Re: Free music archives

[Graham Percival]

On Fri, 05 Dec 2003 08:07:46 -0800
"Joel A. Erickson" <address@hidden> wrote:
> > I can name three major Free sheet music sites off the top of my
> > head*, and PG isn't one of them. [...] It would be nice to have a
> > one-stop archive, but I don't see that happening in the near future.
> > [....] but until that happens, we'll need to search multiple sites.
> 
> What would it take to make it happen? I'm for PG, mainly because it's
> the oldest.

PG is the oldest (and certainly the most well-known) project for
preserving public domain texts, but it's one of the newest in preserving
public domain sheet music.  I think that Werner Icking's site is the
"PG for music" (ie the oldest and most well-known).  Unfortunately, most
of its music doesn't come with source files; only postscript/pdf and midi.

The first step to making it happen would be to contact the groups in charge
of the various Free sheet music projects.  I expect that most of them have
an email list of contributors (or potential contributors); that would be
a good place to ask if they're interested in coordinating their indexes and
efforts.

On a technical standpoint, I don't think it's so complicated.  You need
1)  A website and somewhere to host it.
2)  A database search cgi script (or similiar thing).
3)  Each project would need their own script that translates their own
internal database into entries to your own database.  Then you'll need to
convince them that they should send an update to your database whenever
they update their own.  (this is the biggest step)
4)  Advertise your site.  (probably including a note on all the contributing
Free sheet music sites would be enough)
5)  Profit!  (sorry, slashdot joke.  I couldn't resist.  :)

> If this is something that should be discussed elsewhere, please let me
> know.

At the very least it should be moved to lilypond-user (I've done so),
but it should really be moved somewhere else entirely.  However, I don't
know where exactly.

Cheers,
- Graham