HymnWiki talk:Needed

I mentioned HymnWiki.org in an announcement on the website of the Hymn Society in the US & Canada: Two New Websites; I mentioned HymnWiki first, but used the one link allowed to toot the horn of my own "My Wish Hymnal" blog. (The Hymn Society's message boards do not allow live links. I find them horribly user-unfriendly, but the webmaster says it's necessary to cut down on spam...) In any case, this is not a heavily read site, but will probably eventually lead to at least a few interested visitors. --Haruo 00:22, 1 August 2007 (MDT)

Thanks! I've actually communicated with them through email before (they're planning to mention HymnWiki.org in their next newsletter or some such). How did you come across them? Are you a member? I just took a look at your post. Hmm, the LDS-based thing strikes me as a little odd, so I added some clarification in a post of my own. I hope you don't mind. Thanks for all your help! Veramet 13:32, 1 August 2007 (MDT)

Aargh! I meant to say official—not officially—in that Hymn Society post. :) They need an edit feature, or something. Veramet 13:41, 1 August 2007 (MDT)

Yeah, they do. As I said, "horribly user-unfriendly". But their heart's in the right place. I am a member when I can afford to be (it's $65 a year, which is pretty steep, but the magazine is worth it!), at the moment I'm overdue to pay dues. Sorry if I made it sound like HymnWiki was "officially LDS" or something. I didn't mean that, but rather that from a glance at the Main Page or at the Compilations it immediately becomes clear that there is a very strong emphasis (at least in what is on the wiki to date) on LDS materials. Same with the More Good Foundation, the foundation may not be "official" in the way the Mormon Tabernacle Choir is, but when I read a foundation's website and it says "The More Good Foundation helps persons of other faiths find information about the Mormon church on the Internet. Those who want doctrine and official teachings can go straight to The Church. But as church members we believe we can and should share our beliefs online. The Web can be a powerful tool for teaching the truths of the restored gospel of Jesus Christ to all nations" I immediately say "Mormon"; it's really hard not to. As for you personally, I don't even know if you're a member of the LDS Church—but I would certainly be very surprised to learn that you were not! I don't mind at all your clarifying as you did at the Hymn Society. I probably should have separated the two topics (HymnWiki.org and "My Wish Hymnal"), but it was a sort of spur-of-the-moment thing and I didn't plan it (or its wording) very carefully. And it's true, the lack of an edit capability there is really unhelpful. --Haruo 00:50, 2 August 2007 (MDT)

Hey, I just found that they don't mind if I just delete the message and post the revised version (I emailed them about adding an edit feature). I kind of think it would be nice if they just used Nabble forums, heh heh—but that's me. Yes, it's true that I'm LDS, and HymnWiki is definitely available to make information available about the church (though that's not what it's for), particularly with hymn history (and I'd like to present that information in a good format, if I can). I do have my own testimony of the church, and I do plan to link to a blog post about how I came to be interested in hymns and my religious background, some time (not in an obtrusive place, though, as I don't want to force it on people; if people are interested, I'm sure they'll look for it beyond the main page). I do admit that HymnWiki can be a potential resource for people to find interest in the church (this isn't where they'd want to go for their information, but it may spark interest), but this isn't intended to be forced upon anyone who uses this site (nor even are the LDS hymns intended to be forced on anyone who uses this site, unless you count when they're featured on the main page: feel free to request a featured hymn and/or compilation any time); it's not even meant to a prevalent/advertised. But, all in all, the focus is on hymns, their use, spiritual uplifting through them, and recording the facts and history about them (though not all of them would be spiritually uplifting to every individual; some of the early hymns had some terms we'd consider derogatory, or even racist, today, but I still plan to record those for historical purposes). Anyway, I didn't mean to sound offended or any such. Sorry about that. I really just wanted them to know it was for all hymns; I should amend a few things on that post. You should know, though, that you and I are the top two users so far. Most of the stuff I have been adding is for LDS hymns because most of the old ones aren't very publicly known elsewhere (even to LDS people). One of my major goals is to make them easily available, and even more useful (right now, it's like they don't exist unless you own the old books, or look through the few scanned copies available—well, I have some text files of some of them, now). As far as arrangements I've done, on the other hand—most of those have been with hymns not common to the LDS community. There are many hymns from other sources I like, and I'm still discovering. I originally grew up with the LDS hymns in the current book. Eventually, I memorized all the titles and page numbers of it, and that turned out to be more valuable than I probably ever would have thought. Later, I was introduced to Come, Thou Fount of Every Blessing, and When First the Glorious Light of Truth (from the "old" hymnbook), and then I gained a passion for the older hymns and discovering them. What Wondrous Love Is This, Be Thou My Vision, and the tune Repton are some of my favorites (hence the arrangements I've made). Celtic music introduced me for the first two, and my general interest in hymns after that led me to explore other areas (as well as finding out that non-LDS hymns are actually allowed in musical numbers in church, as long as the doctrines are harmonious with those of the church). I'd really like to find some old compilations of Irish hymn-style poetry—tell me if you find some. Anyway, I'm rambling; maybe we should move this to a Nabble forum post. I'm wanting to have discussion posts for discussion on each hymn and use the Wiki discussion for article-only stuff. I don't think most casual users ever look at the discussion on wikis—but they might look at posts on a forum. Veramet 12:26, 2 August 2007 (MDT)

