User:Nightjar

An incomplete list of completed projects

• Bridge, Frank: Noveletten (parts, from Sibley)
• Bridge, Frank: Sir Roger de Coverley (string quartet version parts, from Sibley)
• Chopin, Frederic: Polonaise, Op.53 (autograph manuscript, compiled from the Morgan Library's scan)
• Cowen, Frederic Hymen: A Daughter of the Sea (from Google's scan)
• Cowen, Frederic Hymen: The Rose of Life (from Google's scan)
• Debussy, Claude: Reflets dans l'eau (autograph manuscript, from BNF)
• Devienne, Francois: Sonata for flute, bassoon and clavecin (from BNF)
• Devienne, Francois: Sonate en quatuor (flute, horn, viola, cembalo, from BNF)
• Doppler, Franz: Duettino Hongrois (2 flutes, piano, parts from Sibley)
• Dussek, Jan Ladislav: Grand Duo, Op.32e (piano 4 hands, from BNF)
• Eler, Andre-Frederic: 3 Wind Quartets, Op.6 (from BNF)
• Elgar, Edward: Serenade (1932)
• Gaul, Alfred Robert: Israel in the Wilderness (vocal score, from Google's scan)
• Haslinger, Carl: Cello Sonata (compiled from ThULB's scan)
• Kiel, Friedrich: Piano Trio No.4, Op.33 (compiled from ThULB's scan)
• Klengel, August Alexander: Piano Trio, Op.36 (compiled from ThULB's scan)
• Lassen, Eduard: Symphony in D (compiled from ThULB's scan)
• MacCunn, Hamish: The land of the mountain and the flood
• MacFarren, George Alexander: King David (vocal score) (from Sibley)
• Martin, Francois: Inclina Domine (manuscript, from BNF)
• Mendelssohn, Felix: Clarinet sonata (autograph manuscript, compiled from the Morgan Library's scan)
• Moscheles, Ignaz: Grand Sextet, Op.35 (compiled from ThULB's scan)
• Mozart, Wolfgang Amadeus: Piano Concerto in A major, K.488 (converted from BNF's scan)
• Parry, Hubert: Agamemnon (vocal score) (from Sibley)
• Parry, Hubert: Blest pair of sirens (vocal score)
• Parry, Hubert: Eight four-part songs (compiled from Google's scan)
• Parry, Hubert: Elegy (for organ)
• Parry, Hubert: Fantasia and Fugue (for organ)
• Parry, Hubert: Five romantic pieces (for piano)
• Parry, Hubert: I was glad
• Parry, Hubert: Invocation to Music (vocal score) (from Sibley)
• Parry, Hubert: Judith (vocal score) (from Sibley)
• Parry, Hubert: King Saul (vocal score) (from Sibley)
• Parry, Hubert: The Love that Casteth out Fear (vocal score, compiled from Google's scan)
• Parry, Hubert: Prometheus Unbound (vocal score) (from Sibley)
• Parry, Hubert: A Song of Darkness and Light (vocal score, compiled from Google's scan)
• Parry, Hubert: Symphony no.5 in B minor (full score)
• Parry, Hubert: Suite in D major for violin and piano
• Punto, Giovanni: Horn Concerto No.6 (parts, from BNF)
• Punto, Giovanni: Horn Concerto No.10 (parts, from BNF)
• Reissiger, Carl Gottlieb: Piano Trio No.1, Op.25 (compiled from ThULB's scan)
• Rise, Ferdinand: Violin Sonata, Op.10 (compiled from ThULB's scan)
• Schubert, Franz: Erlkonig (autograph manuscript, compiled from the Morgan Library's scan)
• Schubert, Franz: Schwanengesang (autograph manuscript, compiled from the Morgan Library's scan)
• Somervell, Arthur: Christmas (vocal score)
• Spohr, Louis: Quintet, Op.52 (compiled from ThULB's scan)
• Spohr, Louis: Septet, Op.147 (compiled from ThULB's scan)
• Stanford, Charles Villiers: Elegaic Ode (vocal score, from Internet Archive)
• Stanford, Charles Villiers: Three Motets
• Thomas, Arthur Goring: The Swan and the Skylark (vocal score, Google scan from Internet Archive)
• Tulou, Jean-Louis: Marco Spada fantaisie, Op.101 (converted from BNF's scan)
• Warlock, Peter: Numerous songs
• Wesley, Samuel: Voluntaries, op.6 nos.1-6.
• Wesley, Samuel Sebastian: Ascribe unto the Lord

Pending projects

I have a number of scores which are currently awaiting time to process. If any readers have partiular requests among these, let me know and I may give them a higher priority. In the absence of any convincing (and polite) requests, I'll continue working to my own pace and to my own judgement.

