Question for Masato (re: songbooks)

Subject: Question for Masato
From: greg stephens
Date: 02 Nov 02 - 09:18 PM

I'm sure a lot of people would be interested in the answer to this one. How many song-books have you got, Masato?

Subject: RE: Question for Masato
From: khandu
Date: 02 Nov 02 - 09:31 PM

Good question, greg!. The man is amazing! I am fascinated by how quickly he has responded with answers for even the most obscure songs!

(Mmmmm...maybe he has made a trip to the crossroads!)

khandu

Subject: RE: Question for Masato
From: masato sakurai
Date: 02 Nov 02 - 09:41 PM

I haven't counted yet, but there're lots I'm still searching for (of course, within my modest budget) and they are increasing.
~Masato

Subject: RE: Question for Masato
From: greg stephens
Date: 02 Nov 02 - 09:43 PM

very inscrutable, Masato!! I'm going to come and look one day.

Subject: RE: Question for Masato
From: Joe Offer
Date: 03 Nov 02 - 03:20 AM

Rich R and I were neck-and-neck in competition for having the largest folk music library next to Sandy Paton's. I think I have 400 to 500 books in my music library, mostly songbooks. Then Masato came along, and put Rich and me to shame. I'll bet he doesn't have Sandy beat, though.
-Joe Offer, who once slept in the library at the Paton home-
(well, I didn't sleep much - too many treasures to look at)

Subject: RE: Question for Masato
From: Big Mick
Date: 03 Nov 02 - 03:41 AM

I'm gaining on you, Joe. One of these days, though............

Subject: RE: Question for Masato
From: greg stephens
Date: 03 Nov 02 - 04:37 AM

Joe Offer(or anyone else). have you ever made a master index of all the songs in your books? This has been a project of mine for at least thirty years, and I'm always going to do it one day when I've got a bit of spare time. I fear this is going to join going to Mars,taking 19 wickets for England in an Ashes test with my demon off-breaks, and shagging Brigitte Bardot: things I never quite got round to.

Subject: RE: Question for Masato
From: nutty
Date: 03 Nov 02 - 04:51 AM

Masato ....... how about listing the song books you are still looking for ...... we may be able to help.

Subject: RE: Question for Masato
From: Hrothgar
Date: 03 Nov 02 - 05:08 AM

Greg, you probably have as much chance of taking 19 wickets in an Ashes test as any of the bowlers they have at the moment.

Even on a doctored Old Trafford pitch!

Subject: RE: Question for Masato
From: MartinRyan
Date: 03 Nov 02 - 05:14 AM

Masato

I'm with nutty on this one - let me knkow if you have an Irish "wants list". I may be able to help.

Regards

Subject: RE: Question for Masato
From: TNDARLN
Date: 03 Nov 02 - 09:04 AM

Masato-
I would love to know how you have your song books catagorized/indexed so that you can find things so quickly. Or how anyone else has done this....many thanks, T

Subject: RE: Question for Masato
From: wysiwyg
Date: 03 Nov 02 - 09:09 AM

There is a thread about songbooks people are looking for.... hm, where'd it go....

~Susan

Subject: RE: Question for Masato
From: Susan of DT
Date: 03 Nov 02 - 10:14 AM

I made an AskSam database (AskSam is the database program the DOS DT is in) of my music books a few years ago and indicated how many lyrics and tunes were in each book. However that file does not seem to have made it to this computer - just a text output of those that were song books rather than other folk music books and it is several years out of date, so it has a mere 80 books on it. That file I should reconstruct or find and update. The bigger project is to add the songs both in the books and on my records (on index cards with songs) and CDs. I suspect that project will never get finished.

Subject: RE: Question for Masato
From: belfast
Date: 03 Nov 02 - 10:14 AM

Well, here's one. Searching For Songbooks

Subject: RE: Question for Masato (re: songbooks)
From: Joe Offer
Date: 03 Nov 02 - 11:52 AM

The Index to my songbooks thread gives the location of some online song index sites. I use the UTK Song Index at the University of Tennessee at Knoxville. There are other sites that are more comprehensive, but this is the one I'm used to - and I've guided my songbook collecting by what's indexed at Knoxville.
In my attempt to catch up with Masato, I'm looking for Volumes 2 and 3 of the Frank C. Brown Collection of North Carolina Folklore, the lyrics of the folk songs and ballads. I have volumes 4 and 5, which provide the music. Other volumes of the collection come up for sale regularly at http://www.bookfinder.com but not 2 and 3.
And I'm looking for Bronson, but so are a lot of people.
-Joe Offer-

Subject: RE: Question for Masato (re: songbooks)
From: Big Mick
Date: 03 Nov 02 - 03:13 PM

I am currently constructing an Access db that will cross reference all my recordings/CD's/tapes, with my songbooks/tunebooks. I am trying to do it by title, author, performer, and source (such as "Sing Out", etc.). It will be a monumental task but when I am done I will be able to tell by a query how many versions and in what format I have any song/tune.

