Yesterday morning, the graphics people from the printer (hey, his name is Alan too) called to inform all files received and stuff. They did a count and total 357 pages. They said the printing is done in multiples of 4 or 8 and so there will be 360 pages in total. That means, i will be left with 3 empty pages. What do i want to do with it.... hmmm.... my options:
a) Adding songs.... cannot unless they start with letter Y or Z and must be YO onwards coz my last song is YIELD NOT TO TEMPTATION. Hahaha....maybe put in Zacheus' song......nah.
b) Leave them empty or put little footnotes... like what? That need to think and need to look at other song books what they print at the back. Realised the acknowledgment part is usually at the back but ours is in the front already!!!! Cannot touch front pages now.
c) Extend the topic index. Our songs are now listed also by topics and some songs is not just under one topic per se. To do that, i need to re look again and add on and format the topic index... which is not very hard work but will need about an hour's job.
d) Guitar chords chart. Hmmm.... this was something i wanted to have when we first printed the book in 2005 but no time to do a proper one and those from internet are too blurry when copied over. Plus there werent a clear clear comprehensive list and so it was kind of put aside. And over the years, i realised there are difficult chords in the song book. So, if we have a reference chart, it should be good for the guitarists or any aspiring guitarists. But where to get good guitar chords? Copy from other song book back cover, as in scan and crop and align or copy little jpeg from web or wholesale from free website or what? This takes some time.
What did i choose?
D lah.... my first para tells it all. Sigh....at first i thot the idea was "noble" and it was needy and so i searched the net and found few websites that i can download the chord as jpeg or gif and then insert them as pics into my doc. Sounds easy and good. But soon it became very cumbersome.
1) Not all chords are in the same website and so if i want a comprehensive list, i need to mix and match from all sites and then we have cartoon guitar chord chart with different chord layout design. I spend much time going thru websites but could not find one that has all. Some needed to pay and there were donwloadable charts of chords but all seem too small.... as in they come in A4 size and i need to cut and paste and redo to A5. If i just use this and shrink to A5, i might as well catch houseflies or tiny flies, kill and flatten them into patches and print in the book!!! Er....maybe the other analogy is better but too yakky to write here.. you know, the black little dots thingy???? ok...move on!
2) The graphic file seem crisp and sharp but it turned out to be nightmarish again. Why do i say so? After inserting like almost 50 over chords and placing them nicely in position, realise some of the staff lines are not visible when printed and so were the chord names. Most of the top part were kind of cut off.... botak, u know? C, F...all didnt look like C or F. And there werent telltale signs when i first saw the file. They look so good.. even now, in my hard disk when i browse the pic files. For the words, i typed a text box over each chord name and positioned nicely and it worked fine.
3) Then i realised not jus the words and middle lines of the staff missing, even the side also missing....ah this, i solved it by making it thinner and not so fat until it overlap.
After solving every possible hiccup, i was still plagued with the missing lines and totally unclear pic. Time checked was like 3pm. What have i achieved? NOTHING! Then i thot maybe because this is A5 size and so the pics are unclear. Why dont i do on a A4 size and then use my trusty photocopier to shrink it before i email to printer? Sounds good too. I restarted from scratch and pull bigger the pics. Did the individual text box for chord names and this time, i was smarter. I tried about 3 rows of chords and then print them out to test. It looked good but argh....some lines went missing again.
5pm.......still nothing accomplished. Totally exhuasted and neck strained. I emailed to Alan the first completed file (A5 size) in excel plus the pdf and asked if he can help to see if they can make it clearer. Then i called to ask if he received. To my dismay, he has left office already. Should i wait for him to tell me this morning if the file is ok or should i do something concrete to solve the problem???
Yes, i could have done the topic index and finish in 1 hour but is this what i really want? To waste 3 pages like this when i can have the choice to do a better option? Actually the deciding factor was also with Alan. I asked in the morning if my spending time to do the chart will delay the printing job and he said no coz they are working hard on the 443 songs that i send over. It will take them whole day and since the chord charts are at the back, it doesnt affect them. The decision i made next was one that i was trying to put away since morning. it was a naggy thingy inside me to create my own guitar chord chart....a totally tedious thingy that i dreaded. BUT NOW, seemed like i have no choice. During the day, i wanted to give up and just take the back page of one of my song book to scan and then crop each piece up. But if i do that, i might as well recreate one and that would be so much clearer. In addition, the created chart would be a comprehensive list of chords which is much better than the limited ones i got off the internet from anyone source. The interactive websites are better... you get every single chord you ever wanted on the internet but copiable (haha...my new coined word) ones have fewer chords. One last reason why i didnt scan my copy was because of the visible yellow blots of stains, accumulated over the years..... :) Yup, it wouldnt be clean and neat and i would regret if i started on that and ended up looking lousy.
And at 5 plus in the evening, i embarked on a journey that i would never forget... something i never done before and enjoyed doing. Was choosing between word or excel and decided on excel. Firstly, when it comes to columns and rows, excel is good. But for time table and stuff, word is better coz more flexible. I needed 8 columns for 8 chords for each key and one row per key. Add to that, there are 5 small columns for each chord (6 guitar string lines) and 5 small rows for the frets in each chord. I even created two rows for slash chords.
Next came the little black dots for chord position followed by the teeny weeny white circles outside the staff to indicate not to press that string. Oh yes, needed the little curve thingy or arc to indicate bar chord stuff. And yah... a lot of drawing and slowly, i see the created chords coming up beautifully (my standard) :)
It was a lot of satisfaction after all the useless struggle. Now there are profitable fruits. Those many hours spend earlier were really time wasters....but then again, if i didnt go thru that, i wouldnt have been driven to do this once and for all to keep for years to come. Besides... i have one less copyright to ask for or copyright issues to worry about!!! HAHAAHAH......
And with that, i used up the extra 2 pages. Btw, the 3rd empty page is at the front, just after acknowledgement and before the number 1 song. Alan told me this in the afternoon. I couldnt do anything about this page because it has been set to print.
Here is how it looks like.... minus the grid lines, it wont be visible when printed:
Hmmmm.....and so, at 10.40pm, i finally finished the task and confirmed with Alan this morning, everything looks good. Thank God once again. Now i can rest my fingers and neck.... :)
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