Adding lyrics and music

Subject: Adding lyrics and music
From: Ian Kirk, Kent, England
Date: 20 Dec 98 - 01:18 PM

Hi all

I just added a tune and some words and went back to the forum to see how it had been received. I see that the fotmatting has changed in that the carriage returns don't seem to have been recognised.

I typed the words and the ABC in Win 95 notepad and saved it is a text document before copying and pasting in to the "Enter message" box.

Can somebody advise on the best method to do this so I get the carraige returns and the tune and words look right

Many Thanks

Subject: RE: Adding lyrics and music
From: Roger in Baltimore
Date: 20 Dec 98 - 02:19 PM

Hello Ian,

Welcome to the world of HTML (HyperText Markup Language). It is a tool for formatting documents in web pages like this one. If you CLICK HERE you will find a thread that talks some more about this. If I recall this will also give you some links for web pages that explain all of this in more depth.

Don't feel bad, all of us novices stumble at first and type in lyrics that all run together. Using the notepad for composing is a good start, because all of the letters take up the same amount of space. Where you put in a return on Notepad, you have to type in <br>. This makes a line BReak. That is the most crucial one. We are still developing an acceptable technique for putting chords in songs. If you click on "Forum Search" on the Main Forum page and search for "HTML" (without the quotation marks) you will find several threads that discuss all of this.

I hope you catch on, it's not all that hard. You will find much to appreciate here and, of course, we all look forward to new lyrics.

Keep on 'Cattin'.

Roger in Baltimore

Subject: RE: Adding lyrics and music
From: Joe Offer
Date: 20 Dec 98 - 06:26 PM

Hi, Ian, I used my magic fixit button and added line breaks <br> to "John Appleby." Are there any others you wanted fixed?
-Joe Offer-

Subject: RE: Adding lyrics and music
From: Ian Kirk
Date: 22 Dec 98 - 02:49 PM

Sorry Joe didn't see see this first. I passed on my thanks in the John Appleby thread.

But thanks again anyway

What's this fixit button have you some magic macro that does the biz?

I suppose if you put a * at the end of each line then replace with
it would work with any WP that has a replace feature? YesNo?

Ian

Subject: RE: Adding lyrics and music
From: Roger in Baltimore
Date: 22 Dec 98 - 03:15 PM

Ian,

Yes.

Roger in Baltimore

Subject: RE: Adding lyrics and music
From: Joe Offer
Date: 22 Dec 98 - 03:42 PM

Hi, Ian - only a few people have fixit buttons. Max had the misconception that I could be trusted, so he gave me a button so I could fix things for people, so I do. Whether I can be trusted is quite another question. I don't know who else has fixit buttons - they're much sneakier about it than I am (or, should I say they're "more discreet"?).
I type lyrics in a word processor, and then use the "replace" function to search for paragraph marks. I replace the paragraph marks with a new paragraph mark and <br>. Your asterisk idea should also work.
I have a problem with the "replace" function with lyrics I've copied off the Web, since they don't have Microsoft Word paragraph marks. When I display the hidden characters in the text, there's a fancy-looking ¶ symbol for the paragraph marks, but I can't figure out how to search for that in Word. Can anybody tell me?
-Joe offer-

Subject: RE: Adding lyrics and music
From: The Shambles
Date: 22 Dec 98 - 03:50 PM

Joe No The Shambles

Subject: RE: Adding lyrics and music
From: The Shambles
Date: 22 Dec 98 - 03:54 PM

OOPs! I was showing off and shot myself in the foot. It should have read:

Joe

No

Roger in in Portland

Subject: RE: Adding lyrics and music
From: Joe Offer
Date: 22 Dec 98 - 03:58 PM

Joe No The Shambles

Hmmm. Sounds like

Three, three, the rivals

Which may well be my favorite line in all of folk music, since it's a great line to sing with gusto.

