Music

Music. Sheet music. It's expensive, and I don't understand why. Oh, the stuff that people own, which is generally anything written since 1923. Stuff published before that in the United States is essentially public domain. (Yow, that's a lot of legalese.) But this stuff is still sold by many publishers. For example, I'm playing the Bach Cello Suite 1 BWV 1007, it cost me $15 + Shipping and handling. And then I had to make copies, so that I would have a clean original.

Bach is awesome, and I'm not saying his work isn't worth $15. It is. Easily. (I wrote about it two days ago in the Jorge Caballero post.) But Bach died in 1750. Music doesn't get much more public domain than that. Yet, I could still only find quality scores if I wanted to pay a lot of money.

Okay, now, enter music typesetting software. This is software that allows you to write the music up on your computer, and do tweaks and stuff to your heart's content. The issue is that the big ones cost $600 or so for a professional copy. Thank goodness there are free ones that are just as good, if a little harder to find. I use Lilypond. Why and stuff is another post, just know that it's awesome and free.

Anyways. I typed up the Prelude to the Suite, and I've posted it. That's what the link up at the top leads to, a page for scores that I want to share for free. Right now, only the prelude is there, but I'm working on the Allemande right now, and hope to have the whole suite up eventually. Then I'll move on to other stuff. I'm not sure what yet. If there's something specific that you want put up, leave me a message and maybe we can talk. (I can't put anything up if I don't have a score to work from.)

The prelude is taken from various editions. But I've refingered it myself, quite extensively in places. I'll be doing the rest of the suite too, because I'm playing it. If I do anything that's not a guitar piece, I can't guarantee the accuracy of fingerings, since I won't be playing the piece myself. But I'll give it a look and see what I can do, if you provide me with a score.

My eventual goal is to have every piece of music that's in the public domain up here. (HA! Give me infinite monkeys, maybe...) Barring that, I'll put up whatever I can. One thing I will not do is rush and put up low quality transcriptions. I'm a perfectionist, and I'll do things to look as nice as I can make them. I'll also be correcting things, so if there are any wrong notes or things that just look weird, let me know.

I could ramble about this for hours. It's been an idea for years, putting the music up free where anyone can use it, and I've put a lot of thinking behind it. I'll post more later when I feel like it... Then again, that's how I do everything, when I feel like it.

For now, enjoy the prelude. Oh yeah, here's a video of me playing it.