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Getting Started

Well this post isn't about me starting the project... it's about starting the blog of the project.  I've been working for a couple of years on an idea, publishing the out of print Donald MacDonald light music collection, complete with modern notation and embellishments and historical notes and research.

As I've been working on this, I realize that I have no place to collect some of my thoughts and ideas about the project.  In phase 1 of the project, I need to get the entire collection into a computer notation program. I've elected to do this in Lilypond.  It's a flexible text based notation program that makes the entry very fast and it has more support than bagpipe music writer (BMW) as well as the typesetting have a more appealing aesthetic.  It also allows me to write comments (viewable in the coding, but not in the typesetting), that remind of things that need to be fixed, or things that are incomplete in the originals.

This is where I am currently. As a result, I've encountered a number of embellishments that seemingly have no name and are not currently in use in modern piping.  There are also a large number of mistakes in the originals.  This is a direct result of the metal engraving typesetting employed during this time.  Mistakes are made, and it's too expensive to correct them, so they stay.  Common endings often don't have matching gracenotes, or at times, an anacrusis is missing, rendering the entire tune a beat short. Some of the mistakes are easy to correct, others not so much without a large amount of research.

In order to keep my thoughts together on some of these things, and to share some of the things I find interesting or anomalous, I've created this blog.  I will update as things go along. It's a big project, and I am only able to work on it when my college teaching slows down and other life issues don't get in the way.  I've found I must do what all writers do, and assign specific dates and times to write, but Murphy always gets in the way.

So... here we go. Welcome to the Donald MacDonald project.

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