Interesting new Christmas book. Free to download – LilyPond

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mikehalloran
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Interesting new Christmas book. Free to download – LilyPond

Post by mikehalloran »

A Collection of Christmas Carols by Benjamin Bloomfield. You can download it for free or buy a print copy. The site even has MIDI files for most of them.

http://acollectionofchristmascarols.com/

It's only been out a few weeks. I found it while searching for PD arrangements to add to a similar book that I have been compiling.

My family has been hosting a carol sing for 35 years and I have been tweaking my book for as long. My book began because I couldn't buy anything that had the versions of holiday songs the way I knew them growing up. I applaud Mr. Bloomfield for this collection.

I found most interesting that he did it in LilyPond. Going to that site, I see that Benjamin Bloomfield is one of the developers. I just don't understand the appeal of a text based notation program even if it is free.
http://www.lilypond.org/text-input.html
The book doesn't look bad, though, kind of like most of the 50+ church hymnals in my collection.

Mine will never be published unless/until I have worked out details on the songs still under copyright and will never be found online. Now when people ask me for a copy, I can point them to this – 2/3 of the old arrangements I use are in it. Many I have never seen online before and my latest copies were printed in the early 1920s. I was planning to release the PD portion but now it's redundant and I am glad.

His claim that there are no known copyright issues isn't quite true but it should be in ten years or so. A certain English publisher may have an issue with arrangements that they first published in 1928. I hope not as those can be found in so many other places.

I wish that I could have bought 40 copies of this a long time ago.
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Phil O
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Re: Interesting new Christmas book. Free to download – LilyP

Post by Phil O »

Thanks for that link, Mike.

Phil
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