Word Spell-Check Mystery

Usually, I’m pretty good at Word, but a mystery has been plaguing me for YEARS that I finally just figured out.

Sometimes, for inexplicable reasons, Word staunchly refuses to spell check. It behaves as if everything was spelled correctly, even though EVERYTHING IS NOT. You can go to Tools > Spelling and Grammar, and nothing happens. Just a stupid smile. You can spell cat “ddog” and it will just beam, peacefully at you. Nothing gets the red underline. Even the Preference “Check Spelling as you Type” is active. Ddog is fine with Mr. Computer.

To fix it:

1. Select Edit>Replace.

2. Click the arrow to expand to Advanced settings.

3. Click in the Find field to set the pointer there.

4. Click the middle popup menu “Format”), and choose “Language.”

5. Activate “Do not check spelling or grammar.” Leave the list field to “(no language).” Click OK.

6. Click in the Replace field to set the pointer there.

7. Repeat steps 4 and 5, but now deactivate “Do not check spelling and grammar.” Click OK.

8. Click Replace all.

Spell check should now work again.

In other words, we’re doing a search/replace for this mysterious behavior, and getting rid of it.

I hope that this changes your life as it has mine.

Recommended Notation References (and others)

These are the books I use most commonly as references.

Notation

Music Notation: Preparing Scores and Parts, by Matthew Nicholl and Richard Grudzinski. (Berklee Press 2007). For contemporary score layout, this is really the definitive source. I was its editor. And I say that to make myself look more impressive by association with this great text (though in truth, I really didn’t actually help it very much), not out of any delusion that my involvement would make it seem any more appealing.

Music Notation, by Mark McGrain (Berklee Press). This book has been around for decades, and at Berklee, it’s long been considered the definitive source for handwritten jazz charts, particularly lead sheets.

Music Notation, by Gardiner Read. This is the old standby, really more optimized for classical music than for contemporary popular music. It’s a classic. Maybe, it’s THE classic.

The Art of Music Copying, by Clinton Roemer. This is a classic text on old school engraving, and a very fine book.

Finale: An Easy Guide to Music Notation (2nd Edition), by Tom Rudolph and Vince Leonard (Berklee Press 2005). Again, I’m the editor. If you are using 2007 or later, wait a few months until the 2009 edition comes out. But this book is worth its price for the chart on page 245 alone.

Orchestration

The Harvard Dictionary of Music. Classic. Everyone has this. It is often hailed as the ultimate arbiter for disagreements, and it’s hard to argue with “Well, the Harvard Dictionary of Music says….” The only effective rebuttal is “Yeah, but it’s geared towards classical musicians,” and even that doesn’t always work.

The Study of Orchestration, by Samuel Adler. Classic, focused on classical music. Most people have this or Piston. I have and use both, but prefer Adler for most things.

Orchestration, by Walter Piston. Classic, focused on classical music. Most people have this or Adler.

Writing

The Chicago Manual of Style. If you write, you need this book on your shelf. If you are a professional writer, you absolutely must have it. It is ubiquitous in the industry.

The Associated Press Style Guide. This is useful particularly for newspaper and Web authoring, whereas CMS focuses more on books. Someone swiped my copy long ago, and I frequently feel guilty when I have a question and don’t look it up here. Did you take my copy? Curse you, give it back! (shaking fist…)

The Elements of Style, by Strunk and White. Among the most lovable how-to books ever written. It’s been said that you can judge how serious a graduate student is by how many copies of this book they own. It is small and easily misplaced, but fortunately cheap, so people buy it again and again. I think I have three copies, but it’s hard to say.

###

Jailhouse Rock: Music books for prisoners

Every few weeks, I receive a letter from another prison inmate requesting free Berklee Press books. These letters are always handwritten and polite. I have a folder of them.

I’ve tried several times to fulfill these requests, but there are complications, and I’ve found it inordinately complex (impossible, so far) to make it happen, much as I want to. Maybe, someone out there will have some ideas of organizations that can help me navigate this. I really don’t have the time or resources to make this happen, myself. I feel badly about saying no, though.

