In the past 24 hours, much attention has been given to a case of potential copyright infringement - the track in question being Zebra by John Butler Trio (official video below).

During this week's Super Bowl, an ad for yoghurt made by Dannon in the US has featured music sounding very similar in feel and melody to Zebra (video of this ad also below) .

Was this a case of unauthorised use of the John Butler Trio track? No, it is clearly a different recording. Is the music similar between the two? Yes.

Now here's the kicker. Is this an infringement of copyright?

Well...? Who's to say. Really - who's to say? Who will make a public, legal ruling that there has been an infringement of copyright in this case? I strongly believe NO ONE will. And I will stand corrected and surprised if this uproar amounts to anything more than an undisclosed out of court settlement between the two parties.

Why? Simple. Because music is very complex and questions of similarity are incredibly hard to quantify. The instruments used, pitch, speed, melody, number and placement of rests, time signatures, additional layers added or subtracted all have an impact on how "similar" one track may seem to another - and it is all subjective. But what is the threshold beyond which a track could be seen to infringe upon another?

As I discussed over 18 months ago, there is not likely to be a legal precedent set on music copyright infringement in cases like this any time soon, due to the inevitable opening of floodgates which would follow. All manner of claims of "this sounds like that" and "this bit is almost exactly the same as that bit" begin choking courtrooms.

When it comes to copyright infringement like this, who'll be the judge?

Some time ago I posted a few articles on LinkedIn groups asking for people's feedback to the question - what's the perfect soundtrack to a rainy day? As I type, I can hear rain falling on the tin roof of the sunroom outside my studio door. It's an awesome and relaxing sound.

Public access isn't available to most of the LinkedIn posts which provided feedback to this question, so I'll list the feedback I received here.

I must preface this by saying that these are the opinions of people who shared their thoughts with me. I am in turn sharing this with you, appreciating that music is very much about personal experience and taste. I would not wish to filter this list to exclude something you may also enjoy when the rain is falling around you.

So, in no particular order, here we go - 10 songs to listen to on a rainy day:

1. Sketches of Spain - Miles Davis
2. The Fountain soundtrack - Clint Mansell
3. Beneath An Evening Sky - Ralph Towner, Slava Grigoryan, Wolfgang Muthspiel
4. Summertime - George Gershwin
5. Pink Moon - Nick Drake
6. Rainy Nights In Georgia - Brook Benton
7. Monument - KiloWatts
8. Ommadawn - Mike Oldfield
9. It Feels Like Rain - Aaron Neville (composed by John Hiatt)
10. Cumulus Rising - Alex De Grassi

Enjoy.

_This past week has seen countless mentions of the 15 year old Korean girl, Park Ji Min, singing a cover of Adele's "Rolling In The Deep" on the Korean talent show KPop Star.

This is a talented young singer who did a great cover of the track. However I have a simple question:

Would we be as impressed by this performance if she was singing an original song?

Here in Australia I've seen this footage countless times this week and there are blogs all over the web mentioning the video. The media are certainly captivated by what she has done. But let's just be reminded that this is a very loyal performance of a song we have all heard before. Are we impressed by how like-sounding she is to Adele's original? Impressed by the young age? A combination of both?

I have written before of the way people listen to commercial radio and popular music - as it is generally easy, non-challenging and most of all familiar.

A greater level of talent would be required to not just nail a vocal performance, but to have actually composed the song. Again, I'm not discrediting this girl's performance. I am simply lamenting my belief that if she did compose an original song and perform it to the same level of expertise, we would probably never hear of it.

The sad, beautiful truth is that so much of the world's great original music will never find its audience.

For many years now, Apple have been selling the Airport Express, a small portable unit which can plug into a power point to create a simple wireless network.

One of the most popular uses of this device is to stream an iTunes library wirelessly from a desktop or laptop to a home stereo (potentially at the other end of the house / building).

This is a setup I enjoy at home myself, but getting it to work correctly is not always as "plug and play" as you would hope. My stable setup these days is the result of many bleary-eyed, late night Google searches for ways to improve signal strength and decrease dropouts.

If you are reading this post with similar trouble, hoping for some guiding light, I won't even begin to cover off all the potential solutions that have been offered over time (which you would likely have read to exhaustion already!).

However, other than the usual suspects of improving line of sight between your sending and receiving devices (minimizing distance and walls between the two), checking you have followed correct setup procedure, ensuring security settings are consistent between sending and receiving devices, not having your microwave running or any other electrical / magnetic interference nearby, etc etc, there is a less hit and miss opportunity to improve your streaming results...

The Channel your WiFi connection is transmitting on can be easily crowded by other communications nearby, including neighbour's WiFi networks and other equipment. The good news is, free tools are available to help check which WiFi channels provide greatest strength and least noise in your area. I have successfully used iStumbler for Mac though there are several other options including Windows-based solutions such as NetStumbler.

In summary these tools will scan and discover the wireless devices and networks having an impact on your own signal strength, giving you a quantifiable reason to choose one channel over another rather than trying each transmission channel in turn and hoping it makes a difference!

