A shout out to Al Smitley

[Wes Merchant]

Al I've been enjoying going through your book, it's really well organized, informative and easy to use. For those of you that weren't at AEBG, Al has put together a PDF book, "Topical Music of Antebellum America", that incorporates words, music and history into a searchable document, it's quite an impressive piece of work.

[Al Smitley]

Thank you very much, Wes.  Did you see your name in the Preface?

Anyway, for those who have a copy, please drop me an email if you have any problems/questions as you are my Guinea pigs!

Also, I meant to announce the 5 most used melodies for the roughly 200 contrafacta in the collection.

Yankee Doodle (13)

Old Dan Tucker (12)

John Anderson, My Jo (10)

Auld Lang Syne (8)

Dandy Jim of Caroline (8)

----- 6th - 11th are........

Jordan is a Hard Road to Travel (7)

Old Rosin the Beau (6)

Boatman's Dance (5)

Jim Crow (5)

Oh!  Susanna (5)

To Anacreon in Heaven (5),   there were 11 melodies tied with 4 usages

Again, these are not to be considered "official"...just the top melodies on the 200 contrafacta in my collection.

Elaine Masciale got the free copy by guessing 3 of the top five (Old Dan Tucker, Dandy Jim, Yankee Doodle)

Jeff Trace gave a good try, guessing two (Old Dan Tucker, Yankee Doodle) but also guessed the 7th most used (Old Rosin the Beau).  Had I been guessing, I too would have made that guess and I'll bet if I included a larger percentage of campaign songs in the collection, "Old Rosin the Beau" may have moved into one of the top five slots.

[Wes Merchant]

Everything worked fine for me and I was able to play the MIDI on MuseScore. That's a nice feature.

[Al Smitley]

That is one of the issues that interests me.  I made those files some time ago on my desktop computer and I adjusted each of the 194 files so that they played at an appropriate tempo for what they were (song, schottische, waltz, etc.) but when I got a new lap top and tested it, they seemed to play way too fast.  You can change the tempo (you can do what you want with them, change the key, tempo, resave, etc) but I just wondered about the tempo on some of those that you might have tried.

[Strumelia]

I made those files some time ago on my desktop computer and I adjusted each of the 194 files so that they played at an appropriate tempo for what they were (song, schottische, waltz, etc.) but when I got a new lap top and tested it, they seemed to play way too fast.

Or...maybe it's just because you got a little older during the interim.   ;)

[Al Smitley]

Hmm.  I just figured out something.  The file you download from the flash drive is MuseScore2.

I created the with MuseScore(presumably #1).  I did a test and downloaded the upgrade MuseScore2 to my desk top and it played the one selection I tested faster!  MuseScore2 has some other things that are different.  They probably work the same way but I have to find them in a different place.  I'll consult with my Tech guy on this and see what we can do.

So, Strum, yes I am a little older and find that I like things increasingly slower but this is real.  ;)