Consider, what better way can an inmate spend their time, besides making music? It not only relieves the tedium and the tension, but it develops a skill that can make the world a better place. Studying music in prison creates a diversion that might keep prison guards safer. Learning music is a forum for introspection and an exercise in self-control. A music book in a jail cell could put some light in a dark place. So, when a prisoner begs me for book about how to learn guitar, I want to make it happen. Even if he’s a murderer.

There are some complicating factors, though. For example, there are many rules governing what kinds of materials inmates can receive, and they vary by institution, and by state. Many prisons don’t permit CDs. At some institutions, only the librarian can request books. Other institutions don’t have libraries, and so different administrators are charged with such decisions. The bureaucracies tend to be Byzantine, figuring out the proper procedure for a given institution.

There are hurdles on the Berklee side, as well. Berklee College has a long list of people asking for free stuff from them, and others (rightfully, in my opinion) take precedence. Inner-city kids, for example, or musicians struggling in New Orleans. Wonderful Berklee efforts such as City Music provide incredible outreach and service to communities worldwide.

It’s no surprise or criticism that we take better care of  young musicians still struggling with the Katrina aftermath than in incarcerated murderers, pimps, drug dealers, etc.   There are so many opportunities to help more deserving constituencies that we never get to, it’s really not such a good allocation of limited resources to send prisoners free books.

Still, though, the prisoner requests keep coming to me.
As I see it, two things must happen in order to get inmates books.

1. Someone official at the institution must administer the request, not the inmate. This requires about five rounds of communication, judging from my past experience. Unfortunately, I don’t personally have the administrative capacity to undertake transforming inmate requests into institutional requests. Do you? Or do you know of an organization that does? A couple hours per request should do it. (Maybe less, once you get the hang of it, and develop some form letters.)

2. An entity other than Berklee College must pay for the book and administer the process. You, maybe?

Let me know if you have any thoughts about how to make this happen. I’m out of ideas (and time to think about it), myself.

Rant: How to Get a Freelance Graphic Design Gig

Hell is looking for new graphics designers.

What I want doesn’t seem to be that unreasonable. I want a freelancer to design covers for our books. So, I placed an ad on Craigslist, very explicitly stating my needs.

Here’s my ad:

“Freelance graphic artists with specific expertise in book cover design are invited to send work samples to Berklee Press, the publishing division of Berklee College of Music. Looking for designer(s) who can give multiple concepts per topic and transform often crushing feedback into brilliant new designs. Must be patient, flexible, professional, and creative, providing a fresh look at contemporary music themes, with art that stands out against the competition and is a positive reflection of our brand. Please send a link to online samples of your work.”

Here’s what I get:

1. Tons of designers with no book cover experience.

2. Lots of illustrators, many of whom seem to want to draw comic books.

3. Lots of designers sending résumés but no work samples.

4. A very small number of graphic artists who have done a book cover or two, but the covers aren’t great. To put it kindly.

5. Several sent me broken links.

6. Several tried applying for full-time jobs with me.

Not one—NOT ONE—designer sent me a single image that had anything to do with music.

I’m not sure why everyone is wasting so much time, trying to respond when they are obviously not a good fit. I’d rather not get any responses than get inappropriate responses.

I once had a painter cold call me and say that he had a lot of portraits of famous musicians and that he wanted us to publish a book of them. I said that we didn’t do projects like that. Then he begged to come in and meet with me, just for an “informational interview” so that he could get practice showing publishers his work.

For some reason, I relented. He seemed like he needed some career guidance, I guess. What a mistake. So, he came over, and showed me his hideous portfolio. I said, “Thanks, but as I said, we’re not interested.” I tried to give him some insight into how a publisher’s decision-making process works—a sense of the financial realities of what he was asking us to do.

He left. But then he kept following up, sending me additional samples, clearly confident that I was on the verge of changing my mind.

I wasn’t! I really wasn’t! I never had any interest, and I was clear about that from the beginning! He just wasn’t listening. Aaaaaahhh!

