Template design for parts in the OP Project

[reinhold]

I have scanned several Graduale and Offertoria by J. Eybler, published 1820-1830, together with all instrumental parts. Now, should I upload the individual instruments separately as one PDF per instruments (consisting of 1 or 2 pages) or is is better to join all the instruments to one big PDF containing the whole orchestra material?

Thanks,
Reinhold

[daphnis]

Generally, yes, it's better to upload one PDF per one instrumental part.

[pml]

I would have to strongly disagree with this being a matter of generality! PDF is not a natural medium for orchestral parts, owing to the fact that it is extremely easy for careless downloaders to ignore the usually carefully planned sequence of recto to verso page turns when printing the file, and thus rendering the parts extremely inconvenient to use. (Not everyone has those fancy foot-operated LCD music stands!)

Obviously where the issue of page turns hasn't been addressed at all (e.g. some of the nastier typesets one sees) then this isn't an issue; but that's a side issue.

Sometimes you find that the first page of a given part is actually meant to be a verso, and if a recto cover has not been scanned then a blank page is required as the first page, or the first page has to be printed separately of the remainder.

My habit these days is to bundle all parts together with an index as a guide to the correct printing order, and with blank pages inserted as necessary to ensure the bundle is always a multiple of 2 pages. (With some of my older scores I was not so pedantic about including blank pages.)

I have recently been hoist by my own petard in this respect, by not fully preparing a large set of orchestral parts all the way through to PDF, and by assuming that a Sibelius source file would arrive at the destination unchanged. Unfortunately the copy of Sibelius at the other end did something totally bizarre with page numbering in the parts, so that the first page of music in all parts (being a verso, I had started at page 2) was instead numbered as page 1; thus all of the left-hand pages were then treated by Sibelius' auto-layout functionality as right-hand pages, and vice versa. Result: a complete waste of 600 pages of duplex printing and binding...

One last comment: IMSLP as yet doesn't have a neat way for dealing with huge numbers of instrumental parts. If some diligent contributor scanned the Gurre-lieder the number of orchestral parts would probably outnumber the full score and vocal scores by about 70 to 3 or 4! Already certain pages (the Mozart Requiem for example) are groaning under the weight of huge long laundry lists relating to itty-bitty PDFs of every last little part.

Regards, PML

[daphnis]

I think the issue you're touching on is no matter the file type used, people need to exercise caution and judgment when printing out scores...not just instrumental parts either, piano scores are also designed with this in mind, and I've wasted my fair share of paper before I wised up.

[reinhold]

I was mainly talking about short graduale and offertoria, where each instrumental part is one to three pages long, so blank pages and other peculiarities are not an issue...

So, I got one pro and one contra, but nothing really definitive what the standard at IMSLP should be...

Personally, I prefer one file containing all parts, so I can selectively print out individual parts or all parts into one booklet (with duplex printing and 2-up to an A5 booklet). Even if individual files per part are preferred, I would probably upload one file with all parts concatenated.

[Carolus]

One part per file is certainly advantageous for those who are looking for a single part for whatever instrument or voice they need. As a general rule, there seem to be more individual files for larger ensembles (like orchestra), but both the score and parts are often in a single file for chamber works. There are of course plenty of exceptions either way. The parts for Rachmaninoff's Symphony No.2 are divided into 3 files: Woodwinds, Brass/Percussion/Harp, Strings. That would be one possible way of dealing with a massive work like Gurrelieder or some Mahler symphonies.

[Lyle Neff]

Given that parts for many works on IMSLP are incomplete (sometimes with only one part for an orchestral work so far), a collected, single PDF for all parts is practical only if the set is complete -- or, at least, if a section is complete (winds, brass, strings, percussion, chorus, etc.).

I agree with Philip that separate files for (complete) parts of orchestral works make the work page unwieldy. Hence, a possible ongoing project for an intrepid contributor: download and collate into one PDF the complete (separate) parts for a work, and upload that single file to replace the separate ones.

[kcleung]

As the acquisition phase of the OP project is nearly complete, we really need to have a consensus about the best way to present orchestral parts of a work and get the template ready in time for the OP project

I have an idea:

For an orchestral item, we can put the full score on the page of the item, then the page can contain a link to a *separate* page which lists all the parts and let users to download the parts they want.

A standard orchestral piece would have 13 parts in the OP project, and I don't think 13 mouse clicks are too much

What do you think, Yagan?

[daphnis]

@kcleung: I don't fancy that idea or others that separate into pages within the same composition (the separation of suites being a good example). The composition page should be the last stop in the chain for reaching a work. If we were to take the idea of orchestral parts receiving their own page, we'd allow inconsistencies to crop up in the form of arrangements needing their own page or anything that wasn't the original scoring.

