From 3f83c7069b2474e3abbbab8a058a81bc75ffd1e2 Mon Sep 17 00:00:00 2001 From: Marcin Chrzanowski Date: Fri, 17 Sep 2021 14:46:39 +0200 Subject: Add songbook blogpost --- src/blog/i-made-a-songbook.html.erb | 133 ++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ 1 file changed, 133 insertions(+) create mode 100644 src/blog/i-made-a-songbook.html.erb diff --git a/src/blog/i-made-a-songbook.html.erb b/src/blog/i-made-a-songbook.html.erb new file mode 100644 index 0000000..a65f166 --- /dev/null +++ b/src/blog/i-made-a-songbook.html.erb @@ -0,0 +1,133 @@ +title: I Made a Songbook +date: September 16, 2021 15:18 +--- +

+A bit over a year ago I started exploring the world of Polish traditional music. +I might write a post later talking more about my journey with that, but for +today I just want to talk about a project related to this that I created last +weekend: tuturutu.net. +

+ +

+Quick word of warning: it's 100% in Polish, so you probably won't get much use +out of it if you're not a Polish speaker. Even if you are, you probably still +won't get much use out of it if you're not interested in traditional music. +

+ +

+In this post I'll go over three things: the what, the why, and the +how of tuturutu.net. +

+ +

What is tuturutu.net?

+ +

+Right now the website is just a simple listing of a few songs from Polish +villages, mostly the types that would be sung at a wedding, or otherwise related +to the concept of love. I got most of the lyrics at a week-long workshop I went +to a year ago. +

+ +

+Most of the lyrics also have short sheet music notating the main vocal melody. +For the most part, these are transcribed by ear by me, hopefully there aren't +any inaccuracies. That said, the sheet music is only provided for reference, and +honestly should not be used to learn the songs. Classical notation is an +imperfect tool for this purpose, as in the real world the melodies often vary +from performer to performer and freedoms can be taken with both rhythm and +pitches. The best way to learn is to listen to performances (if possible, live +performances; and in those cases, bonus points if it's in an environment where +you can join the singing, not just listen to it like at a concert, +further bonus points if you're dancing while doing it). + +

+Where I could find them, recordings from YouTube or Bandcamp are linked. +

+ +

+Each song is downloadable as an individual PDF for convenient offline storage, +or for printing individual songs for distribution to a group learning them. +

+ +

+On the main page, there's also a PDF that's a songbook containing all of the +songs. This is, in my opinion, the main "product" on the website. All the song +pages on the website are nice if you need to quickly look something up, but if +you're going to be needing the songbook at a party, it's probably best to +download the whole thing and use that (it looks good on large screen ereaders, +and has a clickable index). Very printable, too! +

+ +

Why did I build this?

+ +

+Primarily just for myself. In the recent months I'd been going to some parties +where this sort of traditional music would be played, but when trying to Google +some of the lyrics I would hear people singing, I wasn't able to find anything. +Additionally, the lyrics I did have from the workshop I mentioned before were +stored in my phone's camera's folder as photos I took of somebody else's phone +screen showing a photo from a Facebook post of a laptop screen with a Word +document open. Seriously. They weren't easy to find and definitely weren't +searchable. So if I couldn't rely on lyrics websites that already exist, I +decided I need to create something of my own. And the nice thing is, my website +can be as clean as I want it to be, rather than a bloated mess of newsletter +popups, cookie preferences, and flashing ads. +

+ +

+As mentioned above, the sheet music on the website is not really provided for +anyone to use to learn the melodies. Instead, since currently I myself am the +target audience of this website, the sheet music is there to remind me +the melodies if I ever forget them (which I sometimes do). If anyone else finds +them useful, great. Again, I do recommend learning by ear instead. +

+ +

+For now the website is just a small index of a few songs I know. If I have the +time and motivation (or funding/volunteers), I would love to expand it to a much +wider and more general archive of this sort of music. +

+ +

+The songbook will probably receive a field test in the coming days, as the next +edition of the workshop I went to last year is coming up, and we might end up +using tuturutu.net as the "official" songbook. +

+ +

How is tuturutu.net implemented technically?

+ +

+Just like this website, tuturutu.net is a static site. I adapted the +'>Ruby script that generates this website to +build the songbook website, which is simpler in some ways, and more complex in +others. Instead of a list of blog articles written in (potentially templated) +HTML, the sonbgook website has, for each song, up to three files: + +

    +
  1. song.txt: a plain text file with the lyrics
    2. +
  2. + song.ly: a(n optional) Lilypond source file notating the + melody. Lilypond is a music notation + language with a compiler that beautifully engraves it as sheet music to + various formats. +
    3. +
  3. + song.yaml: a metadata file that contains information like + the song's title or links to recordings. In the future these might also + contain important tags like the genre of music, region from which the song + originates, etc. +
    4. +
+

+ +

+The Lilypond files are compiled into SVG images that are then displayed on +individual songs' pages, PDFs, as well as the main songbook PDF. The PDFs +themselves are compiled from LaTeX templates. +

+ +

+Future additions to the website will probably include a search feature, tags, +and, if enough songs are added, multiple songbooks that represent curated +collections, rather than just the one that lists all the songs on the website. +

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