After a recent conversation with someone who had tried everything but never heard of this avenue, I thought it would be worth mentioning here.

Hope this helps you keep the music flowing nice and cleanly from your desktop / laptop to your remote speakers. Nothing is more frustrating than wireless audio dropouts!

_I was recently asked via a contact on YouTube whether the digital piano I play, the Yamaha P-155, is a good choice.

I have just replied and thought many other people could be wondering the same thing, as I did prior to making a purchase some time ago.

The detailed specs for the piano can be found on Yamaha's website. For those who are less interested in the numbers and specs, following is a summary of my responses to the questions I was asked earlier:

- Before I purchased, I had trialled the P-155 for touch and sound alongside some high end Kawai and Roland digital pianos and it stacked up easily as well (and in the case of the Kawai MP6 which is generally at a significantly higher price point, the P-155 sounded and felt better, more realistic, under the fingers).

- Many years ago I held the belief that keyboards with internal speakers were "low end", not as professional as those you have to plug in to external speakers. While sometimes a truism, this is not a solid rule. The quality of the internal speakers in the P-155 is fine, and part of the appeal for me with this model was the ability to sit down and just turn it on and play. Having played with synths in a studio environment for years, it is refreshing and more natural to have no need to put headphones on, turn speakers on, wait for the piano to boot up etc. It was closer to the experience of playing a real piano.

- Something you wouldn't think of and most people wouldn't think to mention - when you use a keyboard of some substance which has internal speakers, because the sound is created inside the keyboard there is a slight vibration you can feel through the keys as you play them - a sensation which feels a little more natural like the resonance generated by the strings of an acoustic piano.

- Like a wine, a car, or a restaurant meal, some people will judge an instrument's quality or lack thereof by price tag alone. This is a shame. Interestingly though, the Yamaha P-155 which retails in Australia for $2,199 actually uses the same AWM Dynamic Stereo Sampling sound engine as the Yamaha Modus H11 which retails for $18,999+. In other words, the wrapper may be different but the sound you're paying for is exactly the same.

As I did prior to purchasing, listening to and comparing clips of various piano performances on YouTube is a good way to get a feel for the quality of sound and sensitivity you can reproduce with various digital pianos. Hear the Yamaha P-155 put through it's paces further here.

Happy listening.

Last weekend I recorded a performance of my composition "Before April". In a strange coincidence, a few days later I read this post about the "Out Back Project", a 15-minute audio piece to be composed from the memories contributors have of their backyard. I immediately contacted the talent behind the project and am pleased to contribute my track as the score.

The title "Before April" refers to the time shortly before the arrival of my first child. At the time I was living in Sydney, in a unit, with a tiny grassed area flanked by a very tall graffitied concrete wall, the only thing separating us from the Gore Hill Freeway into Sydney.

I composed this track thinking of the complete unknown that lay ahead for us with the pending arrival, as I looked out to our very limited living space outdoors. That April we moved to Newcastle, returning to our roots, closer to family, in our first home with a large and varied outdoor environment for our little guy to explore. We have not looked back since, and the concrete wall I once saw from the window of my studio has been replaced with the top of citrus trees, rooves and an expanse of sky.

With that, please enjoy the track via the YouTube clip above. If it connects with you, you can download the track in the format of your choice from here. Enjoy.

As a music composer, it has been years since I've been able to settle for a default ringtone on a phone. Many years back, the ability to import your own short audio clips started appearing in the dominant phones of the day - Siemens, Nokia, Sony, Motorola...

Then a few years back it seemed every magazine and TV show within arm's reach of a gullible teenager offered a way to download the "latest hits" (Crazy Frog, anyone?) to their phone as a ringtone. Amazingly it's still occurring today.

If you're an iPhone owner, you've possibly already wondered at some point how you can get a different ringtone to everyone else, and expand that relatively limited default range of options. The number of apps in the app store to "help" you create ringtones is testament to the difficulty many people experience.

In reality, while not clearly communicated, it is quite easy to create your own ringtone from an existing audio track you have in iTunes (or you could contact me to create a custom ringtone for you!).

The following instructions are based on running iTunes 10.5 on Mac, however the process in older versions and on PC is quite similar:

1. In iTunes, highlight the audio track you want to use as your ringtone. It doesn't matter if it's too long or doesn't start at the point you want it to, you can sort this later...

2. Right click and select "Get Info".

3. Click the Options tab.

4. Check the boxes next to Start Time and Stop Time and enter in the times you want your ringtone to start and stop.

5. Click OK.

6. Right click on the same file again and choose "Create AAC Version".

7. You'll see a new, shorter audio file appear under your original file.

8. Right click on this new shorter file and choose "Show in Finder" (or "Show in Windows Explorer" if on a PC)

9. Change the extension of your audio file from ".m4a" to ".m4r". You may receive a warning message but that's fine, go ahead, make the change.

