Say you're a musician and you buy a new Yamaha synthesizer keyboard. This particular keyboard comes with hundreds of pre-programmed sounds. You use the synthesizer with one of the preprogrammed sounds on a recording. After the initial recording you edit the clip using pitch correction and hugely manipulate the effect before laying the sound to a CD. If this was to be copyrighted, is the use of this sound illegal?

All Answers To Questions

Depends on (1) whether Yamaha claims copyright in the pre-programmed sounds. (2) how much the original sound was "manipulated".

You can only copyright your own creative works. If your selection of words from a dictionary is creative, such as the message you are reading this instant, then it is (in theory) copyrighted the moment you create it. Nobody owns the copyright of the individual words or individual musical notes. Whether Yamaha owns the original sounds you use is irrelevant, even if they were copyrightable, as they have CLEARLY given you a license to use their sounds for your own performances, unless you signed an agreement to the contrary when you purchased the keyboard. That would be like a tool company claiming ownership of a patented invention merely because the inventor used their tools to create a new invention. Sorry; the law rewards creativity, not brute force.