The way to get me, a publisher, to say yes to something is to try to anticipate my needs and then position yourself as a solution to my problems. Don’t send me pastel drawings of your cat. Read my ad, maybe look at my Web site to investigate our existing covers, and then send me what I’m requesting.

Is that rocket science?

I’m just astonished at how outrageously inappropriate all the designers who responded to my ad are, and I reiterate my question, “Why are you wasting both of our time?”

Now, I have to write fifty or so rejections. I so hate sending rejections. It’s an acknowledgment that we’ve reached a dead end, of shattered hope, and of failed communication.

Dude, even though I’m telling you to get lost, know this: you might have talent and promise. You might have a wondrous soul—beautifully tortured and worthy of expression. I’m truly sorry that you are starving in a garret. But what you’re doing to me, sending me on a wild goose chase to your Web site with broken links and off-base scribblings, is flat out rude. Consider my note a rejection of your ill-conceived business practices, and get a clue! You’re life will get easier when you learn this lesson.

The Beagle Factor

Secrecy and pretense have been a part of music education since at least the Middle Ages. Cliques have had their own notation. Masters have been reluctant to share their techniques for fear that they would lose their competitive edge. Textbooks were written in an overwrought, highfalutin academic style, perhaps to create a sense of awe and mystique around the author. But that doesn’t do the reader/student much good. I hope that we’re growing out of that now, in this age of sharing information.

You’ll see this if you compare several works discussing the same subject matter. At NEC, we had a seminar devoted to this. We looked a counterpoint and harmony books by Schoenberg, Piston, and some others, and compared their styles. Some were clear and helpful. Others were as dense as mortgage documents. But the ideas were the same. A fugue is a fugue. Why then, not compete for the clearest explanation? The reality of what’s published is far from that.

In my editing, I find that some authors put a lot of effort into putting on such airs and trappings of academia. This is especially common in two groups: highly educated musicians born before about 1950 and people who grew up very poor, in rough or highly rural neighborhoods with poor schools. The result is long rambling sentences, awkward and esoteric words, and a condescending affect.

Yuck. Clarity is so much more helpful to the reader.

So, the laborious process goes, of profound, deep editing. When editing gets severe, an unfortunate consequence can be that the writer’s personality can get lost. This is a danger with all writing that is very far from the mark of what’s appropriate or helpful for the reader. The life gets edited out of it. The baby goes out with the bath water, and it can be tough work getting it back in.

Which brings me to the Westminster dog show. Congratulations to Uno the beagle and all those who played a part in awarding him his Best in Show victory on February 11, 2008. As I am part of a two-beagle household, with my beagle in-law making three, this is big news around here, and I will confess to probably spending too much time reading about this grand event. A beagle hasn’t won Best in Show before.

Particularly of note are some of the details regarding Uno’s performance. Not only was he considered the noisiest in show, but he also reportedly nibbled on a brand new sign and nipped a microphone during an interview. This is important news: it means that he is a proper beagle, not some over-groomed robot dog, bred for chasing ribbons rather than rabbits. Uno is a dog’s dog. I will tell you from experience: real beagles destroy furniture and toys, bark and howl, and lick even clean dishes in the dishwasher. They are like Uno.

Uno had a good bath, and likely a pedicure, and was on his best behavior for the show. But he was still Uno the beagle. The result was that the crowd gave him an uncharacteristically enthusiastic standing ovation. Despite being on his best behavior, he was still himself. That’s what won the day. He was the perfect dog. And he was still a beagle.

As writers and editors, let’s take note. There are many ways to present concepts. Truth and clarity are our ideals. But the human element—in Uno’s case, the “beagle factor”—that makes it unique and fosters an emotional tie with the reader.

I am reminded of a project by a highly beloved educator, who was just a terrible writer. In his first draft, he came across as condescending and rambling, and inclined towards useless information, redundancy, and digressions. It was such an obnoxious first proof.

After four years editing his project, which included two different editors who eventually gave up in disgust, the project landed on my desk, and I had the directive to either save it or kill it. I had seen the first draft and knew how it started. Then, I read the latest edited version, and saw that it had become a lifeless lump. It was utterly without any beagle factor left. Mostly inoffensive, but b-o-r-i-n-g. And it was about two hundred pages too long.

