A Couple of Home-grown Free PDF Utilities

So, I've been busy lately doing lots of fun things, both at home, work, and on the side. I'm working hard to get my new font site up and running, but a couple of things in particular I completed recently are two free PDF utilities that are currently being hosted by Philip Rothman of NYC Music Services: PDF-BatchScale and PDF-BatchBooklet. The are available for both Windows and Mac. I'm going to borrow some of the text/images from the download site (thanks, Philip!). If either of these sound interesting/useful to you, read on!

Mimicking the Real Book Look

Stop! If you have never heard of "Real Book" or "Fake Book", go look it up and then come back.

(no really, go ahead... I'll wait for you...)

Done? Good. Now, hopefully you are more familiar with what a Real Book score looks like, so let's move forward.

A Small Holiday Gift

So, I've not been able to keep this blog as up-to-date as I'd like to. To remedy that a little, here's a small holiday gift to you. This gift was originally given by Mark Adler on the Finale Blog, but since he offered it freely, I decided to pass it along, with a little extra for all the LilyPond users out there.

Gorgeous Plate Engraving Pics

In a Facebook post today from Bärenreiter-Verlag, they shared some images of the good-ol'-days of real plate engraving that I think any modern computer music engraver/copyist/etc. will appreciate. I know I do. This comes from the golden-era of music publishing, folks! I share them here for long-term enjoyment just in case the above post/pictures disappear from Facebook.

Quick Summer 2015 Update

It seems like I've been out of the loop for too long, so I thought I'd post a quick update with info about what I've been up to.

New LilyPond Templates (part 2)

As promised, here is the second installment of templates. I've created templates for Rock and Pop, Jazz, and Latin style scores.

New LilyPond Templates (part 1)

Greetings, everyone!

It feels strange to (once again) not have put up a post before another month passed, but, alas, it has happened again. Let's remedy the situation!

I've decided to take it upon myself to create a small library of LilyPond 2.18.2 template files that are inspired by those found in the latest version of Sibelius (7.5). When all is said and done, I plan on replicating ALL of its templates in the following categories:

1. No Category
2. Solo Instruments
3. Band
4. Chamber Groups
5. Choral and Song
6. Handbells
7. Jazz
8. Latin
9. Marching Band and Percussion
10. Orchestral
11. Orff Instruments
12. Rock and Pop

So far, I've got #1 and 2 done, but hopefully will be able to pick up the pace and get the others cranked out. I've tried to follow Sibelius' designs as faithfully as possible in hopes that Sibelius users who are familiar with them will find the change over to LilyPond that much easier.