Re: [fasola-singings] Re Using an iPad to sing from

[Robert McKay]

It occurs to me to wonder if, in the future, there might not be an electronic edition of The Sacred Harp as well as a hard copy edition.  More and more books are coming out in both, and some only in electronic editions if I'm not mistaken.  By the time there's a new edition of the Denson book (which I don't think will be necessary for some time yet) people with reading devices may well be in the majority of those who read (alas, some people don't - I work with a guy who says he's never read a book since he graduated from high school, and seems proud of the fact), and certainly they'll be more common than they are today.  And since there's no need to set type, print pages, and bind books with an electronic edition, they're cheaper to produce than hard copies (I have no idea whether their price reflects this<g>).

 

The current edition came out when the Worldwide Web was only two years old, and few people, even in cyberspace, had anything to do with it.  I can remember when having a "home page" was a new and uncommon thing.  FaceBook didn't exist, nor did Twitter, nor did electronic readers.  CDs were uncommon if they existed at all, and Windows 3.1 was the latest version.  But in another 20 years or so, which about when I anticipate another Denson edition coming out (I may be wrong on that score<bg>) the changes we've seen in the last 20 may seem like nothing compared to what's happened by then.

 

And in the meantime, it may eventually be worthwhile to  put the current edition in electronic format.  There aren't as many singers as there are people who'll buy the newest book by Stephen King, but more and more of us will get into the 21st century (eventually I may make it into the 20th<lol>).    :)

 

Robert McKay (goffsca...@juno.com)
Sacred harp singing rules!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
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[Morris]

If it does it'll need a slick table of contents if anyone want to use it at a singing.
I hate dealing with PDFs on my Kindle. I've also discovered that e-books and e-readers are not much fun at a Shakespeare reading/study group. "Go to scene 4, line 24." By the time I found it the rest were halfway through reading it.

Morris

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[j frankel]

I'm one of those people whose body's electromagnetic field doesn't, apparently, generate the necessary electromagnetic oomph (a highly technical term) to easily operate an I-Pad; I can get the picture to get bigger or smaller by the proscribed screen-stroking motions all right, but it takes me 15 minutes to get "want to set up an account at Zappo's" & "want to read your (my sister's, as it's her I-Pad) mail" to go away whenever they pop up, & they pop up a *lot*.

On a real computer I'd just click on the "X" in the upper right corner to kill the darn thing; on the I-Pad, I apparently have to tap it "just right", & it takes 15 minutes for it to finally respond to one of my taps.  I'm serious about this; Apple tablet products (I've not yet interacted with any other company's) have the sensitivity levels set to pick up fields the human body generates, rather than a pressure-sensor, & I'm just not generating strong enough fields via my fingertips; my sister is having much the same problem too.

If they stop printing the book I'll have to get a real laptop on which to read it.  If I ever want to get to the right page in time.

[Clarissa Fetrow]

I went by car to the Portland Convention in October, so it was easy to bring my copies of Denson, Cooper, Christian Harmony, Trumpet, Shenandoah Harmony, and I wound up joyfully using most of them over the course of the weekend.  And I bought a Northern Harmony while I was there.  But I can't/won't do that when I travel by plane.  If they were all in a contraption, that would be pretty nice.

I know some people who use Kindles or iPads to sing with, and so far they all report that as proficient as they themselves are at turning to the page that was just called, the contraption is often not fast enough to get them there before singing starts.  And the size or the glare of the screen can make it not easily readable.  And it can be very hard for two people to view a screen at once to sing from it.

But I have been in some fun conversations where we have imagined the possibilities coming down the line: someone calls a song, and all our contraptions turn to the song right away.  We can touch which part we are singing to have it highlighted, we can see when and who led that song where, we can access notes others have shared about that particular song, etc.  A [blissful or not] dawning is begun, no doubt about it.  

I think a day will come, maybe sort of soon, when buying the paper version of a tunebook will allow the buyer an electronic copy as well.  I love our paper versions, but oh the flexibility possible with contraptions is pretty great too.