I met with the author and found him to be extremely charismatic and engaging, in person. He was also really, really smart, and kind, and seemed to care that I understood the concepts he was explaining to me. And he was sooooo funny! If he was a dog, he’d be a beagle, and his overly edited manuscript was a pale reflection of himself. Who knows why his writing was so off, but the editing mostly moved it sideways, rather than up. The grammar was cleaned up, and the offensive bits were removed. But, well, yuck again.

Here’s how we saved it.

I went through the book, chapter by chapter, and came up with lists of questions about the content. When there was a concept missing, I formed a question to generate the right answer about it. When something was boring, I’d ask for an example. When something was condescending, I’d ask him to explain it again. He was so fed up with the project at that point that he didn’t really remember much about what was in the manuscript and what was not.

Rather than asking him to write again, I interviewed him, doing a one-hour session per chapter, based on my lists of questions.

In these interviews, he was his usual charming self. He told jokes and stories, he used time-tested teaching strategies to explain difficult theoretical concepts. He swore like a sailor, as was his wont. He’d go off on tangents, but then the questions would bring him back. They were delightful sessions because he was such a fun person. To him, it was really a process of chatting about a subject that he loved, rather than writing a book.

I transcribed these interviews, and used what he said there to fill in or replace what was in the original chapters. Some of his stories were really not appropriate for print, but others became useful metaphors/examples, especially after some gentle modifications. Some of them wound up exemplifying points that were besides what originally prompted them, but they were still his stories. In other words, we captured his “schtick.” I gave him the chapters, which he felt were in his own voice in a way that his own actual writing never was, and he made small technical adjustments, but overall was very happy with how it turned out.

The result was a clear, concise book that is now getting glowing reviews. People comment how they like his warm style, and feel like he’s right in the room with them. His past students commented that they were so happy to have his teaching in book form. He went back into his book, and it became alive again. The book is clear and informative, but it’s also got that beagle factor.

There are many ways that writing can be good. If publishing is your goal, remember the importance of the beagle factor. On this eve of Valentine’s Day, let’s remember that it’s the beagle factor that makes the difference between like and love.

Butchering Day

Life would be easier if I had a colder heart. Take my drakes, for example. Fine fellows they are: young, handsome, friendly Indian runner ducks. But in spring, when their hormones start to flow, they will be too intense for my poor hen ducks. If I keep the flock intact, well, not everyone will survive the unwholesome mad frolics that would occur in the pond. One drake for three ducks is the recommended ratio, and I’ve got nearly four for six.

So, I’ve got an issue to address. And much as I like duck a l’orange, I wasn’t brought up in a slaughter house.

Another issue is my chickens, though I’m a couple years from having to address that. Chickens lay eggs for two or three years. Then, real farmers relocate them to the closest stew pot. The alternative is to keep them around, and run an old age home for chickens. If you want more eggs after that, you need to get more chicks.

Unless you can do the dark deed, you can wind up with an infinite number of chickens. And unless you can do it with inappropriate book proposals, well, it’s an impossible business model for a publisher.

Summertime is when teachers often have time available to write books, and the end of summer seems to be the most intense time for them to send book proposals to publishers. Last August, I was really getting inundated.

Then a deadline for proofreading something was looming, and so I switched gears to become just a proofreading machine for a few days, and tried not to get distracted by anything else. When I came up for air, it was time to devote a couple hours to the odious task of rejecting manuscripts.

In my job, there is practically nothing I hate more than rejecting manuscripts. Crushing dreams. Well, not only. The ones I actually feel sad about are in the minority. Like, we once received a beautifully prepared manuscript submitted for a book about how to play the didjeridoo. In all honesty, I think it would have been among the best books published on that topic. But we are ill prepared to market something like that. Our house brand is more about contemporary popular music, jazz, production, making a career, and so on. It just wasn’t a good fit, so we had to pass. A different publisher would have been more optimized to sell it to the appropriate channels. I sincerely hope the author found someone and that her book did well.

