Writing a book...need help formating

[musicjunkie]

Well as the title says, I'm writing a book but need help on how to put it together. Is there any software people use to write music books? I need to put notation/tab with text. Thanks in advance

[timscarey]

Finale..... good luck!

[kenbennett]

Finale

I guess you could write your musical examples in Finale, save them as pdf's, convert them to jpeg's in Photoshop, and insert them into your word processor as images.

Good question

[SwingSwangSwung]

I wrote a 387 page book with over 800 graphics (Tab/notation, diagrams). I used Quark, which is neither cheap nor easy to learn. A friend gave me an old copy of Quark that I used.

One piece of advice I would give you is this. Before writing/formatting the entire book, create 4 or 5 pages that exemplify the kind of page layout/graphics/text you will be using. Make sure the resolution is good on your final print and that the margins meet the standard of whoever will be creating your book (Lulu.com, etc.). Its a lot easier to tweak 4 or 5 pages than it is to tweak 397 pages (the voice of experience here ).

[JohnRoss]

Originally Posted by musicjunkie

Is there any software people use to write music books? I need to put notation/tab with text. Thanks in advance

You'll have to use various programs (my wife is a book designer, though not of music books). You'll probably insert your lines of music into your book as images. InDesign is the favourite for page layout these days (now better than Quark and far easier). Then, as has been said, you'll need a music notation app like Finale or Sibelius, neither of which is easy, or there's an Open Source one called MuseScore which I have heard good things about. You might need other graphics apps like Photoshop for your bitmap images and Illustrator for vector graphics. I could go on.

[GodinFan]

EPS files are often the best way to save individual lines, or any smaller examples than a full page. They're scalable, and depending on your publishing program, may be visible in your screen layout.

[Reg]

Make someone else do it... put your energy into the content... best Reg

[M-ster]

Originally Posted by JohnRoss

You'll have to use various programs (my wife is a book designer, though not of music books). You'll probably insert your lines of music into your book as images. InDesign is the favourite for page layout these days (now better than Quark and far easier). Then, as has been said, you'll need a music notation app like Finale or Sibelius, neither of which is easy, or there's an Open Source one called MuseScore which I have heard good things about. You might need other graphics apps like Photoshop for your bitmap images and Illustrator for vector graphics. I could go on.

I think John's on to it. If you're doing this "for real," you won't just do it in Word or similar - you'll use page layout software. Quark Express, Illustrator, etc. InDesign, as JR mentions. But that presents additional hurdles, if you don't already know the software.

[JohnRoss]

Originally Posted by Reg

Make someone else do it... put your energy into the content... best Reg

Good advice. Why devote X hours / days / weeks / months to learning how to do things when you could spend the same time more profitably doing things you already know how to do? Consider writing the next book in the series, instead, for example.

(I'm not angling for business here, and I didn't like to say so earlier, but my wife and I could give you a quote if you PM me your requirements. At least it would orientate you a bit.)

[SteveM]

In Sibelius you can save any music or section of music as a graphic (various formats) and copy & paste directly from Sibelius into another program such as Word, Quark etc.
Steve

[nado64]

You have Latex with Lilypond.
It's not very easy to write with it, but it's very easy to read a document.