Fate of lyrics posted in the forum?

Subject: Fate of lyrics posted in the forum?
From: Jack
Date: 30 Sep 97 - 04:27 PM

To: Dick Greenhaus

Way back during the first Fantasy Folk Circle, Dick Greenhaus said that posted lyrics are then "in the Digital Tradition". Does that mean the folks at Mudcat collate all the lyrics posted on the forum and put them in the searchable DT?

If so, a tip of my cap in honor of your team's tireless efforts.

If not, maybe I and a few other Forum Folks could try get all the new lyrics posted to the forum in the past 6 months and get 'em to you in a format that you could use to add them to the forum.

Jack

Subject: RE: Fate of lyrics posted in the forum?
From: Ferrara
Date: 30 Sep 97 - 05:14 PM

Good idea. I'd be glad to help in this. It would be nice if we could keep the history and performance info (within reason) as well.

Subject: RE: Fate of lyrics posted in the forum?
From: Jack
Date: 30 Sep 97 - 05:18 PM

I just reread my poorly written post.

What I meant to say was

Maybe I and others can collect the new lyrics posted to the forum in the past year and get them to Dick in a format that he can use to get them into the DT DATABASE.

You'd think English wasn't my first language--sorry.

Jack

Subject: RE: Fate of lyrics posted in the forum?
From: dick greenhaus
Date: 30 Sep 97 - 06:11 PM

Hi- The songs posted here WILL wind up in the DT--eventually. We've been putting in 3-500 every six months, with that number limited by several factors:We're trying to keep some sort of balance; we're trying to avoid duplications; we're trying to append notes when the information is available; we're trying to provide tunes for as many songs as possible. If y'all would like to assemble the lyrics that come in in fragmentary form from several contributors, it would be helpful. If you could find us tunes--damn near any format will do, including audio tapes, MIDI, SongWright, Xeroxes, images of music scores etc. that would be REALLY helpful. In any case, your contributions aren't being lost. The October 1997 edition,as did the April 1997 edition, will include a lot of them.

Subject: RE: Fate of lyrics posted in the forum?
From: Shula
Date: 30 Sep 97 - 06:42 PM

Dear Dick,

A thought:

P'raps we could have a thread started each day or week, just for NOTIFICATION OF COMPLETE LYRICS, and another for VARIANT LYRICS/ ADDITIONAL VERSES to songs already in the DT. Anyone posting a whole song, which is neither in the DT or in RUS, in any thread, could add a one line note in the first thread, and anyone who posts variants or additions could note that in the second. Those of us who read every thread every day could backcheck the entries to see that nothing is missed, and make the appropriate entry when there has been an oversight.

It would be good if these two threads were kept at the top, rather than cycling with the others, and perhaps have a different hyperlink color. These threads would provide you with a daily or weekly catalogue of all the random lyric postings which might lighten your "archeological" burden. What d'ye say?

Shula

Subject: RE: Fate of lyrics posted in the forum?
From: RS
Date: 30 Sep 97 - 07:32 PM

Or as an alternative, what I have been doing: when I post a song relating to a longer discussion, I post it as an entirely separate "Lyric Addition: Song Name" thread, and make a note of this as an entry on the discussion thread - "see my recent post of Song Name lyrics on a separate thread".

Reasons: (1) someone looking for the lyrics can pull up an extremely short thread, containing that song only, instead of having to retreive & look through a whole long thread; (2) DT editors can quickly find the song lyrics, without searching through anywhere else; (3) if the song relates to more than one long discussion, I can cross-reference it easily [e.g.: several Hebrew / Yiddish songs I posted recently, with a note to "see lyric addition" on both the Women's Song Circle, and the Hebrew/Yiddish/Ladino Songs discussion thread.]

Subject: RE: Fate of lyrics posted in the forum?
From: dick greenhaus
Date: 02 Oct 97 - 01:15 AM

Shula and RS- Either system works. It's certainly easier to deal with one song per thread, and a cross-reference showing which threads contain which songs could also help.