[Note: it wasn't really about the didjeridoo. The only lying I plan to do on this blog is to change details to protect the innocent. So, a didjeridoo proposal last summer by a little old lady in Kentucky might have actually been a harmonica proposal five years ago by a pimply teen-ager in Canada.]

Anyhow, most of my butchering doesn’t require so much soul searching, and my loathing of the task often has more to do with the self-absorbed rudeness so commonly part of the person submitting it. (I’m talking non-Berklee types here. It’s completely appropriate for any Berklee faculty member to propose any idea to me, including lunch. But our Web site states clearly, “We publish products by faculty members at Berklee…”)

For example, random people around the world send me scores of atonal chamber music. I happen to like atonal chamber music, and have written some of it myself. But if the author had spent two seconds to look at our Web site or catalog, they would have seen that such publications are simply not what we do. I have to take the time to open their Byzantine packaging, figure out what they are suggesting, and then send them a response. And what they are suggesting is effectively that we make a foolish business decision that would waste tens of thousands of dollars in production and marketing, if we had made the wrong choice and published their hideous cacophony.

I’m reminded of one of the funniest portions of any of our books, a passage in George Howard’s book Getting Signed, where he describes himself listening to demos, wrangling with duct-taped packaging, while the phone is ringing off the hook, and he’s desperately trying to eat some sort of lunch. (Check out George’s excellent blog.) I totally relate. Reviewing book proposals is very similar.

Maybe, I can process a wildly inappropriate proposal in ten minutes (minimum), from opening the envelope to sending the polite declination, and fulfilling some additional administration associated with it. Judging the wildly inappropriate project itself might just take two seconds. It’s the rest of it that’s time consuming.

What a waste. I particularly hate it when people I’ve never heard of overnight inappropriate proposals to me. Sometimes, such packages come from overseas. How much does that package cost them? $50 perhaps, including photocopying and CD, but not including their time? And are they shotgunning many publishers with the same inappropriate proposals? A tiny bit of research would save a lot of money.

One good thing, though, about butchering day: it makes me feel better about the mounds of rejection letters that I’ve amassed myself, of my own work. These rejections aren’t personal. They are rejections of the proposed business collaboration, which would have been doomed to failure and a dreadful mistake for all concerned. Sitting on this side of the desk has really changed my own approach to getting my work published, and helped me to get more personal work in print.

Perhaps, we reject nine out of ten proposals we receive. For maybe half of those, it is immediately obvious that they will never work, so I try to drop them like hot potatoes. The criteria are clearly articulated on our Web site. We publish instructional works by our faculty members, and any exceptions to that rule have special stories; maybe they were guest lecturers, etc. We don’t publish chamber music arrangements. Look at our catalog! We just don’t do it! If a non-faculty member proposes that we publish their chamber music, well, it’s an obvious no. (Note that in August, I received internationally overnighted chamber music score proposals from two different people.)

Of course, the destiny of some proposals is more difficult to figure out, because they might be close to being appropriate for us. These can take several months to process, as various decision makers have to weigh in. If a proposal is so good that it actually gets accepted, it is likely that fifteen or twenty people, spread out over five committees, have weighed in on it. If it’s “close, but no cigar,” still, quite a few people might be involved in the decision. Solid proposals we reject often take more of my time than solid proposals we accept because I do my best to advocate to the other decision-makers that we publish it, despite their opinion.

But again, rejections are often due to factors that have nothing to do with the quality of the intended work. We publish about a dozen products per year. If we already have six drum products in the pipeline for this coming year and someone proposes another, chances are that it won’t fly, no matter how good an idea it is.

I think my record butchering day was about nine projects. I regretted to inform them, but you know, more than that, I regretted that some of them tried to snooker me into making bad decisions, too.

To the “close, but no cigar people,” though, I really am sorry that we couldn’t publish your work. There is just finite space and feed in this coop, and I’ve got to make some tough calls.

Focus Your Writing

Finding the right duck isn’t always easy. In my quest to find Indian runners, I found that the only way to get the pure white ones was to get them “straight run.” In other words, the ducklings were unsexed: males (drakes) and females in equal numbers, as they hatched.

