Nfk

There has been some discussion in previous threads about what kinds of methods people use, but I don't know that I've heard of any magic program that makes it easy.

If you're really wanting a "database" kind of program, any program you can tailor to the specific things you want to keep track of for each of your songs probably will require you to decide what things you want to record - so you get any "general purpose database" and set up your own "record format" by telling it what "fields" to keep track of for each record. If you make a "record" for each piece of music, your fields might be things like "title," "alt-title," "composer," "lyricist," "key signature," etc.; but you decide what they're going to be.

If you have an "office suite" on your computer, you may already have a "database program" like Access or Lotus. There are freeware/shareware "database programs" available, but the "basic" ones will still be general purpose, and you'll have to set up the program to keep track of what you want it to.

A database program, set up to record the data you want, can record a lot more information in smaller file space than most other kinds of programs, but some people find setting them up and maintaining them cumbersome.

Quite a few people have mentioned using a spreadsheet program, often Excel, for this kind of record keeping. You just put the title in the first column, and each other "thing" you want to keep track of in a separate column in the same row.

I make do with just making a list in Word, putting each entry on a separate line, in columns. I list the song title, an abbreviation for what book it's in, page number, key, and a "code" to show a few other details. The code is M if it's a single line melody or S if it's a multipart score, "Ln" for number of verses of lyrics (3 verses would be L3, or V if it just give a single verse.

I only keep track of what I've got in books and sheet music in my own library, so I minimize the amount of info I need in the record and look at the books when I need full details. My record is mainly to keep track of which books I can look in, so it's really just an "index" rather than a database.

I set it up quite a while back, and the first time I got curious about "how big" it was getting was in Dec 1996, when I had 11,859 titles on 215 pages.

I currently show 38,840 titles, from ony 208 books and 233 CDs. The document itself is 647 pages and the file has grown to about 4 MB. That's pretty big for a Word 95 file, and probably more than old versions would handle well; but Word 2000 and later have a spec "maximum size" of 32 MB for documents, so I've got room to grow. (The spec maximum is a guide. I've got a couple of 85 MB documents that haven't crashed ... yet, probably because most of the "size bloat" is from the imbedded graphics.)

The point of what I've got in my index isn't to brag about how many songs I've got. It's to suggest that whatever method you choose should be able to handle a lot more than you think you'll need. Once you start putting all your sh.t in one bucket, it's amazing how much you've got.

John