Clarissa

Seattle, WA

[j frankel]

On Sat, Dec 8, 2012 at 1:36 PM, Clarissa Fetrow <clariss...@gmail.com> wrote:

But I have been in some fun conversations where we have imagined the possibilities coming down the line: someone calls a song, and all our contraptions turn to the song right away.  We can touch which part we are singing to have it highlighted

 

 

I will be game if someone writes the "app" that puts the right syllable under the right note.....

[Robert McKay]

On Sun, 9 Dec 2012 10:30:09 -0500 j frankel <ghos...@gmail.com> writes:

 

> I will be game if someone writes the "app" that puts the right syllable

> under the right note.....

 

Whether it's hard copy, digital, neither, or both, if the next edition of the book can do that I'll be a happy camper.  There are songs that always throw me off because the words are a measure away from the notes they go with.    :)

 

Robert McKay (goffsca...@juno.com)
Sacred harp singing rules!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
--------------------------------

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[Robert Stoddard]

The Shenandoah Harmony will be available both in print and electronically.  The electronic version has a distinct advantage: all the index entries are hyperlinked to the song.  Both editions have three indexes: tune name (including alternate tune names, when a tune is printed under more than one name), first line, and a "general index" that is, more or less, a composer/source index.  Other indexes (e.g., lyricist) will be available online.

Someone suggested that an electronic edition could have improved text underlay.  That desire is a reflection of over-scrunched typesetting in The Sacred Harp to honor historical pagination.  In The Shenandoah Harmony we have set tunes far more compactly than other recent collections (e.g. Norumbega Harmony, Missouri Harmony (2005), or Northern Harmony), with a minimum of text misalignment.  The electronic edition will be identical to the print edition -- quite literally, as each is being generated from the same Adobe PDF.  As I've learned typesetting hundreds of songs, there is a balance between having scrunched words and overly spread-out notes, and The Shenandoah Harmony typesetting team has spent hundreds of hours tweaking this balance and the word underlay to make the book as singable as possible.  I'd like to think that some program isn't going to improve this much!  By the same token, I think the same would hold for The Sacred Harp -- most singers will find it easiest to sing from an exact copy of the familiar pages.

Re pricing, there will be a discount for the electronic edition, but it won't be free.  There are fixed costs of creating and publicizing the book, so even though the incremental cost of producing an electronic copy is zero, the price can't be.  The music committee is still considering what final pricing will be.  I'm sure an electronic edition of The Sacred Harp or the new Cooper edition would also carry a price.

btw, I'm sure that Karen could supply an electronic edition of the Cooper book; she's been singing from her iPad for much of 2012.

[Rachel Hall]

Anyone who would like to try shape note music on an eReader - a 100-page demo ebook of the Shenandoah that Robert mentioned is now available free to anyone who joins our mailing list:
http://www.shenandoahharmony.com/2013/demo-shenandoah-harmony-electronic-edition/

I'd be really interested in hearing your experiences with the eBook, either by replying to this thread or by contacting me off-list.  One person reported a problem with the Kindle but everyone else who tried it seemed to be OK.  I even have one on my phone.

One cool thing is the ability to add lots of indices without any cost in weight.  I'd love to have a Sacred Harp like this (hint, hint) not so much for singing but for research & study.

best,

Rachel

[Rachel Hall]

UPDATE: The Shenandoah Harmony is now available for sale for $12 as an eBook through our web site.  In addition to the 469 songs in the print book, the eBook has 35 pages of additional indices, including fuller composer and source indices, a chronology of songs, texts sorted by author, and indices of meters, choruses, fugue entrances, and songs with fewer than four parts.  All the page numbers in the indices link to the songs.  You can also freely print and photocopy most pages of the eBook.  http://www.shenandoahharmony.com/2013/buy-the-electronic-edition/

It is a hyperlinked PDF with no digital security, other than your name appearing on every page (we figured that the singing community already operates on trust!)  It should work on pretty much any platform; I even put a copy on my phone.

So this is our first experiment with eBooks... So far, sales have been good.  Although I prefer the print book, I find the eBook is an advantage for traveling, especially for "alternative" singings where you might need a lot of books.  Plus, the indices are fun.

best,

Rachel