The difficulty is that when mating season comes about, the healthy ratio for confined ducks is about one drake for every three or so ducks, or even fewer. Thus, I now have too many drakes, and I need to find homes for them, for the good of the flock.

So too, when writing, it is important to have the right ideas present in your book, article, course, or dare I say it, blog entry. Something that I see with books—particularly by first-time authors—is that there is the desire to include too many ideas. If we are motivated to share what we know, we want to give a complete picture. But this can be to the detriment of work, as a clutter of ideas can be distracting and unfocused, and ultimately not in the reader’s best interest.

The following approach can help you focus your ideas for the good of the flock. Er… book. A deeper discussion of this is in my article “How to Write a Music Method Book,” which currently resides on the Artists House Web site. (I also periodically give a writing seminar on this topic.)

1. Title. Focus on crafting a working title for your work that articulates your over-arching most important theme. Though the ultimate title will likely be a decision by a marketing department, a good working title will help you focus. For example:

“Beginning Didgeridoo.”

2. Objectives. Write about five short points articulating what the reader will learn from your work. Make sure that they support your title.

• Learn effective circular breathing
• Develop effective and healthy embouchure and playing posture
• Choose the instrument that’s best for you
• Perform six didgeridoo songs
• Imitate twelve animal noises

3. Topics. Confirm that every topic you want to include in your book supports at least one objective.

Let’s say that your first draft turns out to be 400 pages long, so you know you need to cut out some data. Topic 1 is a breathing exercise. That supports the first bullet, so it can stay in. Topic 2 is about the history of the didgeridoo. Since this isn’t listed as an objective, you should seriously consider cutting it, especially since the book is running long. Do this with all topics, and eventually, you will wind up with a much more focused work. It will be easier for your readers to understand what you are trying to communicate.

The mantra is: Deleting is Delightful. Or, save your rejected topics for another work. There is always another opportunity to write. Do this for every single topic you write or consider writing. Be ruthless.

Now, would you like a free drake? Indian runners are a bit too scrawny to eat, but they make good company.

File Organization

Are you all set with your New Year’s resolutions? Last year, I’m afraid I broke pretty much all of the ones I made, but I did make some progress on one: to be more organized. I’m definitely a convert to the Getting Things Done (GTD) approach by David Allen, though I’m more zealot than master.

David Allen likes to say that acceptable rules of hygiene evolve, and generally speaking, we tolerate less and less skuzziness in our lives as generations pass. For example, people bathe and brush their teeth more often than they did in former decades and centuries. Our tolerance for being dirty and stinky has decreased. He evangelizes for a similar cleanup of personal and professional work habits.

I’m not sure that computer hard drive hygiene has been similarly evolving, in these days where memory is so cheap and plentiful. Maybe we’re a few generations away from really being digitally tidy. But there are great benefits to being organized. You can find things, for instance. Other people can find them too. You can keep track of what’s the most recent version. You can see at a glance what’s missing or where things go. And you can generally escape the feeling (and perception) that your hard disk (and thus, your workplace) is a skuzzy place (different than SCSI!), and generally feel in control of at least part of your environment.

Here are some tips that might help you organize your hard drive—and thus, your work/art.

1. Only use the Documents folder for storage. Avoid storing your files on the desktop or in application folders. If all your personal work is in the Documents folder, you will have a much easier time backing it up, transferring it to a new computer, finding it, and generally living with yourself.

2. In most cases, try to have no more than twenty files in a folder. If you have more than that, additional layers of subfolders might help you. It becomes annoying to try to find items on lists greater than this. Only have more items in a folder if there is a logical sort of sub-organization that goes on within the folder, such as sequentially numbered file names.

3. If you have many projects of a certain type or logical classification, consider bundling them up together in a Projects folder. For example, in my work, I have a folder for Berklee Press projects (books and DVDs), which is part of a higher level of organization called Berklee. I have another folder for my personal compositions. And I have another for my community service activities. There are others, too, but for the sake of this blog, let’s say that there are just those. A snapshot of my hard drive Goose (always name your hard drive), then, looks something like this. Note that I have no files on my desktop. None. Nada. Yesterday, I had about twenty, but that was skuzzy, and it’s cleaned up now, as it gets cleaned up at least once a week (when I am behaving).

