoons. Deliverable: the template, filed in _business, plus one sentence on when you'd refuse to rely on it.

Part D — Synthesis

D1. The band memo. A four-piece band asks you to settle their ownership before their EP drops: the guitarist writes the riffs, the singer writes melodies and lyrics, the rhythm section "just plays" but the drummer invented the half-time flip that defines the single, and the bassist paid for mastering. Write the memo: composition splits per song (with your reasoning about riffs, arrangements, and the flip), the master table, what the mastering money does and doesn't buy, and the one organizational document the chapter's lawyer list says they need before anyone quits.

D2. The beat-lease ladder. You sell beats. Design a three-tier offer — non-exclusive lease, premium lease, exclusive — and for each tier specify, in two-copyrights vocabulary: what's licensed versus transferred on the composition, what's licensed versus transferred on the master, what limits apply (streams, term, territory), and what happens to previously sold leases when the exclusive sells. Close with the split-sheet instruction you'd attach for every buyer's eventual song.

D3. The viral emergency. A friend's self-released song is suddenly doing big numbers — and they're registered with a distributor only. No split sheet (one co-writer, a roommate who "helped with the hook"), no PRO, no MLC, no SoundExchange, no copyright registration. Write their priority-ordered week: which conversation happens first and why, which registrations stop the biggest leaks soonest, which money is already pooling somewhere recoverable versus likely lost, and which single item on the list is genuinely time-sensitive because of the infringement-remedies clock.

D4. The admin-deal decision. Using the chapter's tradeoff framing (T3 to the bone): a songwriter with forty registered works earning modest but growing composition royalties — increasingly from foreign territories — is offered an admin deal at a mid-teens commission, no ownership taken. Write the two-column ledger: what self-administration actually costs (enumerate the desks, including the foreign ones she'll realistically never reach), what the commission costs at her scale, and the crossover condition where your recommendation flips. Name the contract terms you'd still read carefully (duration; what happens to pipeline royalties at exit).

Part M — Mixed Practice

Interleaving from earlier chapters — closed book first, then verify against the chapter named.

M1 (Chapter 21 + 33). Your collaborator sends "final" stems peaking at -0.3 dBFS with the mix bus kissing 0, and asks you to master to "around -10 LUFS integrated." Name the gain-staging problem, the print spec you'd request instead, and why the loudness target is a conversation about the music rather than a number to hit (what does normalization do to it anyway?).

M2 (Chapter 22). A mix feels veiled and congested; the spectrum analyzer shows a pileup between 200 and 400 Hz across pad, guitar, and vocal low-mids. State the subtractive-first fix, the matched-loudness rule that keeps you honest while you make it, and the arrangement question Chapter 20 taught you to ask before EQing anything.

M3 (Chapter 7 + 11). A bright-voiced singer in an untreated bedroom keeps getting harsh, sibilant takes on a budget condenser with a presence peak. Give the complement-don't-compound mic move, the two free position changes that tame sibilance at source, and the gain target for the take.

M4 (Chapter 35 + this chapter). You're uploading a single: the distributor form asks for artist name, writer credits, and offers an ISRC. Name the consistency rule for each field across releases, which of the three feeds the composition's plumbing, and the two registrations this chapter says those writer credits must match exactly.

M5 (Chapter 28). Kick and 808 are fighting again on a new beat. Describe the sidechain setup that resolves the relationship (key input, what ducks, the two aesthetic poles of the release setting), and the bypass-test ritual that decides whether the technique earned its insert.