No, what, Shambles? That I can't be trusted? I thought we had already established that.
-Joe Offer-

Subject: RE: Adding lyrics and music
From: MMario
Date: 22 Dec 98 - 04:43 PM

-Joe -
I'm not sure what version of Word you are using. But if you are using the versions I am; when you do a replace you should have a "special characters" button. then under "find what" you just choose "paragraph mark". it may show you the "fancy character",{actually - if you turn on display paragraph marks in Word you will see this is what they use for their own paragraph marks.) it may just show ctrl-p or even ^p, but it DOES work......[just tested again to make sure]

try seaching the index in Word's "help" for replace - they have a more detailed description there....

MMario

Subject: RE: Adding lyrics and music
From: Joe Offer
Date: 22 Dec 98 - 06:01 PM

That's the problem, MMario. The paragraph mark in Word is ctrl-p, not ¶. I have Office 95/Word 95, and the problem I have is with documents that use the ¶ character for line breaks.
-Joe Offer-

Subject: RE: Adding lyrics and music
From: Pete M
Date: 22 Dec 98 - 08:18 PM

High Joe, not sure if its universal but the International Lyric server for example seems to use a soft return at the end of lines (sorry can't find a copyable example of the displayed symbol, it isnt defined in Courier New and I don't want to start experimenting with changing fonts in the middle of this, but it looks like a leftward pointing arrow with a vertical bar at the tail going up). You generate them in Word by using shift return. In the "Special" drop down list of the "Replace" pop up its listed as "Manual line break" (^l) Just another helpful inconsistency brought to you by MS!

Hope that helps.

Pete M

Subject: RE: Adding lyrics and music
From: dick greenhaus
Date: 23 Dec 98 - 01:24 AM

Joe- I work with three different machines, using three flavors of Word. In all of them, ^p (shift 6, lowercase p) is the code for a paragraph sign. If you use replace, try replacing ^p with the open-angle-bracket-B-R-close-angle-bracket followed by another ^p; this keeps it from flowing out into one long line.

Works for me.

Subject: RE: Adding lyrics and music
From: Joe Offer
Date: 23 Dec 98 - 06:07 PM

Hmmm. I think I do exactly what Pete and Dick do, when I'm typing lyrics myself in MS Word. The problem arises when I'm editing lyrics other people typed up in other word processors (and maybe words typed directly into our "reply" box), which use ¶ for the line breaks. When somebody goofs up a song posted here, I'd like to "view source" and copy the lyrics and paste them into my MS Word, and then use "replace" to add the <br> line breaks. Then I'd copy from Word and paste back into Mudcat. Trouble is, most of the line breaks are those ¶ ones, so I end up manually pasting <br> into messages here, thousands of times. It does force me to read the lyrics for lots of songs, and that's a great fringe benefit. It's no big deal, because I like reading and fixing the threads, but it bugs me that this "replace" thing for the ¶ line breaks is one river I haven't been able to cross.
-Joe Offer-

Subject: RE: Adding lyrics and music
From: Susan of DT
Date: 23 Dec 98 - 07:14 PM

I too have a fixit button and mainly use it to eliminate duplicate postings. I sometimes add those linebreaks, but yes it gets very tedious, even keeping the brackets break on the clipboard, so I only do it if I am interested in the song and/or feeling kindly.

Subject: RE: Adding lyrics and music
From: Ian Kirk
Date: 28 Dec 98 - 10:15 AM

I experimented with replacing the paragraph mark in a lyric in the Just as the Tide was Flowing thread.
I put in 4 lines of test verse I had created in Word using the standard paragraph mark as the line delimeter. When I copied and pasted it back in to Word I found it all came out in one long line.
I broke the line up using the enter key thus getting the Word paragraph mark at the end of each line. I then used the Edit/Replace function. In the Find What box I clicked in the Special button and chose the Paragraph mark. You get ^p.
In the Replace With Box I typed in the “br” with the chevrons round it followed by the paragraph mark from the Special list. You then get your “br” followed by the paragraph mark. I copied that back in to the Reply box and the whole thing formatted fine.

If you do a straight replace of the paragraph mark with the “br” Word reformats the text in one long line . Thats why it is better to replace the paragraph mark with “br” followed by the Word paragraph mark.

Hope this helps the hard pressed editors

Regards

Ian