The New 2006 Tune Book

Ok, so I put myself under the gun this time...  I really have nobody to blame but me.  A few people at band had asked if we were going to do reprints of the tune book I made a few years back.  Some copies have either disappeared, or become tattered that a new one is necessary.  Plus, it's been a project I wanted to do in the back of my brain for a while. 

 

See, last time I did the book, I wasn't quite sure what I was doing.  It took me some time, and I think I figured it out.  I thought that if I were to do it again, I would know exactly what to do for each.  Now here's the rub... last time I used Quark Express... seemed fine, but lately I've grown very fond of all the Adobe products.  Adobe came out with InDesign which is supposed to surpass Quark for what it can do.  I looked at it and it looked VERY similar.  So out goes Quark, in comes InDesign.  Well, turns out that they are not EXACTLY the same, and being that it was 3 years since I did the book last year, I've forgot everything.

 

So for the past few weeks I've been trying to learn how to do EVERYTHING with InDesign.  I know I could probably make it simple, and nobody would know the difference, but for myself, I have to try to learn this. I have to prove to myself that I CAN still learn thigns and turn out a good product.  Hopefully people will see that I did a good job.  Now, if only I could figure out this Table of Content automatization thing that'd be awesome!.

 

Already I've made a few improvements over last version:

1. Tunes are rotated to be 'landscaped' so that each tune is larger on the page
   this took a few days because I had to redo each tune in BWW so that it would be landscaped, and then I had to PDF the print of it.


2. The tunes themselves will be better resolution
   if you look at the last version, the round notes are really pixelated, this year i outputted the print to a PDF file which is higher quality than i did last year (export to low-res BMP).


3. Using master sheets effectively
   this is helping me get better at positioning the page numbers.  Last version some of the corners of the pages where I put page numbers was wrong.  By using master sheets it'll determine automatically which corner to use


4. Using the 'book' more effectively
   this really helps maintain the appropriate page number and order.  when i did it last time i had to design each page... figure out where it came in teh book and put in the page number... that led to some problems throughout the project.  Now, most of it is automated.


5. No more calendar


6. no exercises
   we'll see... if i can keep the number of pages down, then we can keep it in... what i'd really like is to have some new execises in there, some of the john cairns' ones.  those are good!


7. less preamble

What I'dstill love to figure out is a way to automate all the tune names into an index at the back... but even doing the basic ToC at teh front is causing me all sorts of hell... grr.

Well... why am I writing this?  'cuz I'm going stark raving mad!

I've been up since ... well fairly late actually this Saturday, but none the less... ever since I was up I have been working on this book.  Sure I've taken breaks to wash dishes, dust, organize shelves, and whatnot... but I'm going stir crazy!  This is my one way to take a break.  I hope you enjoyed it!

And hey... btw - nobody ever writes comments in here?  I'm sure some people check this out... let me know... converse people!  I promise I won't flame you!

the title page showing here is just a sample... tho' it may become the real thing if noboy suggests any different