PD hymn books

I see that one of the requests here is to watch ebay for lesser known hymn books. I'd also suggest checking out google books. Search for hymn (and similar queries). If you select 'full view' quite a few old hymn books come up. They are definitely worth looking at. Most you can download as pdf also. Horndude77 22:18, 8 August 2007 (MDT)

Wow. This is extremely nice. I've been so addicted looking through these that I'm only now starting to reply. I found Songs of Zion, 1908 on there (I've been looking to 'buy' that book for a long time: now I don't have to). Endless volumes . . . this is great. Thanks for the information! I'll have to put up something on the article about that. Veramet 17:16, 9 August 2007 (MDT)

I hadn't come across any LDS hymn books so that's a good find. I know there are quite a few non-LDS ones. (Some other good ones [1], [2], etc...) Really there tons. I'm more of an orchestra person so I was looking for old scores, but I was happy to find these.

Suggestions on making the site more useful

Just a little point I've noticed (from over the pond) ... but your mapping between words and tunes seems very strange to me. I came to the site from the lilypond mailing list, and looked at your featured tune - All hail the power of Jesus Name. I've never come across "Coronation" before :-)

So I then looked for one of my favourite tunes - Hyfrydol. I've never met it associated with any of those hymns - Love Divine in particular is always sung to Blaenwern!

Different places, different traditions I know, but I think the separation between words and tunes should be much more pronounced if you want to appeal to a wider audience. I suspect that I'm going to have to strip and rewrite lyrics to pretty much every lilypond file I download because your tradition doesn't match mine (Oh yes, please make lilypond source files include the tune name! :-) (And looking in my hymn books, they all agree with me for words-melody mapping :-)

Awesome. Thanks for the comments! That's good to know that tune names listed on sheet music are in demand. I'll have to make a point to do that more often (although if it makes the difference between the song being one or two pages, I'll probably leave it out, but maybe still put it commented out in the LilyPond file). Are there other ways you had on mind to make a stronger distinction? I try to make sure all the tunes I know about that I have time to list are listed under the tunes section of a hymn article, and then all the hymns (lyrics) under associated lyrics in the tunes articles (although I admit I haven't been working that much on tune articles). The sheet music sections on hymn articles should identify the tune somehow. If the name isn't known, it usually references a publication where I found the tune. Not all the articles are like mine, though—so I can't speak for them. (Don't forget to sign your name with four tildes—but it's not a huge deal, as I can see who's doing what through the recent changes anyway.) Veramet 17:56, 7 August 2010 (UTC)

Just added the lily source for Blaenwern - I've re-arranged my copy slightly and the composer has been dead 70+ years so it's out of copyright. I had a thought - if you can't put a tune page up for copyright reasons (a crying shame :-(, then it would still be nice to have the page there with a little bit about it (composer, dates, etc) along with a note saying there are no more details because of copyright.

