Update

[catsittingstill]

I have finished the easy songbook (well, except for converting all the open office files into pdfs and stitching them together and making the cover and stuff, but I have finished all the song pages.)

And I have entered music and lyrics for three songs and lyrics for a fourth and now have at least the first verse and chorus of the melody in sheet music for every song.  And I'm wondering how I want to handle the sheet music songbook.  Should I write all the verses under the notes, like a hymn?  Should I write the extra verses in a text box?  Should I try to write out all the harmonies or is just the melody enough?  I need to make some decisions on this in the next few days.

Comments

[randwolf]

Westerfilk wrote out the first verse under the notes, and then gave the following verses separately.

B.R. (before recording) the sheet music of a song was the composer's definitive arrangement. I've worked with 19th century sheet music and it was complete. Nowadays, musicians often rely on recordings for that information, but it's not possible to tell from a recording what's important and what's an idiosyncrasy of the recording. So if you're proud of the harmonies, I think writing them out makes sense.

[catsittingstill]

It's interesting to know how they handled it back then. However most filkers can't turn pages while playing (I'm guessing) so I think the verse-to-verse variations in rhythm is just something people are going to have to work out for themselves.

I have thought it over and my plan is to 1) include the harmonies, since I had several requests for same on LJ and 2) write out the verses hymnwise under the notes unless the song has more than 4 verses, in which case I will write them in a text box under the last staff.

Of 21 songs I have about six that are ready to go. Sigh.