Take 6 Transcription Programme

Take 6 Transcription Programme: Rationale, Outcomes and Methods

Rationale

The aim is to make the EFDSS’s online Take 6 archives more accessible and useable, for example for those with limited musical skills and/or who find it difficult to decipher a raw MS.

Outcomes

It is intended to support the Take 6 MSS with the following:

MIDI files of the melody line;

GIF and/or PDF files that display sheet music of the songs;

abc files (where possible) that the user can display as sheet music, play as audio, and edit, with free software such as abcExplorer [1] and abcNavigator [2];

Text files (.txt) and/or enhanced text files such as Rich Text files (.rtf) containing transcribed text from the MSS, notes from contributors on the songs and tunes, etc.;

Industry standard Music XML files of the sheet music that can be loaded into most music notation software programmes and altered and edited by the user.

Notes on Music XML files. If you open these at the Folkopedia website all you will get is a page of hyper text markup language (HTML). So download the files and open them with music notation software. The Music XML download pages display the following notice underneath the file link--Warning: This file may contain malicious code, by executing it your system may be compromised. So run virus scans before opening Music XML files. Some Music XML files may have data missing. So check their content against that of the PDF images.

Methods

The filenames are the Take 6 MSS references with dashes substituted for the forward slashes (e.g. GB-6a-39 for GB/6a/39).

To view the original MSS images that are here transcribed, and to access their catalogue records:

1. Go to the EFDSS Take 6 Search Page at http://library.efdss.org/archives/cgi-bin/search.cgi.

2. Type the MS reference into the Search Box immediately above the Submit Search button. The MS reference is the file name of one of the transcriptions without the file extension and with forward slashes substituted for the dashes. Thus for GB-6a-39.MID type GB/6a/39 into the Search Box. If there are letters (preceded, perhaps, by a dash or hyphen) added to the numbers at the end of the filename and before the file name extension remove them from your search term. For example, there are two versions of GB/2/9, namely GB-2-9a and GB-9-2b. In both cases type GB/2/9 into the search box. Likewise, GB-6a-18-alt is an alternative version of GB/6a/18 so type GB/6a/18 into the search box.

3. Click on the "Submit Search" button.

4. This should display "Search produced 1 result(s) [1 of 1]" with the MS link underneath.

5. Click on the right facing arrow to the left of the MS link. This displays the MS's catalogue details and, beneath these, a small GIF image.

6. Click on the GIF image to enlarge it.

7. Save the GIF image to your computer. Do not save until you have enlarged the image or you will save a small image.

Currently the Butterworth and Hammond MSS are being transcribed.

At present transcription of the Butterworth MSS is limited to songs and tunes collected by George Butterworth himself and by his associate, Francis Jekyll, from the mouths and musical instruments of the people; it omits material that Butterworth copied into his notebooks from printed sources such as Barrett, Chappell and the Journal of the Folk Song Society.

Take 6 Transcription Programme: The Butterworth Archive, MS 2

Take 6 Transcription Programme: The Butterworth Archive, MS 6a

Take 6 Transcription Programme: The Butterworth Archive, MS 7a

Take 6 Transcription Programme: The Butterworth Archive, MS 7b

For information on the Hammond MSS and the collectors who created them, go to [[3]]

Take 6 Transcription Programme: The Hammond Archive, MS 5