Payson man’s opus: Netflix in E minor

PAYSON — Kevin Bailey had an epiphany nine years ago while trying to play a new age tune on his piano.

The Payson music store owner tore pages of sheet music from a composition book because the book wouldn’t stay open on the music stand. But the pages kept falling off the instrument’s stand too, so he taped them together. Again, no luck.

That’s when it dawned on him: Digital sheet music.

Sounds simple, right? Bailey agrees. And now EMI Music Group and Sony are working with him to convert potentially thousands of tunes to his patented format whose roots were more garage band wonder than Silicon Valley startup.

The result is a musical version of Netflix, the popular online video rental service.

“I’m like the average next door neighbor who came up with this,” says Bailey, 45. “I just don’t want to see music die.”

Bailey’s background is steeped in music. He ran Schroeder’s piano and organ stores in Paradise Valley and MetroCenter malls while living in Phoenix. He moved to Payson, population 12,000, to escape the heat and co-found Payson Music Center in 1993.

He says he came up with paperless sheet music in 1998, but the tools to make it weren’t cheap enough at the time.

“No one’s gonna buy a music stand that costs a thousand dollars,” Bailey says. “And the proof is in the pudding because there are a couple of competitive models out there that do scoring and the page for you, but you still have to touch the screen or use a footpedal to change the page.

“But it’s still the motion,” Bailey adds, becoming annoyed at the thought. “It’s still taking your hand away from the instrument. You have to think of something other than just playing your instrument.”

So Bailey waited until gear prices dropped for DVD players, portable DVD viewers and laptops loaded with user-friendly software to create and present musical scores.

In 2005, he started scoring songs digitally for paperless sheet music. He began with songs in the “public domain” – tunes created before copyright laws were in place to protect them. Anyone can score these songs without paying the original artist a royalty. Classical music from composers like Mozart and Beethoven, for example, fall into this category.

Soon Bailey started reaching out to music industry shakers. He eventually found Milton Hopkins, of Hopkins Music Group in Austin, who agreed to work with record labels on Bailey’s behalf to secure rights to songs so that Bailey could score them digitally.

EMI Music Group, one of the world’s largest repositories for music, signed on and recently gave Bailey access to 2,700 songs. He scans them for tunes he think people will be interested in learning and playing. [Sony is also in talks with Bailey.]

Once Hopkins helps secure the rights, Bailey goes to work scoring each piece. He uses a network of six independent composers in Louisiana, Missouri and Arizona. One of them just graduated from Arizona State University with a degree in musical composition.

Each composer scores 10 songs and emails it to Bailey, who then adds the artwork using an Apple laptop. The assembly-line process takes about one month to create an album of digital sheet music.

Users can now go to the company’s website and individually select songs from Bailey’s growing library. They’ll get a CD in the mail within five days, Bailey says.

At press time, Bailey’s paperless sheet music catalog includes songs from country stars like Faith Hill and Tim McGraw, the Charlie Daniels Band and more. He even has television and movie themes from the Facts of Life, Ghostbusters, Rocky and James Bond, among others. [Bailey was recently pouring over tunes from classic rock stars like Phil Collins and Genesis.]

Bailey, 45, estimates that he has sunk $50,000 into the business so far. If he strikes it rich, Bailey says, he’ll stay in Payson.

If not, no big deal, Bailey says. It’s about getting people plugged into music, driving customers to his store and other “brick and mortar” music shops, and filling a void left behind by a beloved Rim Country music teacher.

He cites a recent Gallup poll done for the music industry that suggests people are ready for this plug-and-play setup. About 82 percent of respondents said they were interested in learning and playing music but didn’t know how or where to start.

Bailey also says the paperless sheet music is something that has driven more traffic to his store at a time when the music industry is shaky. He thinks it could do the same for other shops.

“I have a television sittin’ on a piano in the front of my store,” he says. “I just put it on and loop it, and it repeats over and over and over. I have more people talk to me about it and start up a conversation, and they’ve never been in the store before.”

And maybe the new tool will offset the dearth of musical instruction in the Payson area. Bailey says local schools haven’t funded a real music program since Ileane Gonzales, whose enthusiasm for music fueled the Rim Country Orchestra and three grade-school programs, passed away in 2000 at age 79.

“It’s really not about money,” he says. “It’s more about people being able to play music and simplifying it to a point that, you know, people say, ‘I’ve got a choice. I could sit here and watch the television, or I could pop in my DVD and watch my televsion and play something.”

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>>Email the editor at aklaw@zoniereport.com.