Hello there! I am a high school student, and I am competing in the Science Olympiad competition. I am doing the Sounds of Music event. In this event, we have to build two instruments and perform two pieces. One of the pieces is of our choice, and I chose the "Pokemon Center Theme." The sheet music I chose for this is the version "Amoeba" transcribed. I had to arrange it to fit the instruments we built, and I also have to submit the sheet music for the judges' viewing. Under "Composer(s)," I wrote "Transcribed by 'Amoeba,' Arranged by Students." Under "Copyright," I wrote "Copyright- Ichigos.Com." Is this acceptable? Please let me know!

Ichigo's only holds copyright on content originally made by Ichigo's. (http://ichigos.com/legal) However, you are free to, in fact encouraged, to make a note somewhere that you downloaded the sheets from Ichigo's, you just can't claim Ichigo's is the copyright holder.

The reason for this is, most arrangements and transcriptions do not satisfy the requirement of sufficient new expression. Any derived arrangement of a song or tune that matches the melody and chord progression (and lyrics, for songs) of the original to a sufficient degree can't be copyrighted by the arranger. That's why it would be an error to portray Ichigo's as being the copyright holder.


For copyright protection to attach to a later, allegedly derivative work, it must display some originality of its own. It cannot be a rote, uncreative variation on the earlier, underlying work. The latter work must contain sufficient new expression, over and above that embodied in the earlier work for the latter work to satisfy copyright law’s requirement of originality. source (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Derivative_work)


For example, a lead sheet is the form of a song to which copyright is applied—if a songwriter sues someone for copyright violation, the court will compare lead sheets to determine how much of the song has been copied. source (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lead_sheet)

So under "Copyright," it would be better if I put "Copyright- Nintendo, Downloaded- Ichigos.Com"?
For the first part, what I wrote under "Composer" is acceptable then?

So under "Copyright," it would be better if I put "Copyright- Nintendo"
Edit: Either the publisher (Nintendo) or the developer (Game Freak) owns the copyright. It's also slightly possible that the composer (Junichi Masuda) himself owns the copyright, but this is highly unlikely. Most of the time, the composers works are owned by the company they contract under. His may be a special case though, since he's not just the composer, but also a major creative force behind the pokemon series (he's done programming, direction, design, etc), and he's on Game Freak's board of directors. He's not just your standard hired-help, in other words. He's a somewhat important person.

In the end, it's up to you to find out just who is the actual copyright owner.

Under composer you need to put the original composer of the music. If you still can add more information, then put the transcriber and arranger.