Miracle Piano

[Magic Russ]

I happen to own this keyboard, the Miracle Piano Teaching System. It has some of those cheesy sounds that might appeal to certain people. I thought it might be fun to turn this into some Kontakt instruments and maybe post or sell them.

I had originally thought that this was an FM based keyboard (probably because it did not sound any better than the FM soundcard I had in my PC at the time), but it seems that its sounds are sampled.

This was originally created by The Software Toolworks. They went out of business and some of the technology was incorporated into the Piano Discovery System by Jump! Music, who are also no longer in business.

I would like to know if there is any way of finding out if the samples in this keyboard are still under copyright and if so how to find out who owns them.

[SampleScience]

For the copyright, you can always look at the Library of Congress website, that's where I used look to know if a film is still under copyright:

https://www.loc.gov/

But I think that the website has been updated and the copyright registry seem to have been separated, you can search the copyright records here now:

https://www.copyright.gov/

I'm pretty sure no one would care if you put out a Kontakt instruments of this, since it was some kind of toy and your market don't overlap with theirs, but it's always better to get permission to make sure everything is legit.

[Magic Russ]

Thanks for the link. A quick looks shows a few transfers to companies that don't seem to be around any more, but at least its a place to start.