4. If you have projects of similar types, consider recurring folder names within them. For example, for book projects, I generally have the same folder types. I’ve found it easiest to organize these projects by the author’s last name. Recent project authors have included Jon Damian, David Franz, and Andrea Stolpe, so here’s what their folder setup looks like:

I currently have 42 active Berklee Press projects! That’s a big, horrible folder: far more than twenty items. I’m always trying to get stuff out of that folder and into my Completed Projects folder. That folder has over 150 subfolders! But since it is seldom accessed, that’s okay.

Note the “Drafts” folders. That’s one step away from the trash, and in fact, once a book is published and I’ve created a CD archive of all the files, I delete all the Drafts folders. (All drafts are still stored on CD.) But it’s helpful to me to have Drafts folders associated with each project.

5. Name your files carefully. When it’s logical, include a sequential number in your file, and a concise descriptor of what it is. Mix case.

For example:

The Chapter folders have numbered chapter files. (Some books, such as Andrea Stolpe’s Popular Lyric Writing, don’t really require separate files for each chapter. It depends on how many embedded graphics there are.)

For Dave Franz’s new edition of Producing in the Home Studio with Pro Tools, the chapter files look something like this (simplified, for the sake of this post):

Graphics files get numbered sequentially by chapter and by image within the chapter. For example, here, chapter 2’s first graphic is called New Session. The second graphic in chapter 2 is called New Track Dialog. Each chapter gets its own folder.

For notation, I used to think that there should be separate folders for Finale files and for graphical export files, but I ultimately found that too cumbersome, in practice. Now, I just have all those files in a Graphics folder, even among other graphical types such as screen shots and diagrams. So, in Jon Damian’s new book The Chord Factory, a typical graphics folder looks something like this, mixing Finale files (.mus), exported notation (.tif), and charts he made in Clarisworks (.cwk):

Keeping them sequential keeps them organized.

If you live like this, your life gets easier. I can’t imagine how many tens of thousands of files are on my computer. Lack of strict organization schemes such as this would make my work grind to a standstill!

If this is an alien idea to you, I recommend that you mend your evil ways, for your own sanity. Simplify! Organization will set you free. For all new work, try to come up with a simple, usable system for organizing your files. In spare moments, try to make sense of any disorganized areas you might have.

Make it a New Year’s resolution to get ALL data files off your desktop at least once a week. The first time you try this might be a painful procedure, but if you’ve got a logical hierarchical setup, it becomes easy to keep it all neat and organized.

Good luck, and happy new year!

Expression vs. Articulation

Writers, like other creative artists, struggle with the relationship between two related, and often confused activities: expression vs. articulation. Navigating this is critical for creating effective work.

Expression means bringing something that’s inside of you out. Your soul stirs, and you write something down. This is an over-arching motivation for why creative artists spend their time creating. They perceive something they feel has value, and want to share it with others.

Articulation means crafting a communication object. It involves looking at an outpouring of raw expression and adjusting it so that a reader (listener, watcher, whatever) will understand what you’re trying to express.

Editing (including self-editing) is the process of honing the communication object for optimized communication.

I find three questions helpful, when editing, that help preserve the original intent while making communication as effective as possible. When I teach this in my writing seminars, I call it “Feist’s Trident.” Someday, maybe somebody else will call it that too.

Feist’s Trident

The questions I ask when reviewing something:

1. What’s the Big Idea?
2. What’s in?
3. What’s out?

Say that you are charged with optimizing the following sentence. (I made it especially horrible, just for you.)

“It is my opinion, based on my thirty years as an educator and performing pianist, that pianists at all levels of expertise and proficiency must remember to memorize all types of inversion—first, second, and third—so that they are to avoid creating musically ineffective and unsuccessful comping parts.”

First question: What’s the Big Idea?

It can take several readings to figure this out. Here, the writer seems to be saying that there is a body of information (inversions) that is important for pianists to learn.

