New songbook
May. 13th, 2007 09:29 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
catsittingstillOkay, it would make better sense to squee about this when I've posted it. But I worked on it untill 11 last night and I'm quite proud of it.
I have been getting requests for lyric sheets for the CD, and since I had all the lyrics and all the sheet music entered in the computer, I thought putting together a songbook wouldn't be any big deal.
Well, it turns out to be a slightly bigger deal than I thought, but it's done. There are lyrics and sheet music for all the songs, and lead sheets on the facing page for most of the songs, along with a page explaining a little bit about what each song was about, and some nice pictures to fill in empty spots.
I am totally impressed with Photoshop's ability to optimize pictures for the web, by the way. I tried it in a fit of whimsy, and discovered it reduced jpeg sizes by a factor of 10. With that plus reducing total pixel numbers (there's no need to insert an eight inch wide picture into a six inch wide space, when a six inch wide picture would work fine and takes up less bandwidth), I cut the size of the final songbook from 50 MB to 16.1MB.
But 16.1 MB still seems awfully big. For instance, it's big enough that I'm going to go up to Carson Newman to upload it. Should I just dump the pictures and leave blank space? There's a picture of Peter playing his dulcimer, a picture of Dave Alway blowing a horn at GaFilk's New Years Party, a picture of me in Patience, a page of pictures of Judi signing (they don't do her justice--but they will print on paper and movies won't, and anyway, I don't *have* a movie of Judi signing) and some mimmoth drawings.
It would be possible to make it available on CD, so that people who are sipping the net through dial-up can still get it if they want. And I'm not sure how much demand there will even be.
Let me know what you think. And watch this space for uploads.
I have been getting requests for lyric sheets for the CD, and since I had all the lyrics and all the sheet music entered in the computer, I thought putting together a songbook wouldn't be any big deal.
Well, it turns out to be a slightly bigger deal than I thought, but it's done. There are lyrics and sheet music for all the songs, and lead sheets on the facing page for most of the songs, along with a page explaining a little bit about what each song was about, and some nice pictures to fill in empty spots.
I am totally impressed with Photoshop's ability to optimize pictures for the web, by the way. I tried it in a fit of whimsy, and discovered it reduced jpeg sizes by a factor of 10. With that plus reducing total pixel numbers (there's no need to insert an eight inch wide picture into a six inch wide space, when a six inch wide picture would work fine and takes up less bandwidth), I cut the size of the final songbook from 50 MB to 16.1MB.
But 16.1 MB still seems awfully big. For instance, it's big enough that I'm going to go up to Carson Newman to upload it. Should I just dump the pictures and leave blank space? There's a picture of Peter playing his dulcimer, a picture of Dave Alway blowing a horn at GaFilk's New Years Party, a picture of me in Patience, a page of pictures of Judi signing (they don't do her justice--but they will print on paper and movies won't, and anyway, I don't *have* a movie of Judi signing) and some mimmoth drawings.
It would be possible to make it available on CD, so that people who are sipping the net through dial-up can still get it if they want. And I'm not sure how much demand there will even be.
Let me know what you think. And watch this space for uploads.
no subject
Date: 2007-05-13 02:03 pm (UTC)I would much prefer with the pictures, but I'm on broadband - I can leave a download running overnight if need be.
Would it be possible to have two versions, with/without pictures? Do you have download bandwidth / data transfer limits?
Re layout - will it work OK on international size paper as well as US size?
no subject
Date: 2007-05-13 02:18 pm (UTC)I suppose I could put it up, and have you be my guinea pig. If it's necessary to adjust things, my major problem will be the sheet music; I can adjust the margins on the word files easily, but NotePad is dumb as rocks and has no margin controls whatsoever and no way to adjust where the staves fall on the page except that changing the size of the lyric text makes everything re-flow and sometimes staves will fall more advantageously.