10. Swap back to iTunes and delete the short ringtone file you just created in Step 6.

11. Import the file you just renamed with the extention ".m4r" into iTunes.

12. Now just connect your iPhone and sync your playlist. You may need to drag the .m4r file into the Ringtones section on your iPhone.

13. On your iPhone, you can now choose this ringtone alongside all the old boring default ones!

Happy ringing! And please, no more of this...

My studio hard drive was running low on space recently, which meant an upgrade to my daily storage and backup systems.

The outcome of this was a transfer of my whole iTunes library from an internal disk to an external. The phrase "hindsight is always 20/20" could not be more true in this case, as in the process I managed to break most of the links iTunes had to its mp3 files! The effect - most files I attempted to play back through iTunes showed a dreaded exclamation mark warning that they would not play back correctly as the actual file could not be located. Argh!

After a little investigation, I ended up purchasing TuneUp. Read on - this is not simply an endorsement...

Most people - such as myself until recently - might remember TuneUp as being an annoying popup which appeared some time back whenever you launched iTunes (unless you disabled the popup).

The program promises to clean your iTunes library, adding in missing tags and missing cover art, generally tidying things up. It also offers to dedupe your library so that multiple instances of the same track are removed.

Now, let me be clear. TuneUp is not a simple matter of one click and everything is sorted. To be honest, I had a frustrating problem with the program in that many times while it was "cleaning" or finding missing info, it would hang. The program requires an internet connection of course, but even when all other browsing and online activity was fine, this thing would hang and need to be restarted to pick up where it left off. Frustrating, especially if you are cleaning a large audio library for the first time.

What is TuneUp good at? The hanging issue aside, it does a good job at finding missing cover art for your tracks. It also does a good job at filling out missing or incorrect detail such as album, track or artist titles.

Deduping seemed to be a little hit and miss for my liking. Especially given that my library contained a lot of broken links given the recent hard drive changes, TuneUp didn't seem to have an ability to prioritise a track in the iTunes library that it could find over one which was a broken link in the library. As such, even on manual review of each duplicate found, it was difficult to choose the correct one to keep.

How did I get around this? A big thank you to the authors of this post titled "How To Remove Broken Songs From iTunes Library". Following these steps, I was able to remove duplicates from my library relatively quickly and easily, ensuring that broken links were completely taken out of the picture.

In summary, if you can handle the frequent need to relaunch the program, TuneUp does a good job of adding missing tags to your audio tracks and finding missing cover art. But this is how to freely and easily remove broken songs from your iTunes library.

Recently my family and I went on a driving holiday up the East coast of Australia. We traveled 1985 kilometres, saw kangaroos, dolphins, whales, blue tongue lizards, beach, bushland, highway, dirt tracks, sunrise, sunset, caravans and high-rise buildings. It was brilliant.

But there is one thing we didn't find often in our accommodation along the way. A stereo.

During our travels we stayed in six apartments. Fortunately as we were travelling outside peak season, we were able to find some quite premium places to stay at significantly reduced cost. Great views, plenty of space, modern appliances, flat screen TVs (in one case three of them!) - but only one apartment had a stereo system.

I realised many years ago that when traveling, even more essential than clean clothes is the inclusion of a headphone jack to RCA connector - so that your portable CD player (in the "old days") or an iPhone / smartphone could be easily connected into the auxillary input of any stereo you find on your travels. A great way to unwind and feel a bit more "at home" in otherwise unfamiliar surroundings.

Dutifully I took my headphone to RCA connector on our trip but it was rarely used.

At first it crossed my mind that the lack of a stereo in each apartment could be due to a lack of space. But no. These destinations had ample space, plenty of vacant shelving and access to powerpoints.

Could it be to keep noise down? Surely not. Are the common massive televisions expected to be kept at a low volume any differently?

With the transportability of music now a reality and not a luxury, I remain surprised.

In one stopover, we had a great time listening to a selection of chilled music from my tinny iPhone speaker while we relaxed at the end of the day. It truly became the modern transistor radio.

I don't expect my readership extends broadly into accommodation-service-provider territory, but if I happen to do so I urge you to consider placing a small stereo system in each room you offer.

"We're all going on a silent holiday. No more music for a week or two...".

Recently I read about the launch of Google's new music-discovery service, Magnifier. While currently invitation-only and in beta, the plan is that the site will feature videos of live performances, interviews with artists as well as free music downloads. A Google Music account is required to access the songs.

With so many online services enabling the discovery of new music - such as
Pandora, Last.fm, The Hype Machine, Musicovery, Spotify, Grooveshark and many more - this update from Google beckons the question whether we as listeners really need another option.

Part of the joy of discovering music is the way in which it is discovered. Hearing it in a friend's car or home. At a party, or before a movie starts. In a cafe, in a bar. In a written review somewhere. The circumstances are literally endless. Music is everywhere and so too is our ability to discover it.

Choosing to create an account with an online service takes away part of the joy of organic music discovery.

Listen all the time. Not just when you're logged in.