Can One Set English Psalms Using the Bloomfield Psalm Tool?
  • francis
    Posts: 10,668
    I have demonstrated on this forum how I set English Psalms using ID, but I’m wondering if it can all automatically be done using the psalm tool. Has anyone done this?
  • francis
    Posts: 10,668
    hmmm.... hours later... have I finally come up with a stumper?!
  • GerardH
    Posts: 411
    I've not had much success with his psalm tool unfortunately. I generally use his transcription tool instead, because at least it manages the matching of notes to syllables
    Thanked by 1francis
  • francis
    Posts: 10,668
    O well… I was hoping to use this tool before tomorrows mass. Guess it’s back to InDesign.
  • Chrism
    Posts: 868
    I think this used to work. It might be worth an e-mail to the maintainer - perhaps it would be a quick bug fix.
    Thanked by 1francis
  • francis
    Posts: 10,668
    Sent today

    Hi Mr Bloomfield

    Thank you for your chant tools.

    Is it possible to cut and paste English verse from the psalms into the tool and get a resulting manuscript for my grade school schola? We sing the RP for every Friday weekday Mass and presently I point the psalms in ID manually. If your tool did the job it would save me a good bit of time and effort.

    Thanks again
    Francis Koerber
    Thanked by 1Chrism
  • francis
    Posts: 10,668
    Response from Mr Bloomfield

    You may be able to, though I haven't done much testing with it. You'd have to select the English checkbox above the psalm textbox in the upper right, and mark the final syllable(s) with an asterisk immediately following the accented vowel. (e.g., exa*mple) and if it incorrectly syllabifies something, you can force a different syllabification with equals signs, putting the equals sign immediately following the word to indicate a word of one syllable (e.g., e=quals sign=). However in English the final accent is often on the very last syllable, which the psalm tone tool does not know how to handle, and it appears to give up right now if the final syllable is marked as accented, so you may not really be able to use it.

    God bless,

    Benjamin Bloomfield
  • GerardH
    Posts: 411
    I'd say you'll still get more than half way there with his transcription tool. Set the language to English, paste your text in the box on the left, and then just type the notes separated by spaces on the right. It's much faster than typing out gabc code in full; it handles the syllabification for you, and you don't have to constantly type open parenthesis, closed parenthesis ad nauseam.

    It certainly sounds faster than InDesign - but then I'd love to know what your workflow is since you use it regularly.
  • francis
    Posts: 10,668
    Here is how I presently use InDesign to point psalms.

    http://myopus.com/preview/respPsalmDemo.mp4
    Thanked by 1GerardH
  • francis
    Posts: 10,668
    Here is futzing with the Psalm tool as Mr. Bloomfield suggested... hard to overcome the oddities.
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