I'm hoping to set up something a little similar over here, where rules are a bit different :-). and I might well have the protection of a blanket licence as well. We'll see ...

You might be pleased to know that you can already put up a tune page (or a hymn page) no matter what the copyright is—you just can't put up any copyrighted information (unless you have the license to do so). Take a look at the Restricted category. Pages under that and its subcategories are about hymns with some kind of copyrighted content. Permission has been granted for some stuff to be posted, but most of it just doesn't have the copyrighted sheet music, lyrics, etc. There are still articles, though, and this is still quite useful (i.e. for comparing poetic meters, names and dates of who wrote what, stories, listings of publications, etc.) However, you can always link to another website that actually does have the license to portray the music and/or lyrics (that's what I did with the copyrighted songs in the 1985 LDS hymnal, such as Teach Me to Walk in the Light. Such links usually go under an external category (i.e. External lyrics or External sheet music—or the more generic External links).

Be sure to tell us the source (e.g. the hymnal, songbook, etc.) you used for 'Blaenwern'. If the source is copyrighted, it's still okay if the song isn't (as long as they haven't made severe enough changes to it that they can copyright the arrangement). I like to use public domain sources, myself, since they require almost no research to verify that the hymns in them are public domain, but I don't require other people to do that (although I do encourage it). I like to help people out with hymn research, though, so if there's something you're wondering about, feel free to ask, and I'll see what I can come up with.

I noticed that you put the LilyPond source text in the Blaenwern article itself. To reduce page size, and to preserve file encoding (where this matters), I strongly recommend just uploading the file and linking to it from the article. To upload the file, look at the links on the side. At the bottom, you'll see the toolbox. Click on Upload file. It's a good idea to mention the contributor/copyright information in the summary box. Anyway, upload your file. Then, to link to it in an article, you'll notice you have to use something like this to link directly to it, instead of the usual way: [[media:Blaenwern.ly|LilyPond source]]. I usually make a template for the hymns in each hymnal I do, copy/paste it in and then fill out all the blanks (and/or edit it accordingly). Here's an example for the Jubelklangen, 1896 hymn articles I've been doing:

=Sheet music=
==Using tune from [[Jubelklangen, 1896|<i>Jubelklangen</i>, 1896]], no. ==
*[[media:.pdf|PDF]]
*[[media:.mid|MIDI]]
*[[media:.ly|LilyPond]]
*Copyright: [[public domain]]
*Contributor: ~~~~

=Tunes=
*Tune from [[Jubelklangen, 1896|<i>Jubelklangen</i>, 1896]], no. , by [[]] (–) (NOTE: if I can figure out the tune name, I put it here instead of 'Tune from …')
**Copyright: [[public domain]]

=Lyrics=
*Poet: [[]] (–)
*Copyright: [[public domain]]
==Lyrics from [[Jubelklangen, 1896|<i>Jubelklangen</i>, 1896]], no. ==
… put lyrics here (I generally surround them with pre tags since it takes a whole lot less time than using colons or <br> tags.) …

[[category:Hymns]]
[[category:Swedish Hymns]]
[[category:Public Domain]]
[[category:Lyrics]]
[[category:Sheet Music]]
[[category:]] (This blank one is for stuff like poetic meter, scripture references, etc.)
[[category:Swedish Lyrics]]
[[category:Swedish Sheet Music]]
[[category:Public Domain Lyrics]]
[[category:Public Domain Sheet Music]]
[[category:PDF Sheet Music]]
[[category:Public Domain PDF Sheet Music]]
[[category:MIDIs]]
[[category:Public Domain MIDIs]]
[[category:Needs English Translation]]