Subject: RE: Fate of lyrics posted in the forum?
From: Charles
Date: 02 Oct 97 - 06:54 AM

Dick: if (when) I get round to record the French folk songs I know on tape, where do you want them sent? I have no formal musical training, I only know the songs by oral tradition. But I can make tapes all right.

Charles

Subject: RE: Fate of lyrics posted in the forum?
From: dick greenhaus
Date: 02 Oct 97 - 01:05 PM

Our snail-mail address is: The Digital Tradition 28 Powell Street Greenwich, CT 06831

Subject: accents in lyrics and search
From: Charles
Date: 03 Oct 97 - 09:03 AM

Hi, about accents in lyrics, wether to include them or not. I think we should include them, specially if we have songs in quite a few languages, and members ensure of their French, German, Spanish, whatever. So we would get things like

O rage, ô désespoir, ô vieillesse ennemie!
N'ai-je donc tant vécu que pour cette infâmie?

with its complete set of accents. But in the background the text is

O rage, &ocirc; <meta o> d&eacute;sespoir, <meta desespoir,> &ocirc; <meta o> vieillesse ennemie!
N'ai-je donc tant v&eacute;cu <meta vecu< que pour cette inf&acirc;mie? <meta infamie?>

Instead of meta chose any tag you like. Now the text would show all the accents, and yet it should not be too hard to modify the search engine to look into either the accented or the unaccented version (I assume the search engine already has to separate words anyway?)

Do you think that is a reasonable way of including idiosyncratic characters? If it is then I'll start doing that in things I send and pushing others to do the same.

Charles

Subject: RE: Fate of lyrics posted in the forum?
From: Alice
Date: 03 Oct 97 - 08:16 PM

Dick, if we have printed music, what form of graphic file would you like us to use to attach to email? Alice in Montana

Subject: RE: Fate of lyrics posted in the forum?
From: Carl
Date: 05 Oct 97 - 09:16 AM

..and how about obtaining that printed music after a DT-Search. Does that make sense anyway? In a former request (Oro se do bheatha bhaile) I tried to start a discussion on exchanging sheet music to fill gaps of phrases one is unable to fill by listening to the record. No problem with lyrics, this has been proved to work wonderful at this forum, but what about the music itself? But this thread ended soon with a discussion of the meaning of "Slainte", what may be interesting, anyway, but was not my intention at the beginning.
If something like "C´mon Carl, not again that boring stuff.." comes to your mind, please let me apologize.

Slan go foill, Carl

Subject: RE: Fate of lyrics posted in the forum?
From: dick greenhaus
Date: 05 Oct 97 - 09:03 PM

Charles- The problem is that the Digital Tradition is used by literally hundreds of thousands of people; this forum represents a minuscule portion of them. I could probably program the search engine to accept the kind of instruction set you describe, but I have no idea how to get even a small portion of the users to enter requests in that form.

Subject: RE: Fate of lyrics posted in the forum?
From: RS
Date: 05 Oct 97 - 11:57 PM

Re: songs with accents, foreign symbols, etc:

A simple way around the search problem might be to include the song *twice*, once with accents, once without - both in the same entry, under two separate sub-headings: "accented version"; "unaccented version". Then the search engine could easily find the unaccented version; and someone who knew the language & wanted the most accurate lyrics, could use the accented version.

This in theory could be a problem if there were huge numbers of such songs, but in practice I don't think the small percentage of duplication would make much difference to the database size.

NB for this to work, both versions would *have* to be in the same entry, otherwise the search engine might not recognise & locate the accented version.

Subject: RE: Fate of lyrics posted in the forum?
From: Joe Offer
Date: 06 Oct 97 - 03:21 AM

I think you're getting at something good, Carl. Can you say a little more about what you're getting at? I still like the idea of MIDIs over RealAudio or sheet music, but maybe I'm understanding people wrong. tunes in MIDI format are easy to enter, transmit, store, alter or transpose, play, and print. The sheet music I've seen on the Web is great, but it comes in graphics files that are usually fairly large, and my sound card won't play graphics files. I can hear the music when I play a RealAudio file, but I can't print it out so I can perform it.
But why do you suggest sheet music, and how can it be transmitted?

