Maintainer
Maintained by Dick Schoeller.
Last modified: (none)
This page contains old change log information about these pages. If you are interested in how we got where we are, look here.
I just added a link to The Klezmonauts. They are a (maybe the) Klezmer band based in Wales. We have been exchanging email and arrangements.
I have, per Judy's request, transposed Bay Mir Bistu Sheyn into Gm and Tum-Balalayke into Cm.
I have also started on an Alto part for Bay Mir Bistu Sheyn that is a true backing part and not a melody or a harmony that follows the melody. This is not complete but is available in the A section.
Per Barbara Maxwell's observation, I have fixed the mistransposition of the bass part in Goldene Khasene. I agree with Barb's observation that the initial key of the song looks odd. I have not fixed that yet.
I had added the tenor and trombone parts to Abi Gezunt, but had neglected to add the links to them in this page. That has been remedied. I also fixed the vocalization ni the yiddish title.
I upgraded the version of LilyPond again. I am at 2.10.2 now. I've been running convert-ly on the sources bring them up to version. The only difference there should be the version number in the footer of the final page.
I have also put the comicbook style font back into the bass parts. What I observed is that these are read and print just fine using Acrobat on Windows. The display just fine, but I can't get them to print using KPDF on my Linux box. Acrobat on Linux won't read them. If you have other observations or find this to be a problem, let me know.
The following were run through convert-ly and have the fun returned to the bass part.
I added tenor and trombone parts to Abi Gezunt.
I added a tenor part to Tsena (not all instruments). I also cleaned up the placement of rehearsal marks.
Did some general clean up of rehearsal mark placement and line breaks. This became necessary because of some differences in the new version LilyPond.
Got MP3 recordings of the following.
Added first cut at Yehudah Katz's Nigun Halelu. I'm trying to turn a folk rock nigun into a klezmer one. Experiments galore!
Added a bass line to Rumenye, Rumenye.
Added a first cut at Abi Gezunt.
I put the rest of the lyrics in Rumenye, Rumenye. This should make it ready to rehearse.
I rebuilt all of the PDF files. Because of an upgrade to LilyPond, I had to change the parts of the source that put in the instrument names on the conductor's scores. This version also seems to have problems with Comic style fonts I was using in the conductor's scores, the bass parts and a few other places. Until I can figure out the source of that problem, I will leave things in a more traditional font.
We are now moving into doing Yiddish songs, rather than pure instrumentals. Of the songs on this site, the following have lyrics on the leadsheets.
In addition, the following songs have lyrics that I haven't entered yet. Those will be coming along soon.
Added or changed the example recordings for the following songs:
Added the ending that we have been doing to Freylekhs in Dm.
Changed the flute part to be melody and tenor in Nokh a Bisel (K. 1-8).
Added the bass line to Ale Brider and cleaned up some of the printing layout.
I upgraded LilyPond to the latest stable version. As a result a complete rebuild was done. In theory everything should be the same as previous. However, there might be small differences in the output.
I added 2 new songs at the request of Agnes Fázold. They are still works in progress. I haven't added the bass lines yet, let alone other harmony or counterpoint parts.
I have cleaned up the implementation of glissandos and some other layout issues in the following tunes:
At Fred Ledley's request, I raised the clarinet part for Freylekhs in Dm an octave.
Susan has pointed out that the previous fix to measure 34 in Honga put the note up an octave. That is now fixed.
Susan pointed out, and I have fixed a problem in Honga at measure 34.
Yesterday's update had 2 problems:
Both of these have been corrected.
The trumpet and violin will probably not be dealt with until next week.
The violin parts now have the chord letters. The trumpet parts also have chord letters, but I have not yet fixed the page breaks and places where the rehearsal marks overlap the chord letters.
BTW, as part of this effort I have been attempting to get more rational page turns. The assumption is that you are printing most things double side. If there are an odd number of pages of music, then print the last two pages on one side of an 8.5"x11" sheet.
I discovered that the chords were wrong in the coda of Kolemeyke. This has been repaired.
At our last session, Fred L. and Susan asked that I redo their parts with the chord letters. This work is in progress. I also fixed some layout problems in instruments that already had chord letters. As a result new versions of all of the following instruments have been uploaded.
Clarinet, trumpet and violin should be along soon.
Fred noted that the the final note in measure 29 of Freylekhs in Dm was an A and should be an A♭. This has been fixed.
I discovered and fixed a cut and paste error in the attributions for Tangissimo.
I discovered and fixed a problem in the way the bass line was being handled in Freylekhs in Dm.