Next, we go word by word, phrase by phrase, and ask the next two questions of each element: what’s in/what’s out? In other words, what supports the Big Idea? Ruthlessness will serve you well, here.

The first bit, from “It….performing pianist,” is a common sledgehammer, designed to inspire the sense that the point coming up is worth reading. But readers already think the writer is credible, or else they would stop reading. So, that whole first bit can be “out,” and we can begin “Pianists….” Omitting useless text like this generally helps articulate a point.

“Pianists” seems an important word here, so we keep it in, for now, but “…at all levels of experience and proficiency” is redundant, so it’s out. “Memorizing” is relevant, so we keep it! “Must remember” is just bossy, “all types” with “first, second, third,” are unnecessary.

Let’s see what we’re keeping, so far:

“Pianists must memorize inversions, if they are to avoid creating musically ineffective and unsuccessful comping parts.”

That’s getting much closer to the Big Idea. But it’s quite bossy and negative. Here’s a more positive rendering, still keeping the Big Idea. I’ve done a bit more massaging to get more useless verbiage “out.” Now that we’re closer to the mark, it seems that “Pianists” is likely obvious, as we’re discussing comping parts, and the whole work is likely about “pianists” anyway.

“Memorizing inversions helps you create effective comping parts.”

Now, that’s a much more useful sentence! The Big Idea is now clear. Certainly, though, confirm with that author that you did, in fact, nail their intended big idea. When editing is as drastic as this, points are likely to be mistaken, somewhat. The author might say, “Actually, I want to emphasize that learning them is what’s important, not memorizing them.” Or “I meant memorizing inversion fingerings.” Omitting some of the chaff helps everyone focus in on what the main point to be articulated should be.

The goal in the process was to articulate a point. The raw expression object was hindered by words and thoughts that were distracting. Honing focus and gleefully eliminating words that didn’t serve the main purpose helped achieve the real goal: communication.

Notation and Text

There are a number of ways to integrate music notation into text. See, you can do this:

Best practice, the text is set in a text-editing program, such as Word or Word Perfect. These programs are optimized for issues related to text, with features such as spell-check, text find/replace, and easy ways to edit the text’s font, style, and so on. For informal final products, such as exercises for students, a good word processing program might be all you need.

For more formal publications (books, ads, coffee mugs, etc.), you might eventually import your text into desktop publishing software, such as InDesign or Quark. These give much more control over placement. For Web use, you might use a Web design program. This blog is created using WordPress. But I always start my writing in Word, just because it’s optimized for editing text.

Then, you have to get the notation in a form where it can be imported into the software that will eventually house all the content. All these programs have ways to import graphic files. In Word, you can choose Insert > Picture > From File. Some programs use other terminology, such as Place or Set (even Browse), accessed from a menu called something like File or Import.

The notation itself has to be a graphical file: EPS, TIFF, PDF, JPG, etc. The different file formats have different strengths and limitations. EPSs provide best quality, but there are often font compatibility issues with them, which is an issue if multiple people are working with the file. TIFFs are very portable and predictable, but they distort if you change their size, and they are much larger files than EPSs. Not all formats are compatible with all software.

Anyhow, notation must somehow be converted into one of those graphical formats. Handwritten notation scan be scanned. Better, though, is to generate notation with dedicated notation software, such as Finale, and then render it as a graphic.

Finale has a Graphics tool that lets you define a notation region (drag a marquee box around what you want your graphic to be) and then “export” it from Finale (Graphics > Export Selection) to your hard drive. Then, that exported file can be imported into Word, InDesign, or whatever.

You could also use a screen capture program to grab your graphic. The Mac OS has a handy shortcut: Command-Shift-4, then drag. This lets you take a screen shot of part of your screen. I do that for this blog, mostly because it is very quick. The print quality isn’t so great (it’s a low res jpg), but it is handy for this relatively informal purpose, particularly because it is intended to be displayed on a computer screen.

Once you can integrate notation and text, you can write books, articles, classroom assignments, and much more. If you are writing for a publisher, discuss with them what the best delivery format will be, and if they have any file organization parameters. I’ll discuss some of the Berklee Press preferences for file organization in a future post.