Making "song books" for an instrument from several scores
Hello!
BLUFF: Anyone have experience automating the process of printing a set of parts for a given instrument from several scores?
Every band has a similar experience to this: The director has a lineup of songs laid out with all the parts. If the band is well organized, the section leads will collect the music they need for their sections, make duplicates, then disseminate. If not, havoc ensues and every musician for themselves grabs music first-come first-serve.
I do a lot of hymns out for the church band, which varies week to week for whos playing. Could be a full orchestra with strings, or it could just be brass, or it could be a flute, trumpet, and guitar. What have you. In the end, it's just a 4-part harmony distributed evenly, and usually to the same instruments every time.
Myself, the band director, and a few of the helpers have been slowly annotating hymns into Musescore with the hopes of having the entire hymnal available for each instrument. Given there's 800 or so hymns in a hymnal (only 600 or so we would play, but still), that's a LOT of printing and sorting. Besides, there's still no option to "print all parts" as far as I can see.
I'm an engineer by trade, and I've done my fair share of VBA programming. My intent is to format all the hymns the same, then use a VBA macro to open and print every hymn by part into "songbooks."
Has anyone ever done this?
Is there an easier way to print all parts from a given score?
Any chance there's a tool for having two parts equal to each other (rather than "copy paste" for each soprano/alto/tenor/bass part to respective instruments)?
The end result: we show up at church, the 1st trumpet player takes out the 1st trumpet songbook, gets the song order from the organist, and plays the songs per the hymnal that the congregation has. No arranging, no key issues, just play the music.
Comments
A few things come to mind.
Consider not entering hymns into MuseScore the same way they appear in the hymnal. Put soprano on one staff, alto on another and so forth. That way you have individual parts to work with.
When I've seen this kind of thing done, the parts aren't named by instrument but rather by key. C Melody or Bb Melody. And C Harmony and so forth. That way even if the instrumentation varies, musicians grab the key of the book that fits what they have.
Now you know why collections like this cost so much.
Speaking of which, as you know even hymnals are copyrighted. Unless there is permission from the publisher.
In reply to A few things come to mind… by bobjp
You're totally right on separating the parts: I've tried it both ways, and it's certainly easier to make an organ part from four individual parts than it is to make individual parts from an organ score.
I'm not a fan of key books: I've been in situations where no matter how hard you try, you get someone playing the wrong part.
As far as copyright goes; My understanding is we have to have enough copies of the hymnals to go around (ie we can't buy 1 hymnal, write it out, and print several copies). If that's the case, we're covered. The church has hundreds. The intent is merely transposition. I'm not an expert on copyright law though. I have a feeling if I'm wrong I'll find our right quick.
In reply to You're totally right on… by steamingspud
Well, you do what you feel you must. However, look at the publisher information page (probably the second or third page in any of your Hymnals. It will say something about not copying in whole or in part anything in the hymnal. How many copies the Church has makes no difference. I've worked for a number of churches and schools. It is normal, and illegal, to run off copies of all kinds of music. Even churches with contemporary bands are supposed to buy a license to perform contemporary music in a service.
Probably no one is going to turn in a church, but some schools have been sued by publishers.