Mick

Subject: RE: Question for Masato (re: songbooks)
From: JohnInKansas
Date: 04 Nov 02 - 12:39 PM

I started keeping an "inventory" of songs in my music books when it got to the "I know I've got that one, but which book is it in" stage. I just made a list in Word, one line per song, with title, book/CD, Key written, and a "content code" using M for melody line only, S for "score" if it has more than one line, C if it has chords noted, and L# for number of verses given (as L12 for a 12 verse).

A typical entry:

All God's Children Got Shoes    FSFB    27    G    MCL4
Which means "All God's Children Got Shoes" is on page 27 of the "Folk Song Fakebook," in the key of G, and has a melody line, chords, and four verses.

Last time I "totaled" in July, I had 38,628 Song Name Entries from 208 books and 221 CDs. (The list is up to 674 pages in 8 point type, so I quit printing out reference copies a long time ago.)

Unfortunately, since I don't have much other than "commercial - off the shelf" stuff, it's not too useful for mudcat research, although it does make it easy to "know" what I've got, and we find something of interest occasionally.

Setting up an index is a real pain, if you've got quit a bit of stuff; but keeping it up to date is not too painful if you update immediately when you add a new source. My word of caution would be that you must keep your data base down to the essential information. If you try to put "everything" in, you'll never keep it up to date.

Use the index to find the piece, and get the details from the original.

I used Word for my list simply because it was handy, although I didn't realize how much the index would "balloon" with time. I still find that it is a lot easier (and faster) to search than most databases. Word97, on my machine, can sort about 380 pages at a single pass to keep things in alphabetical order - so I have to do multiple (about 3) overlapping sorts now when I add stuff, but for now it does the job.

Choose a program you like, and are somewhat familiar with. And carefully choose what information to enter - remembering that you'll have to (want to) enter it all for each song.

John

Subject: RE: Question for Masato (re: songbooks)
From:
Date: 04 Nov 02 - 07:53 PM

Big Mick, WoW! Ambitious. Great idea.

John in Kansas, I've been indexing my Gaelic Song books. I'm putting them alphabetically by title, and each column has the title of the book (abbreviated of course), with the page number. Sounds similar to your plan. This way I can look up in a single place which book a particular song is in. As a benefit, I have noticed that some songs are much more popular than I had even thought.

Subject: RE: Question for Masato (re: songbooks)
From: Joe Offer
Date: 04 Nov 02 - 10:17 PM

I plan to organize my checkbook sometime soon.
Maybe.
Don't think I'll be one of those who index their songbooks...
-Joe Offer-

Subject: RE: Question for Masato (re: songbooks)
From: cetmst
Date: 05 Nov 02 - 07:40 AM

My 3x5 card file contains more than 40,000 titles cross referenced from 530 song books including hymnals and school song books and Sing Out v. 11 to date. Hymnals are not yet indexed and there is a separate list of about 1500 Christmas related items. These titles are also gleaned from a collection of 540 CD's, 510 cassettes, 641 12-inch LP's, 35 10-inch LP's, 44 78's, many cracked, broken or otherwise unplayable, 37 8-tracks (Anyone know where I can get a player to transcribe these to other records ?) I have an unorganized wish list of several hundred recordings and songbooks. A future project is to index my wife's collection of classical music. I bought my first record in 1947 after hearing Burl Ives sing "The Fox" on a college radio program and began indexing in pre-computer days so it is cumbersome and loaded with dupications and errors. The time it would take to get this all on a computer probably exceeds my life expectancy but I would be happy to search for specific items. I have often found however that Masato, Joe Offer and others have been able to answer much more quickly. Mudcat almost daily adds to my collection. I am not a performer either instrumentally or vocally - my repertoire is limited to "the Fox", "Tam Pierce" and "Blood on the Saddle" which I sing only for my grandchildren, but really enjoy making the historical and traditional connections from the music.