Fixed a problem with the "D.S." rehearsal mark in Freylekhs in D minor.
Added a new song, Freylekhs in C minor. Currently this consists of the melody from a lead sheet that Fred Ledley picked up at KlezmerShack's mini Klezmer Festival, cleaned up and transposed into parts. I have not done the chords or bass lines yet. That also means that the volta brackets for the repeats are not drawn in on parts that have chords. This song was recorded by Metropolitan Klezmer on Yiddish for Travelers.
I added new song Freylekhs in D minor. Currently this consists of the melody from a lead sheet that Fred Ledley picked up at KlezmerShack's mini Klezmer Festival, cleaned up and transposed into parts, and a bass line. I have not yet added (but I will) add an alternative melody variation from Klezmer Plus!
I expanded the clarinet and tenor sax parts of Mayn Shtetl Yas. I made them refer to each other.
Added RSS news feed to this page. Use your RSS aggregator to keep up on changes.
I fixed a large number of layout problems through out the songs. This has been6dribbling out for a while, but I figured it was worth announcing.
I used some Comic style fonts in the bass parts and the orchestra scores. Any comments on the relative merits of traditional, formal fonts versus modern, casual fonts would be appreciated.
Finally the LilyPond sources for everything can be found here.
I discovered that new versions of the music were being created with paper size A3, a European size, instead of Letter. This has been fixed.
Fixed up some problems in Bay a Glezele Mashke. This includes fixing the wrong note in the melody and providing melody and tenor, in the appropriate range, for all of the melody instruments.
Spring is here, a-suh-puh-ring is here.
Life is skittles and life is beer.
I think the loveliest time of the year is the spring.
I do, don't you? 'Course you do.
- Tom Lehrer, "Poisoning Pigeons in the Park"
OK, back on topic. I have been converting over to the new version of Lilypond. As a result we pick up some new capabilities:
In addition, I changed the way I have organized the sources. Currently about half of the songs have been converted to the new version and new organizational system.
Finally, I'd like to thank the band members for a great performance on Purim Temple Aliyah. As Susan so aptly put it, "Still smiling about our Purim concert?" The answer to that is yes and we all should be!
Got an mp3 file for Honga.
There's a new song out there, Honga. I had a version of this song on the Klezmatics', Jews with Horns and mentioned it to Fred and Jerry last week. Since then I found an arrangement of limited scope and have been working it to the point where we can use it. It isn't really complete but it is close enough to start practicing with.
I have also been cleaning up the labeling and the fit to page on most of our songs. Far fewer of them have awkward layouts now.
Patriots lose badly. I wasn't ready for that.
I went through a major rework of the names. I changed all of the labeling inside the files to have the transliterations from Yiddish be consistent with the YIVO standard. The previous transliterations followed the publications in which I found the pieces. Thus they were very inconsistent. I also changed the names of most of the files to match the transliterations. This will make it so that if you print the files in order they will be alphabetical by the transliteration.
I did a rework of the title page document for each instrument. You can find that by going to the scores directory. You will find the title page documents in there. I intend to change the formats of the front pages for all of the pieces to be similar to the title page rework. That will happen piecemeal.
I just added Shiru laHashem.
I did a little more clean up of the titling, especially noticable on in the titles with mixed Hebrew and Latin characters.
Added Nigun II. Got an MP3 file for Nokh a Glezele Vayn.
Added 2 new songs:
Minor clean up of the following:
Fixed up the arrangement of A Glezele Yash a bit. This includes getting the lyrics in and straightening out the parts.
Serious fix up on Oyfn Pripetshik.
Added lyrics to Tum-Balalayke and added the second verse to Tsena.
Slight reorganization of this page. The special section for works in progress was removed. All the pieces in there are now in the main section of songs.
Cleaned up the index.
I've added a new song from Kammen Vol. 1. It is Volume 1, No. 12. John Chambers's web site refers to this as Odessa Bulgar #3. So, that is how I have titled in my transcription.
I've added a new song from Kammen Vol. 1. It is Volume 1, No. 11 and is titled Shpilt Mir Klesmorimlach.
Minor updates to the following:
I've added a new song from Kammen Vol. 1. It is Volume 1, No. 16 and is title Rumeynisher Hora 16, though it has a bulgar part.
The following songs have had their trumpet score revisited. The secondary part is now the tenor sax part, adjusted for range.
The following had a general clean up of layout.
More clean up work. Many empty sheets were removed. If I get back to these and make them have some music, I will replace them.
We were really approaching Sid's Freylekhs incorrectly. It should have been played A,A,B,B,C,C2,A,B,C3. However, the markup didn't really reflect that. It is now fixed. I also made the clarinet and trumpet have melody and tenor.
