To Thread - Forum Home

The Mudcat Café TM
https://mudcat.org/thread.cfm?threadid=48174
16 messages

site for blank music manuscript

02 Jun 02 - 06:03 PM (#721787)
Subject: site for blank music manuscript
From: Charcloth

Hey folks my cousin turned me on to this site for printing out blank music manuscript. I tought some of might find it useful. I can't do the blue clicky thing so heres the address www.music.pomona.edu/MSPAPER/MSPaper.html
God Bless all Charcloth


02 Jun 02 - 06:12 PM (#721789)
Subject: RE: site for blank music manuscript
From: JohnInKansas

Lets try a clicky: Manuscript Paper

John


02 Jun 02 - 06:44 PM (#721807)
Subject: RE: site for blank music manuscript
From: greg stephens

Thats pretty interesting. Can you get ordinary lined paper as well? Or maybe even blank sheets?


02 Jun 02 - 06:58 PM (#721812)
Subject: RE: site for blank music manuscript
From: GUEST

Blank music paper is easy to make. For instance in Wordperfect you use the underline character for staff lines, and set vertical spacing to half normal.


02 Jun 02 - 07:07 PM (#721814)
Subject: RE: site for blank music manuscript
From: Snuffy

Happy daze, Guest. I remember doing that ten years ago on my old Amstrad, before scalable fonts came along. It was much easier with Pica and Elite.

WassaiL! V


02 Jun 02 - 07:11 PM (#721816)
Subject: RE: site for blank music manuscript
From: JohnInKansas

greg - I think the value of the site depends on how (well) one was paper trained.

Noting that the forms are referenced by what is available at the "university book store," I can appreciate that people not close to a university might find it easier to print their own. When you can find it in "general trade" stores, it's usually a couple of bucks for 50 sheets. - Much easier - and actually cheaper - to print it.

Been doin' it for years - with my own PS scripts.

John


02 Jun 02 - 07:41 PM (#721826)
Subject: RE: site for blank music manuscript
From: JohnInKansas

If you open a new document in Word, hit Control-F9, and paste the following between the "braces" that appear, you can print a staff sheet to any PostScript capable printer and get a perfectly useful page of blank staves:

PRINT \p page "0 setgray [1 6 1 6 1 6 1 6 1 36] 0 setdash 450.00 setlinewidth 306 90 moveto 306 650 lineto stroke"

If you really want to get fancy, add a separate Control-F9 with the following between the braces:

PRINT \p page" /right {36 0 translate 0 0 moveto} bind def /up {0 36 translate 0 0 moveto} bind def /left {-36 0 translate 0 0 moveto} bind def /down {0 -36 translate 0 0 moveto} bind def /draw {newpath 0 0 15 0 360 arc stroke 0 0 2.5 0 360 arc stroke 0 0 10 225 315 arc stroke -5 7.5 1.5 0 360 arc stroke 5 7.5 1.5 0 360 arc stroke} bind def gsave 52 52 translate draw 0 1 13 {right draw} for 0 1 18 {up draw} for 0 1 13 {left draw} for 0 1 17 {down draw} for grestore"

The last one may not work if your printer doesn't have at least a couple of MB of memory - and sorry folks - it's gotta be a POSTSCRIPT printer.

John


02 Jun 02 - 08:35 PM (#721855)
Subject: RE: site for blank music manuscript
From: Nigel Parsons

JohninKansas: interesting, but why bother with the typing when you can bookmark the page noted above ?

Nigel


02 Jun 02 - 10:01 PM (#721887)
Subject: RE: site for blank music manuscript
From: JohnInKansas

Nigel -

Bookmarked pages have a way of going away. If I wanted to use the forms at that site, I'd probably save the .pdf files on my own machine. PDF files are relatively large.

I have one Word .doc file with a half dozen or so of these forms - in clear text. With my PostScript printer I can paste any one - or more - of them into a blank document, print as many copies as I want, and I don't have to save the document.

Additionally - the form you really want is never exactly what's on somebody else's site. The one-liner above can be easily edited to show more or fewer staffs, change spacing, etc to suit exactly what I want, at any given time.

The first example is actually kind of a "trick" script. It creates a dashed line consisting of dash - space - dash -space ... dash - long space, makes the line almost a page wide, and then draws one dashed line straight up the middle of the page. As shown, it draws 9 staves, centered on US A-size (8.5 x 11) paper. If you want to use it on Euro size, you can move left and right by changing the "306" two places. Up and down, change the "90" and "650." Dimensions are in "points" with one point being 1/72 inch.

(The second, longer script, draws the same picture 66 times as a border on the page.)

John


02 Jun 02 - 10:16 PM (#721891)
Subject: RE: site for blank music manuscript
From: Charcloth

Hey I just thought it was cool to be able to use for hand made banjo tab


02 Jun 02 - 10:39 PM (#721901)
Subject: RE: site for blank music manuscript
From: JohnInKansas

Charcloth -

It is cool.

And I wish more people would carry a few blank sheets in their case, so they can loan me one when I forget mine. There's always something you need to make notes on.

John


02 Jun 02 - 11:09 PM (#721918)
Subject: RE: site for blank music manuscript
From: JenEllen

Cool is right. Thanks Charcloth. (on my last business trip, I ended up scratching on hotel stationery, using the obligatory envelope to try and make straight lines...pitiful, really) Thanks for passing it along.
~JenEllen


03 Jun 02 - 05:14 AM (#722017)
Subject: RE: site for blank music manuscript
From: greg stephens

when i hand draw music MS the lines always diverge from left to right. Does this happen theopposite way with anyone? Maybe its one of those introvert/extrovert personality things.


03 Jun 02 - 08:51 AM (#722051)
Subject: RE: site for blank music manuscript
From: JohnInKansas

greg -

If you can find an office supply store that still stocks those "old-fashioned" drafting tools, there's a neat little job with a whole bunch of holes that you can slide back and forth along a ruler - move your pencil (or ballpoint) to the next hole - and you get nice parallel lines.

If you can find one, it should set you back about $1.35.

Of course, there is a certain charm to having the lines "swing" with the tune.

John


03 Jun 02 - 05:05 PM (#722310)
Subject: RE: site for blank music manuscript
From: M.Ted

You can still buy much much nicer blank manuscripts in a music store than you can print yourself, because it is printed on much better paper stock--of course, it is wasted on me, since my hand-drafted manuscripts are illegible--easier just to print things out with notation software--


03 Jun 02 - 05:18 PM (#722322)
Subject: RE: site for blank music manuscript
From: Kenny B (inactive)

My old music teacher in the 50's had a 5 pointed nib pen to make his own stave paper.
Is there still an analogue version available? :>)