• Butterworth, George: A Shropshire Lad (complete song cycle)
• Dowland, John: Lachrimae (transcribed for string quintet by Peter Warlock)
• German, Edward: The Just So song book (complete song cycle)
• German, Edward: Songs of Childhood (complete song cycle)
• Gurney, Ivor: Come, O come, my Life's delight
• Gurney, Ivor: Ludlow and Teme (complete song cycle, quintet version, score and parts)
• Gurney, Ivor: Severn Meadows
• Gurney, Ivor: The Western Playland (complete song cycle, quintet version, score and parts)
• Holst, Gustav: Six choral folk-songs (individual song requests considered)
• Holst, Gustav: Choral songs from the Rig Veda (vocal score, sets 1, 2, 3)
• Holst, Gustav: Egdon Heath (full score, large format)
• Parry, Hubert: Chorale Preludes (sets 1, 2)
• Parry, Hubert: Piano sonata no.2
• Parry, Hubert: Twelve short pieces for violin and piano (nos. 1 to 4)
• Somervell, Arthur: The Passion of Christ (vocal score)
• Somervell, Arthur: A Shropsire Lad (complete song cycle)
• Warlock, Peter: Capriol (piano duet version)
• Warlock, Peter: The Curlew (score and parts)
• Warlock, Peter: Songs (I have most of Warlock's solo songs in first editions or reprints of first editions. Note that some are still in copyright due to the longevity of some of Warlock's lyricists.)
• Wesley, Samuel Sebastian: The Wilderness (first edition)

Scanning stuff

My scanning method differs from those suggested elsewhere on this site. I scan all music pages in greyscale, never in monochrome. Firstly, the deskew and resampling functions which I sometimes use give much better results with greyscale images. Secondly, having greyscale files means I can tinker with threshold settings in post-processing, rather than leaving this key part of the process to horribly inadequate scanner software. I only convert pages to monochrome after they're straight and at the final resolution. This method also allows me to set a different threshold level for each page if necessary.

I also find that by using greyscale, scanning at 600dpi gives more than adequate results. I've only once had to resort to 1200dpi scanning, for a particularly unclear miniature score. In my experience, a 600dpi greyscale page is much easier to work with than 1200dpi monochrome: noise is easier to get rid of, and there are fewer ugly jaggies from the resampling process.

Reassembling fragmented scans

A number of digital music libraries have adopted a distribution method which rather than making their scans available per-page or per-document, breaks the scans (which are usually of excellent quality) into small tiles which are reassembled in small batches when a user requests a page or part of a page.
For example, the Morgan Library's autograph manuscript of Schubert's Die Winterreise (which I recently uploaded, but which has subsequently disappeared) is (at its highest resolution) broken into 15,540 tiles no larger than 256x256px. Like any good magic potion, the ingredients of the one which I use to remosaic the tiles into pages of more practical use to musicians and scholars cannot be bought, but they may be found freely by anyone with a pure heart and a willingness to seek them out and learn their ways. And, of course, make sure that the right magic words are uttered before touching the magic return key.
A later reassembling project downloaded 20,540 tiles and reassembled them into the pages of the orchestral score of Lassen's Symphony in D, while I was out doing the evening shopping. The potion doesn't always work so smoothly, of course, (think L'apprenti sorcier) but grepping the logs often leads to a higher level of enlightenment and knowledge of more powerful magic words. When the potion and the words work in harmony for hours to transform the base metal of tiddly tiles into the beaten gold of a usable score, it's kind of cool.
The BnF's system is rather friendlier: it allows one to fetch the tiles in sizes up to 2048x2048px, which makes the downloading and reassembling processes much faster.

ImageMagic crib

Here's how to get from a medium-res JPEG to a reasonable quality mono PDF page in a single step:

convert input.jpg -filter lanczos -resize 200% -threshold 60% -monochrome -density 600 -compress group4 output.pdf

• The threshold may need tinkering with. I generally use 55% to 60%, occasionally as high as 70%.
• The resize and density values will depend on the input file. Not all providers of scanned images provide page size data or calibration charts, in which case you may have to guess the original density.
• If using from a Windoze batch file, replace % with %%. (The Windoze command line conveniently also accepts %% as %.)

Here's how to create a blank (white) page:

convert -size 6368x8160 canvas:white -density 600 output.png

Essential tools

All of these are free and cross-platform. They work for me.

• Gimp for hand-editing of scans.
• ImageMagick for scripted editing of scans and format conversion.
• pdftk for combining PDF pages and adding metadata to them.
• Emacs for hacking Perl, batch files, keeping notes, and fostering the illusion of being in control.
• Ghostscript I can't remember now why this is on this list.
• Perl for messy and repetitive jobs.
• wget for batch downloading files. The Windoze port is here.
• LibreOffice to keep a giant spreadsheet of the pages I've scanned, and useful data about them.

For some years now I've used PDF-XChange as a PDF viewer and printer for Windoze. It's closed-source, but far better than Adobe's equivalent bloatware.
VueScan is a highly-tweakable scanner front end (cross-platform, closed-source payware with a watermarking trial mode) which can work with a multitude of different scanners. Folk doing industrial quantities of scanning, or using film scanners or scanners with poor software, should probably check it out.

Afterword

My scanning projects are currently in abeyance due to ill health. I'm currently using what spare time I have for composing, performing, writing revolutionary manifestos, and gardening.

This user uses GNU LilyPond.