minstrel: A la venue de Noel (Was re:Carol of the Birds)

[Vanessa Layne]

Flieg writes:

> I was
> clearly being conservative when I thought that six verses might be too 
> many!  

Oh, heavens, yes.

The other noels I've been working on (1556, Noelz & Chansons) all have
bzillions of verses.

Generally, the shorter the tune, the more verses.  The longest tune in
that book has only 6 or so verses.  The shortest tune has 18ish.

> How many of you have written a Christmas
> carol or are in the process of doing so?  Should we share?

I'm not writing my own, but am arranging monophonic period ones, for
general consumption in the SCA.

>  How did you make the music GIFs? (reply off-line to avoid OT conversation).
> Since I find myself making more music recently, a convenient way to put it
> on the web would be nice.

I will answer here because it is as much a question for me, and I hope
some other Scadian virtual music publisher might have a recommendation.

Alas, how I do it has *nothing* to do with "convenient", which is why
so much of my music gets distributed in my handwriting.

I am a Mac user, and use a shareware program called "Bitmap Music".
It is basically an ultra-primitive drawing program for music, a
"desktop accessory" along the lines of the Notepad and Scratchbook. It
takes it several seconds(!) to spit out each new note, and then you
have to drag it into position.  I can handwrite the damn stuff about
three times as fast.  It doesn't even do cun-n-paste.

But, by gum, it has an "Export to PICT" option.  That plus
GraphicConverter, the much beloved shareware graphics app, which
allows me to add text, fermatas, breath marks, longae etc and to
output as GIFs, is how I make the files.

Which explains why you only see me typesetting short music. :)

If anyone can recommend a better system, even one which (*gasp*) costs
money, I'd like to hear about it.  Mac software only, though, please.
Any graphic format of output should be fine.

-- Tibicen
   tibicen at carolingia.org


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