Because we have a trombonist again, I took the baritone out of the trumpet score for Odessa Bulgar and put in the tenor part instead.
I just did a big reformat of the page. I hope you like it. I also included the new songs. They aren't listed in the table of contents section yet. You will just have to scroll down the page.
I am continuing the overhaul of the site. There will be more changes to the names of the files, formatting of the web site and the formatting of the PDF files.
Every PDF file has, where it is applicable, the song title in Yiddish, or occasionally Hebrew, in addition to the English. Right now the Yiddish is first and larger. I will probably swap that.
There are many new songs coming in. Not all of them are described on this page yet. While I am updating the site, You can go to PDF repository or the MIDI repository directly to look at what is there.
I have changed the file names of many of the files. This is an effort to make it so that the alphabetize cleanly if I print several of them together. The links on this page look the same. It is only the filenames that have changed. However, if you are copying the files down to a local directory to organize them, you might want to delete that and restart. The old PDFs and MIDIs will still be available for a while.
I have upgraded to 2.5.29 of LilyPond. This has allowed certain improvements in the layout of the pages. However, it requires some tweaking after the upgrade to take that advantage. So some of the songs that we haven't played much lately may actually look worse, not better.
Jerry suggested that we try something simple from The Jewish Fake Book as an excercise to improve our improvisation. So, at his request, I have added Artsa Alinu. Notice that I have done the transpositions into B♭ & E♭ and provided a sample bass line.
Made part of the clarinet melody in section C of Nakht in Gan Eydn be scored in 2 octaves. I've removed the 8va indication for that section.
As per notes from the last rehearsal. Fixed problems in Baym Rebn in Palestina where some notes were missing accidentals in measure 14.
As per notes from the last rehearsal. Fixed problems in Baym Rebn in Palestina where some notes were missing accidentals in measures 86, 88 and 90.
Changed the ranges for some flute sections of Tish Nigun and Polish Polka, K. 1, 33.
The piano parts for Frailach Medley and Russian Sher Medley have been cleaned up. This consists of fix some sections and of rearranging the parts to print in a more readable layout.
I added Easy Clarinet to Baym Rebn in Palestina. The melody is a composite of the trumpet melody raised an octave and the clarinet melody. The tenor part is the same as in the other clarinet version.
I added some optional sections to the clarinet parts of Lebedik un Freilech and Tish Nigun.
I did some work fixing up Tsena. It had errors in the MIDI, it had the wrong key signatures on the saxophones and had no trombone part. All these deficiencies are resolved.
From Kammen Volume 1, songs 1 - 19, 33 and 37 have complete transcriptions of the accordion parts now. I also did some more clean up of the piano parts.
Raised the clarinet part in Odessa Bulgar by an octave throughout. I'm waiting on Fred to determine if anything should be pushed back down.
Changed Tumbalalaika to have a 4 bar guitar intro. I also added the accordion part to the score and made the MIDI follow distribute the melody between the accordion and the flute.
The February 16 update should have said Odessa Bulgar. Using computers late at night should be prohibited.
Fixed in octave error in measure 24 of the flute and clarinet parts of Baym Rebn in Palestina.
There are some clean ups of piano and accordion parts in some of the low numbered Kammen songs. I will do a full update of this information when I have finished the process on all of the Kammen songs already on the site.
Fixed a cut and paste error in the clarinet part of Baym Rebn in Palestina.
This time I actually got the repeat in Frailach Medley, which I mentioned on January 21st, right. Previously it was in the MIDI but did not appear correctly in the PDFs.
I updated the drum part in Polish Polka, K. 1, 33. It is now more than a randomly chosen polka groove. I actually sat down with it and worked it out to a proper drum score.
Two music changes made as the result of last night's session. First, I introduced the repeat in the section between B and C in Frailach Medley. This makes the sheet match what we have been playing. Second, I fixed the trumpet part in Polish Polka, K. 1, 33. That was plainly a transcription error on my part.
I have also been working on general formatting issues. It seems that much of the music was inadvertently rendered for A4 paper (metric letter size) instead of letter. This has been fixed everywhere. On all of the music that we are currently playing I have made sure that it fits reasonably on that rendition. All of the files whose file names begin with 'a' to 'g' and the Kammen pieces 1,1 to 1,8 have been more thoroughly cleaned up.
Finally, I have added drum parts to Polish Polka, K. 1, 33 and Padespan, K. 1, 37.
Based on input from Thursday's session and a review of the contents of the some of the sources, I've made some updates to the following songs.
