At some point before you publish, it might be good to recruit some reviewers, both for text typos, and to make sure that the harmonizations follow whatever conventions you intend. With sufficiently many eyeballs, finding bugs becomes trivial.
Ryan, is there any chance you could post the Introit and Communion (A) for the Eighth Sunday Ordinary Time? Before Thursday? We have a substitute organist for the Sunday who can't ad lib. Thanks!
Attached is a PDF of where it stands right now. Proofreading help is welcome.
Verses should be good. I just finished proofreading those today. I'm pretty confident that the antiphons are ok harmonically, but if you find anything strange in them let me know. Parallel octaves and 5ths are mostly avoided ... sometimes passing/neighboring tones justify them ... but if you find anything glaring like in the previous example I posted, please do point it out.
Also, if the way syllables are split up in the antiphons seems odd at any point, please point that out. I tried to stick to the way they appear in the SEP book, and otherwise just went on what I'm accustomed to seeing. I don't know any steadfast rules to follow with that, so let me know if anything looks odd to more expert singers.
Tomorrow I am going to begin editing the antiphons ... ties, slurs, and staff spacing. You'll see how cluttered they are right now - all of that has to be dragged into place manually.
Ignore the blank pages and staves at the start/end, those will get trimmed later. Also, any missing antiphons or verses are because they are repeated elsewhere. Once everything is formatted they'll just be copy/paste work.
Also need help for any missing ties. If there are repeated harmony notes, they should be tied together unless there is a full bar or system break between them. (In the absence of a full bar, they are intended to be tied, but it looks cleaner without ties across system breaks.)
I wouldn't worry so much about the "missing" ties, since idiomatic accompanying on the organ would have such repeated accompaniment notes tied by the player anyway.
I flipped through the Easter section briefly yesterday. I'm sure you're aware that there are currently three different kinds of formatting for "last time only" chords, cf. pp. 176, 186, 206, 252, 266.... (Ryan, I'll send you particulars on the Easter pages once I go through them more systematically.)
Besides the items Ryan mentioned, we proofreaders might also keep an eye out for these kind of things: p220, double bar at end of antiphon; p253, capitalize "lord" in the verses.
The different ending formats have different reasons: -Black parenthetical notes are optional to include after the written chord, but never the final time through ... something to keep it from sounding harmonically resolved if verses are to follow or the antiphon is going to be repeated. -Those labelled "last time only" explain themselves -Sometimes the material surrounding it justifies notating with the different ending brackets. I just woke up and can't remember what that reason is exactly.
I intend to include a short intro / performance notes which will explain these and some other things.
Finished editing the ties, slurs, and system spacings. I'm going to comb through word spacings in the antiphons and a list of errors sent by nun_34 (including some misplaced verses in the Easter season) and post a readable, useable draft in a few days.
Most glaring issue so far is the font exports with what looks like spaces after italic letters in the verses. It doesn't look like that in Sibelius but it does when exported to PDF. Hmm.
Does your PDF export or print-to-PDF program allow you to pick the resolution? Most of the less-featured/low-budget programs print only at 300dpi. I use (the free version of) PDF995, which is very good print-to-PDF program, in that it allows you to select the PDF resolution - and I regularly set it to print at 2400dpi, with excellent results (even though my best real printers only print at 600dpi).
582 and 606 are missing in the PDF. They're fixed now.
The PDF generator is built in to Sibelius. I noticed its also exporting the font at a different resolution than the music (font looks fuzzy on my computer). I'm going to try CHGiffen's suggestion and see how this works.
I tried PDF995 and it has a similar problem. The output is a little clearer overall, but it still has the spacing issue and the text is still fuzzy. I think its an issue with the font itself ... Original Garamond off a fonts website. I'll mess with some others ... if you have any suggestions I'll try them out.
Then it must be the font itself. I use Palatino Linotype with much success and satisfaction in virtually all of my editions. Also, is there an option in Sibelius (as there is in Finale) to use fonts and/or resolution from from printer (as opposed to using them from the screen)? I'm not sure this would make a difference, but it might.
Ok I found Garamond Premier Pro, which is what the original book used. I had trouble finding it before but St Google interceded kindly today. Doesn't seem to have any issues with the italics, nor to have created any other spacing issues.
Check out the updated version attached here
This is still using the Sibelius PDF export, as PDF995 creates files too large to attach.
Here are two parts of it. Strangely, any PDF exported beyond this point comes out too large. Even a hundred pages at a time comes out to 2.38MB ... larger than the complete file. Huh?
A couple of design tips: (1) If you put the page numbers in the corner of each page, it's handy for readers. (2) Also, a page footer next to the page number can help: For example, "Fourth Sunday of Advent / 27" on the right-side page and "26 / Fourth Sunday of Advent" on the left-side page.
Here's the whole thing (without the above suggestions, yet).
(1) The page numbers are easily moved. I like the look better now that I've tried it.
(2) The footers would need to be entered manually. I can probably knock that out this weekend if you think the results are desirable. I like how it looks, check out the second attachment. I removed the name from the top of the file in this example, because it seems redundant to have it at both places. Another advantage of moving them down like this is to use the full names. Some of them are abbreviated when placed at the top, ie: Assumption of BVM, instead of Assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary, which looks cluttered on top (in the current format, anyway) but would be just fine as a footer.
I really like the look in the second attachment here. Let me know what you think.
I think having footers stating what Mass it is would be a desirable feature. I like the look as well.
Here's what I would do: on the first page the of each Mass (IE above the introit), provide the heading full size on the top with the title, and on the bottom, provide the page number only. On every other page of that Mass, lay it out as you have in attachment no. 2. Repeat for each Mass.
update- All titles and footnotes are created. Now they just need to be manually dragged into place (they're splattered amongst the pages they pertain to). Adding these served as an additional opportunity for proofreading on my part. Noticed a missing antiphon on the 26th Sunday and a couple of misnomers in the antiphon labels (those, of course now deleted and corrected in their respective footnotes).
Hmm. Still wont accept it. But everything's there in the split file or in the Sib export.
So, pending further edits, I guess its time to figure out licensing and publishing details. Does this need to be licensed under creative commons at all? What about ISBN? That doesn't seem necessary for something like this. I'll investigate some self-publish sites, if anyone has suggestions please share.
Also, most of the sites seem to have a page limit in the 400's for spiral bound, so I think that it might be necessary to split into two volumes. They'd also be a little less unweildly than a 650+ page item. Might cost more though.
Createspace is Amazon's POD service. Lulu is good too.
ISBNs are expensive because publishers have to buy them in blocks. Createspace and other POD providers will assign you one as psrt og the setup process.
To participate in the discussions on Catholic church music, sign in or register as a forum member, The forum is a project of the Church Music Association of America.