@ Lyle & Philip: I don't see how multiple orchestral parts/files in a complete set make a composition page unwieldy if their titles etc. are "collapsed" to share the same publisher information and listed in score order. That's where the index at the top of the page comes in handy. If these 2 conditions are met, usually within 2 mouse clicks a user can find their part.

Of course, I don't think there should be a push to take one file organization and change it into another; if someone begins uploading separate parts then fine, if they upload a file with the complete parts, then great. But again IMHO I would prefer, as an orchestral musician myself often looking for one part, to be able to jump right to it (then figure out the page order for printing*).


*To follow up on Philips comment after consideration, I didn't mention that I usually remove leading or trailing blank pages (in parts), but never (I don't think) intra-blank pages, which I think are very important to keep. Printing is a tricky business for PDFs and music scores. I dare say most people don't print from this site in duplex fashion, and those likely to do so (myself included) examine the pages for turn points before wasting paper.
Re: the Sibelius printing mishaps. I also learned this the hard way. I *never* transport my source typset file off it's mother computer. I prepare my source file and extract any parts, then PDF them if they're to be sent anywhere. While the lesson learned didn't entail wasting a ream of paper, it did involve the file on the other end displaying gobbledygook for noteheads. Apparently the typset was determined to be a piece of visual art more so that destined for performance, so it was printed and presented anyway...

[steltz]

If I could just weigh in on one aspect of this debate, I'm not sure there is a "one-template-fits-all" solution to this. The most unwieldy scenario I can think of is that eventually, IMSLP might have full orchestral parts to some of the bigger operas. At 50-60 pages each, no one is going to want to download the whole orchestral set in one hit. Even some of the bigger symphonies will cause this problem, as Carolus pointed out.

Perhaps a 2-tiered approach with a guideline of "if the total page count is over a certain amount, divide into instrument families" would be a good solution?

Missing parts could be dealt with the same way missing pages are dealt with now -- in the comment line?

[kcleung]

@kcleung: I don't fancy that idea or others that separate into pages within the same composition (the separation of suites being a good example). The composition page should be the last stop in the chain for reaching a work. If we were to take the idea of orchestral parts receiving their own page, we'd allow inconsistencies to crop up in the form of arrangements needing their own page or anything that wasn't the original scoring.
.

Of course I don't mean each instrument or each instrument family having its own page. What I mean is that we either list the instrument parts in the composition page, or put *all* parts in one single separate page.

The latter case is preferable when most people are only interested in the full score

By the way, The parts received by the OP project are one instrument per pdf (but serparate parts within an instrument (e.g. first and second violin) are put into the same pdf file in nearly all the case. Due to the sheer volume of the OP project, it would be too much to manually concatenate pdf files!!!!!

[daphnis]

@kcleung:

Of course I don't mean each instrument or each instrument family having its own page. What I mean is that we either list the instrument parts in the composition page, or put *all* parts in one single separate page.

Yes, I caught what you meant. I'm just personally not a fan of separation of works of the same creative capacity.

[Carolus]

As steltz mentioned, there are certain works - operas and ballets in particular - where the individual parts are quite large. I think there's a violin part for Tchaikovsky's Sleeping Beauty on the wiki now that's over 60 pages. With works like that, one file per part is much better from a downloading POV - especially in light of not everyone having high-speed connections. I also very much agree with Daphnis' point about keeping individual works on a single work-page. One of the things that I've talked about with Feldmahler is the possibility of some future update to the wiki which would include the ability to add tabs for a given workpage. This way, there could be a separate tab for each primary level of our page hierarchy: Full Scores, Parts, Arrangements and Transcriptions. This would alleviate the potential problems which might arise with a Beethoven Symphony where one could end up with 25 different score editions, 10 editions of parts, and 50 arrangements and transcriptions. The prospects for Handel's Messiah are even more terrifying in this regard, as there have been more than 50 editions of the score alone issued since the mid-1700s.

[steltz]

The tab idea sounds like a perfect solution. That way, no one has to concatenate the pdf files that come in individually from the orchestral parts CDs, and it's organized, clean, and doesn't clutter up the original page. Can we vote for that now?

[homerdundas]

(repeating ideas of a post a while back)
When changing our template to have a nice *download* arrow - we could easily collapse each entry to a single line - lets just keep the 'Scanned by...' and 'Uploader...' and 'PDF file' info on the file image page.
This will greatly shorten orchestral parts listings. I support having one file per part as not all of us have high speed Internet. I might vote for an extra tab where pages get unwieldy - but with an extra link from the relevant full score...
(end of repeated ideas)