DOOD.CA: Guy Stuff

See Part Two.

In part 3 of this series of articles, I’m going to show you the process I used to create a Songbook using the files generated by the software we used in Part 2. Additionally you will need a Spreadsheet software such as Microsoft Excel, and a fairly sophisticated text editor such as Ultraedit. The Text Editor is useful for doing block editing that you will need to insert the song numbers back into the files. This isn’t really needed the first time you make songs, but if you are adding songs after your first batch, this may become useful – though there are ways around it. The Spreadsheet program (Microsoft Excel) is useful because it will allow you to order the songs in any way you would like: By artist, by song title, or by song number.

Parsing the Raw Text File
Once you’ve converted all the MP3+G files into MCG’s, there should be a text file that was created. It will share the same name as the folder that you that you created the files in. This will be your alphabetical song list. In your subfolder where the MCG files were created, there will be a Juke.txt file, which will give you the song numbers that you will need in order to create your songbook. These files need to be merged in order to create your song book.

You will need to grab the column of song numbers from the Juke.txt file using a block or column editing mode in your text editor, and insert it in the beginning of the text file generated by MP3+G Toolz. Now you will have all your songs in a list with the corresponding song numbers. After this, you need to use search/replace to try and insert commas between each of the three elements: Song Number, Song Name, and Artist Name. The only commas that should exist in this text file are the ones separating these elements on each line. Each line should look something like this:

“1234,Summer of 69,Bryan Adams”

Where:
1234 = The Song Number
Summer of 69 = The Song Name
Bryan Adams = The Artist

Creating and Organizing the Song Book
Once you have done all that, change the file extension on the text document to .CSV and open the file in Microsoft Excel. Changing the file extension to .CSV identifies the file as a Comma Separated Values file, and will allow Microsoft Excel to recognize it. Each of your elements should now be in their own column. You can use Excel to alphebetize or organize it however you like, and then print it to create your songbook.

Excel uses very simply column organizing commands that will let you order all the data based on any of the columns. You simply click on the column you with to organize by, and the select-all (CTRL-A) and the choose “order by” and the method you wish to order it by.

If you are adding additional songs you will also need to recreate your INX file so that your CAVS player can read the song list as well, and the process is somewhat more complicated, but still manageable so long as you have all the programs here.

In Part 4, I’ll start talking abou gear again. I’ll go over the Microphones and Mixers you can use.