Can you create your own lead sheets if the song is covered under CCLI?

Question:

Regarding contemporary style songs covered under CCLI: If downloaded lead sheets are covered if you get them directly from CCLI, can you create your own lead sheets (in easier to sing keys) if the song is covered under CCLI? Sometimes I need to transpose these by at least a third or fourth to put them in a better range.

Response:

Transposing is not the same as arranging. There is no prohibition in the copyright law against transposing protected music, unless you're making copies. Read on…

Question

What about whole arrangements that need transposition? Many of these worship songs were written for tenor voice, which puts it too high for most of the congregation and even for me, as I am a mezzo and sing it in the treble range. My accompanist is wonderful at classical, baroque, and modern; but he is clueless about contemporary popular and rock styles he is not familiar with. Sometimes I would prefer he use the arrangements as performed on the contemporary worship albums. When he improvises with a lead sheet, it often comes out all wrong stylistically. It's great when I can just have him play it the way it was arranged for the recording, but then we are stuck with a key that is too high for most of our voices. Is it legal to purchase an arrangement and then transpose it note by note into notation software as long as we are not doing it to avoid the purchase of the music?

Response:

Your second question poses a slight variation on the first. You're not asking if it is legal to enter copyrighted music into a music software notation program so that you can then create a duplication of the original in a different key. Since you don't mention making alterations to this music, I assume you are not making an arrangement of it — that you're merely transposing it. The law prohibits you from making changes without permission. You may not make a derivative arrangement without permission. The other part of the question presents a problem. While there is no prohibition against transposing music, the law does prohibit you from electronic storage of copyrighted music without permission. Since, by definition, you can't make a transposed printout without entering and storing it electronically, this use is not allowed by the law and would require permission of the copyright holder. It seems like a small hair that's being split here, but the law is clear about electronic storage of copyrighted music. The same hair is split when you talk about writing out a transposed version by hand. Here you're making a physical hard copy of the music in the new key, and this would then require permission.