I don't think there's a need to worry if we get off the subject. Just steer the conversation back to the subject. We all like to talk about music here, but sometimes we get distracted.
-Joe Offer-

Subject: RE: Fate of lyrics posted in the forum?
From: dick greenhaus
Date: 06 Oct 97 - 05:27 AM

Carl- I thought I'd answered this, but apparently I didn't. If you download the MIDI file (hold down the shift when you click on the blue Play the Music box), you can use Noteworthy Composer to print the score. There's a previous thread on this (look for Print); and a fuller explanation in the News box at the Mudcat Home page.

Alice: Any graphics format: GIF works well, as does TIF and JPEG.

Subject: RE: Accents
From: Charles
Date: 06 Oct 97 - 12:33 PM

Dick: if the songs are in the DB in a strange html format, that certainly doesn't mean I have to use exactly that format in the search queries? It's the people that contribute and edit songs that would have to use that, not those who query the database. The DB is already flexible with the case of letters and with the order of words entered in the query. For instance I typed the query Picnic for and I got:

1) BOB, THE PEDIGREE SHEEPDOG

And his picnic taste for salmon paste
Now at Sheepdog Trials they come for miles
For our littermen to clean up.

2) TEDDY BEARS PICNIC

For every bear that ever there was
Will gather there for certain, because
Today's the day the teddy bears have their picnic.

3) WAIT TILL THE SUN SHINES NELLIE

"There's a picnic, too, at the old Point View,
"How I long," she sighed, "for a trolley ride
For the sun came shining down.

If the search is already that flexible, then why can't the engine search for words inside specific html tags and find the relevant songs. The ordinary visitor asking for a song would get an answer, even with accents added on the words he typed in, and not see anything strange about that.

There remains the work of editing the songs to produce such a format. I'm under the impression that it's not harder than entering the whole song twice, once with the accents and once without, but I haven't tried entering and checking hundreds of songs to the DB...

RS., about the usefulness of accents/foreign characters in foreign songs, having the accents is not just useful for people who know the language. Once I learnt some songs in Swedish with a choir over there. I can't speak a word of Swedish (Actually I spoke four: kan du prata fraskan, can you speak French), and having the lyrics very exactly written, accents and all, really helped.
Also I'm persuaded the pressure to include songs in foreign languages may be a trickle now but will grow in the future. I haven't found anything similar to the mudcat for songs in other languages, and there's more and more languages being used more and more often on the net... It's one of its big advantages (I think) to cut accross boundaries. Maybe internationalising this DB is not the solution? But maybe we're just letting a revolution pass us by?

Charles

Subject: RE: Fate of lyrics posted in the forum?
From: Shula
Date: 06 Oct 97 - 01:11 PM

Agree with Charles, in spite of the nuisance to those who submit additions in languages other than English. Really hate the sloppiness of leaving out accents.

Charles, are you able to read idiomatic Canadian French? If so, I could use some guidance.

Shula

Subject: RE: Fate of lyrics posted in the forum?
From: Charles
Date: 06 Oct 97 - 02:07 PM

Shula: I would understand Canadian French, although I can't help with cultural references etc. Yep, I've 'heard' you almost screaming for help with French. I've been hesitating about volunteering, but I guessed I've just been volunteered ;-)

I'm easiest to reach at [e-mail]

Charles

Subject: RE: Fate of lyrics posted in the forum?
From: Shula
Date: 06 Oct 97 - 02:54 PM

Dear Charles,

Didn't intend to shout; sorry. Do want to leave Dick with accurately corrected text. Will e-mail some of the questionable lines for you to look at. Kind of you to offer.

With gratitude,

Shula