Baym Rebn in Palestina has had changes to almost every part. I fixed up the clarinet ranges that Fred asked for and expanded the tenor part fully into the hora section. That means instruments that had a second part only in the Frailachs section now are more complete. I also added a piano part.
The instruments that have a melody and harmony part have cleaned up layouts. There are now 4 pages of music for those instruments, with a long rest at the page turn point. There are minor clean ups in the other instruments.
Finally, I changed the drum part slightly. Instead of tap, rest, roll in the hora section, I changed it to tap, rest, ruff. This seems to match the recordings better.
The alto sax parts have had the ranges fixed in Roumanian Hora and Bulgar, Kammen, Volume 9, No. 29, Nakht in Gan Eydn and Odessa Bulgar.
I made some touch ups to the tenor sax parts in Lebedik un Freilech and Tish Nigun. The former resulted in a recompile of all of the parts. For most, the only chane will be the date string in the file.
Fixed 2 different melody problems in Russian Sher Medley. The first affected flute and violin parts in measures 98 and 99. The second affected trumpet in measure 99. These fixes also affect the MIDI and complete score as well.
Fixed a chord name in Odessa Bulgar at measure 8. It was Dm. It should have been, and now is, A7.
Updated all the rest of the preview images.
Cleaned up Tish Nigun with the current multipart approach. Also got its page breaks and rehearsal marks cleaned up.
Included fixes to Odessa Bulgar and Baym Rebn in Palestina identified by Susan.
Updated 20 of the preview images. These are used in this page to give you a glimpse of the beginning of the melody of each song.
Added the multiple part stuff to Kolomeike. Removed the empty drum PDF file.
Fixed an inappropriate repeat sign in Odessa Bulgar.
Changed the default drum rules. This caused a regeneration of all of the PDF files. The change was in order to make typesetting more closely match the standards recommended by the Percussive Arts Society. An easy guide that is compliant with this standard is available from Audio Graffiti.
Fixed some more problems identified by Susan in Baym Rebn in Palestina. This includes some more changing of B to B♭ in flute part and some range adjustments.
Started reorganizing this page. I've moved the older update history off into a separate file. Every time we pass a major milestone like changing repertoire, doing a big performance or upgrading my music software, I will move chunks of history into the "old news" file.
Another reorganization is to move the bibliography into a separate page.
Added Odessa Bulgar.
Susan and I found a variety of problems in the type setting of Baym Rebn in Palestina. These are now fixed.
Fixed a some problems in Baym Rebn in Palestina. The beginnings of some sections were missing their repeat marks. Also the MIDI had been generated with a repeat of the hora section. This is not in the recordings or in the score. Both problems are fixed.
Found a hack to get the titlepage back. The titlepage is not as nice as it wwas. But it is working. All PDF files are updated as a result of that.
I cleaned up the following list of songs. This includes removing empty part files and removal of the B♭, C, E♭ parts. The harmonies that were in those are now found in the files of the specific instruments. I also tried to make the positions of rehearsal marks more readable and consistent.
Sherele also has much cleaned up piano and drum music.
Changed the titling on the Kammen pieces. The name of the piece has been made more prominent than the Kammen designation.
Updated Odesser Bulgar, Kammen, Volume 1, No. 18 to have multiple parts in the sheets for the specific instruments.
I have found MP3 files for more of the Kammen pieces.
I upgraded to Lilypond 2.4.2. This required a major clean up of the sources as there were both syntactic and semantic changes in the language. The major change to the output at this time is that I have been unable to generate a page break between the title block and the beginning of the music.
I also reorganized many of the songs that we are regularly playing. I have started to eliminate the sheets with all of the parts for instruments of like key. Instead, I have provided a melody and harmony part in the sheets for the specific instruments. Thus, the clarinet sheet would contain both the clarinet melody and the tenor harmony. This reorganization reflects what I believe are the preferred harmony parts for the different instruments. Correct me if I am wrong! Changed songs are:
The following pieces have had some clean up, but do not have multiple parts per instrument. Their lengths were prohibitive.
Finally, I added one new song to the repository. Baym Rebn in Palestina is a hora and frailach. I was able to find an arrangement for the frailach. The hora part is partially arranged and still in progress.
Added Tangissimo, a klezmerized tango by Reiner Oberbeck.
Added Tumbalalaika in an arrangement for flute melody with guitar and bass accompaniment. I may later add violin to that mix.
I discovered another problem with all of the MIDI files that I was generating with LilyPond. These have all been updated.
