MusicWeb International article

You can see an article I wrote in April 2012 about the genesis of my YouTube channel on MusicWeb International.  Click this link to read it.

Scanning music scores

I make big use of score-sharing websites - IMSLP and others - to get hold of public domain scores that I would never have found in the second-hand music shops or music libraries I used to visit in the UK.  Most have, alas, now closed down or restricted their activities.  However, although much music is now available from these sources, few people contribute new scores.  I encourage anyone who has old scores that are not already available online to scan and upload them before they crumble away.  

My own technique for scanning music is:

• Scan the plain title pages and music sheets with a setting of Black and White (not grayscale) at 300dpi - this gives a readable output, and keeps the file sizes down.  I use a standard A4 size scanner, but would use a larger one if I had one!  It can be difficult to position large-size sheets on the scanner to get all the content in, but it is worth persevering.
• If there is some good cover art, scan this and upload as a separate page in colour so that people have a choice of whether to view or download the larger file.  Note that one of the major score contributors, the Eastman School of Music Sibley Library does this, as here.  You can see from the stats on this this example page how many more people download the music than the cover art.
• I have the excellent PaperPort software (an old version that came with the scanner) to manage the scanning process and process the scanned pages.  The features I use are:  
• rotating the pages (sometimes you have to scan pages upside down); 
• erasing marks on the scanned pages and black areas around the edges of your scans.  Remember that printing ink is one of the most expensive fluids on the planet.
• aligning the pages vertically where they have been scanned crookedly.
• putting the pages in the correct order (stacking them).
• After doing this I end up with a stack of sheets on the Paperport desktop.  I then print this stack using a virtual PDF printer.  I use the free PDFCreator which will create a single PDF document out of the stack, that is ready for uploading.  Note that the printer settings should match the scans - so set the printer quality as  Black and White, 300dpi.  This is really important as you will otherwise end up with a far larger file than you (or the end user) need.
• If you follow my suggestions, other than the colour cover art page(s) each black and white sheet should add no more than about 70Kb to the file size (eg, a recent scan of a six-page 19th century salon piece which I did resulted in a file of 384Kb).  Again this is important as making the files too big wastes bandwidth (for uploading) and space on servers and local storage media.
• Finally, when naming files, put the composer's surname first, followed by the work and opus number if possible - eg.  'Grieg - Piano Sonata Op. 7.pdf' .  This will help anyone downloading the file to their digital collection to identify it.  File name lengths are not as restricted as they once were.

When handling scores scanned by others, you may find that they have not followed the above suggestions, and you may be forced to use a file that is much larger than it need be.  A particular problem is with scans done in colour where the background comes out as cream or yellow.  This makes them very hard to print in black and white.  I recommend processing the file before printing with the interesting A-PDF to Black/White software which will analyse the files and convert the backgrounds to white.  You will need to test each file out to get the right setting so that you do not lose any faint content or convert areas of scanned 'dirt' or shadow turned to black.  This software is also very useful for processing scanned manuscripts where the composer has written in pencil or a colour other than black.

" Why do my wrists hurt when I play piano? "

A viewer to my YouTube channel posed the following question "Why is it that sometimes when I play the piano for over an hour my wrist hurts,especially when I play that song [a Clementi sonatina]? Most of the times I play once a week. Are the pain in my wrists normal? I am 38 years old."  

I have suffered from short-term wrist pains once in a while.  For me there are only three causes:

• Hitting the piano too hard.  Many years ago I accompanied an operatic society chorus singing 'With cat-like tread' from Gilbert & Sullivan's 'Pirates of Penzance', which has sudden loud chords.  I was playing a Steinway in a large theatre, and I hit the chords harder than I would on smaller pianos, and had a wrist-ache for a month afterwards!
• Sitting at the piano at the wrong height.  I always play so that my lower arm rests very slightly lower than the top of the keys.  Others will like different heights.  I am very particular about getting this right, else I certainly would suffer from a wrist ache after only a short practice session.
• Having stiff shoulders.  I like to play with the whole arms - there is a balletic aspect to music making whatever instrument you play.

If you think about each of these points maybe you will find the answer.  Wrist pain is certainly not normal at 38.

Is every piece of music a song?

Looking at the comments on the (mainly classical) pieces recorded on my YouTube channel, I am struck by how common it is for young musicians to refer to every piece they play as a ' song '.  A common comment I get is 'I'm learning this song', and a teenage violinist called me the other week to ask if she could rehearse with me some 'songs' she was learning (they were all classical pieces).  This is a very recent linguistic development, and probably stems from marketing blurb for digital downloads.  For example, the iTunes website has the following: "The music you love (and have yet to discover) is just a click away. You’ll find millions of high-quality, DRM-free songs on the iTunes Store all for just 69¢..."  (my emphasis)

So, for many, music = songs.  Perhaps the late Henryk Górecki saw this coming when in 1976 he subtitled his 3rd symphony 'Symphony of Sorrowful Songs'!  There is no harm in it at all but it maybe shows that people are losing sight of the context of music they listen to or play.  The lack of contextual knowledge often shows up when I accompany student violinists at music festivals.  They will typically announce their piece like this: 'I'm going to play Concerto in A Minor by Vivaldi' - when actually they are only playing a single movement from a three-movement work.

For those going on to study music as a profession at universities or conservatories, it must be a steep learning curve to get the background knowledge needed to write dissertations, programme notes etc., when it does not seem to be provided in many schools (certainly in UK).

The X Factor

Well, this is a long way from the so-called 'classical' music in which I specialize, but I am interested in all aspects of live performance.  I follow both the UK and USA versions of the show, and am on the lookout for the really individual act with the potential to do more than bland covers of pop songs.   I guess I would like to see the next Björk emerge.  I do have some gripes with the format of the show, and in particular:

• The amount of 'padding' (clips from past shows, backstage material etc.) and commercial breaks is enormous, and seems to grow as the number of contestants declines.  I try to avoid watching the show live, and instead record it and fast-forward through everything except snippets from any interesting acts and the judges' comments.  That way I save at least an hour per show, and I am sure plenty of others do the same.
• There seems to be a difference between the demographics of the people who vote for contestants on the shows and the people who buy records, and I have always felt that the telephone voters are mainly women, which probably favours the male contestants - analysis of the published voting figures for part series of the UK shows supports this theory.  The same does not seem to apply to recording sales and downloads - for example, the Billboard.com Digital Songs chart for the week of November 26, 2011 showed four female solo artists and three male solo artists in the top ten.
• I am irritated by the 'arena-type' costuming and choreography (particularly on the UK show) - when the aim of the show is apparently to find a top recording artist, who only needs to perform well in a studio rather than a stadium.  The best shows are the final audition shows where the contestants perform with just piano or a very small band, and can show their intimate side.
• Finally, can the producers please use live bands for all the shows (like American Idol).  If that's expensive, just reduce the judge's fees to compensate.  I'm sure there are lots of celebrities out there who would do the job for next to nothing just for the publicity!

Welcome

This is my first venture into the blogosphere.  I intend to use this page to discuss points arising from my YouTube channel, PSearPianist and the comments on my videos, and also give my views on other music-related topics.