I made some minor changes on some of the songs we played at the last session. I added accordion parts to some of them as well. Finally, I added a new piece. Kammen, Volume 1, No. 15 is called both Roumanian-Serbian and Frailach in the Kammen book. The beginning part is also known Shtiler Bulgar.
I have put out updates for 3 of the pieces that we are working on. Also, some corrections in other pieces.
The Frailach Medley and Sid's Freylekh both contained an error in the trombone/baritone part. The last 3 notes of both endings of Sid's B section were incorrect. This has been resolved.
I discovered problems in the way that MIDI was being generated by LilyPond when grace notes are present. In some cases voices would get out of synchronization. This can occur if one instrument has grace notes and another doesn't. This is correctable with no loss. It can also occur if a grace has more than 3 notes in it. This is not correctable. I have made the MIDI for those instances with 4 note graces omit some of the notes. Kammen, Volume 1, No. 8 is typical of the latter problem. The MIDI correction process is ongoing. More updates will be done on other pieces.
Finally, some of the pieces were incomplete. I have resolved that issue.
I have put out updates for 4 of the pieces that we are working on. There are errors corrected in several of the parts. I have also focused on making the trumpet parts be more in range and complete. To that end I added a trumpet specific version of the B♭ multipart music for Nakht in Gan Eydn.
I added 2 medleys that we plan to work on for the fall. These are made up of pieces that we already play, arranged for seqential playing.
I have updated 3 pieces with a new layout scheme. This should make them easier to work with for the fall.
I added one more Kammen number and cleaned up the bass line on another.
I reduced Sid's Freylekh B♭, C, E♭ to just those, eliminating the upper/lower junk. It turns out that the alto and the baritone were essentially the same part in octaves. This is what happens when you do things mechanically instead of carefullly.
I added a few more Kammen numbers.
All of the Kammen pieces listed on this page now have the B♭, C, E♭ parts.
Cleaned up on the presentation of the B♭, C E♭ parts in many of the pieces that were already out there.
Cleaned up Kammen, Volume 1, No. 37, Padespan per some suggestions from Susan Silverman. There is more clean up to do on this.
A final note: the MIDI output seems to have some problems. The tempos are OK as mentioned below. However the instrument balances are a bit weird. Also, grace notes sometimes mess up the timing. I have an idea how to fix this, but I have not pursued it yet.
I added B♭ versions of the bass clef parts. These are primarily for Michael, who is playing bass clarinet.
I also tweaked things so that we are getting decent MIDI output. LilyPond 2.2.0 was not picking up the initial tempo setting, but was picking up subsequent tempo changes. I padded the beginning of the songs with skips so that the real initial tempo is applied as a change.
I've added C, B♭ and E♭ sheets for several additional pieces.
For all pieces that have C, B♭ and E♭, I've also add bass clef parts. This is typically the trombone and bass parts.
I've added C, B♭ and E♭ sheets for several additional pieces.
I've added 2 songs from Kammen, Volume 1, No. 8 and No. 10.
I've added C, B♭ and E♭ sheets. For songs that we have worked on recently. These sheets allow us to assign parts to instruments ad hoc. The sheets typically contain melody and one or more harmony part for instruments in the specified keys. Generally, the C melody will be the violin melody, the B♭ will be the clarinet, and the E♭ will be the alto sax part (if it is melody). The "tenor" harmony will often derive from the tenor sax part. The "baritone" harmony will derive from the trombone part.
I've added 2 recordings from our last rehearsal before Purim. These are of Happy Nigun and Nakht in Gan Eden. There are videos and audios. The recording comes from the builtin microphone of the camera, so don't expert much.
This year's Purim performance will take place on March 6, 2004, at about 8:00 PM. This year we will be performing the following numbers, not necessarily in this order:
The music here was all transcribed by me using LilyPond. The sources for both the recording and the score of each song are listed. Please have a listen to the MIDIs as well as the MP3s. You can listen to parts in isolation and you can get an idea of the orchestration that I have in mind. The MIDIs all follow the codas and the segni.
There are some new parts available. Several songs have a melody for E♭ alto saxophone. More of the pieces have parts for enough instruments to actually play from. Unfortunately, the drum parts still are mostly stubs. The piano parts are kind of crummy on most of the pieces. The trombone parts are not all as interesting or complete as I would like.
I added songs 12 and 29 from Kammen International Dance and Concert Folio, No. 9. Neither of these is fully scored. I'm waiting for the violin and trumpet books to come in.
In addition, I redid the piano for Bay a Glezele Mashke. Finally, there have been a number of tweaks to make the music more readable. I have focused on the conductor's score and the bass part.