It’s a great idea - but I wouldn’t wanna write it either.
I would think the logical place to start would be to compile a list of topics, which would ultimately be chapter headings (for example “Advice to beginners,” “Whistle reviews,” etc.) The next step would be to do keyword searches of the message board to find good posts on each of those topics, then contact each of the authors to get permission to use their posts.
Redwolf
On 2002-12-28 07:17, whatzitt wrote:
OK, I’ll admit that this idea came to me during a recent bout of insomnia, but I still think it’s a good idea. Has anyone ever discussed the idea of putting together a book/booklet of whistle advice compiled from the wisdom shared on this message board?
It sounds like great intentions with one person getting stuck doing all the work. I started sending whistles to people in the Pacific rim because they cannot buy whistles easily. A few kind folks here jumped on the bandwagon, and were kind enough to send/order whistles and used whistles and to want to participate in this whistle giveaway thing. I have had a lot of fun doing this, and the e-mail correspondence is a ball. Some folks wanted to turn it into a world-wide mission, some folks suggested and designed bumper stickers and logos. I still buy whistles when I can, I only have one condition, and that is if the person I’ve giving it too is over eight years old (only one got fed to a dawg, by an adult professional musician). This is a gift without strings, and I am gratified that I’m strill corresponding with some of these folks. While I’m no longer seeking people to send whistles to, I’ve enjoyed this, and thinl I may have helped a little, after all, I passionately believe that people need the means to make music. How come I’m not actively soliticiting anymore? Chiff and Fippies seem to have lost interest. When I post about a new “whistle babies” I get no replies, the thread stops. I’m sure that when the Corrs go on tour again, people will show up here looking for Walton’s Little Black. But in the meantime, it’s kinda nice to have the postage out of pocket in my pocket for now. It’s rewarding, I’m going a great thing, and I love it, but it’s one of those things you can’t do alone. I don’t encourage publishing a book without thoroughly researching the whole thing first, it’s hard to sell those buggers. Not that I mean to be a wet blanket, but it’ll take one fanatic person to keep it going.
Anna understands that a hearty dose of realistic expectations is needed.
If it’s going to work you’ll need an organizational tree of some sort, with …
- One person in charge who can assign chapters and deadlines to interested contributors. (And to re-assign chapters when people fall off the project.)
- Another person will need to collate and edit material.
- Someone to typeset the book (I might find it fun, if it reaches that point).
- Someone to choose among the publishing options. Choices include print-on-demand, e-book, PDF--and what if Dale doesn't want to host the electronic options with the attendant shopping cart requirements? Some print-on-demand places offer e-book hosting as part of the package. And are you going to pony up for an ISBN? That WOULD get you onto Amazon.com, for one thing.
- Someone to do the bookkeeping for unavoidable expenses and to appropriately pay out charitable contributions if there are profits.
Scared yet?
M
Marguerite
Gettysburg
[ This Message was edited by: mvhplank on 2002-12-28 15:34 ]
Aw, we’re all dancin’ around the fact that a really big fat book about whistlin’ needs to be done. C&F submissions would be just a part of it, but you would need history and encyclopedic articles, discography, about players etc etc. The scant history has been covered by Breathnach (Folk Music and Dances of Ireland), but would need to be amplified by research on Clarke and Gen companies and other pioneers. You would then need to explore the ascendancy of whistle, with all the new builders etc and face the subjective choices of builder inclusion etc.
The players have been covered by Vallely (The Companion to Irish Traditional Music) but you would labor to extract those entries without plagiarizing, because that book was a combo of submitted articles rather than a single person processing all the info, so permission would be a huge issue there as well, I would imagine.
I have often thot it was time for the big book , but I’m a dreamer more than a do’er. This would be a huge job, to do it right. You could pitch it tho with C&F as proof of a customer base.
An interactive pdf version of C&F lore would be doable, especially using the index features of Acrobat. The biggest problem would be re-formatting all those Forum messages, tho, establishing style sheets etc. I have produced a 150-page college Student Handbook in print for example, then re-did it as a pdf and set up all kinds of page relationships for access at the college website..
I am in favor of saving trees, and if its just C&F lore, I think a pdf version is the way to go.
As far as extracting information from the board, maybe that responsibility could be divided topically. For example, one person would be responsible for gleaning all relevant posts about whistle care, and another all relevant posts about beginner’s tips.
If Dale is willing to get involved, maybe we could come up with a downloadable permission form for all contributors.
On 2002-12-28 12:45, Peter Laban wrote:
On 2002-12-28 10:55, serpent wrote:
I’m not a lawyer, and I don’t play one on TV, but I do believe that since this is a public forum, the information found in it is de facto in the public domainI don’t know about copyright where you live but in my book copyright rests with the authors of each contribution and nothing should be used without their consent.
While I agree with you in spirit, I also stated that I’m not an attorney and that this needs to be looked at by someone who is, before anything is done. And I believe you will find that, this being a public forum, automatically places submissions thereto in the public domain unless a statement of the nature “Copyright &C yyyy by &name. All rights reserved.” appears in the text posted.
Attorneys? Opinions?
(I don’t care about non-attorneys’ opinions. They are legally equivalent to mine in weight, which is zero.)
Cheers, 
serpent in the garden…
Well, Whatzitt, it’s your thread … is it going to be your project?
I only have so much ##hold fingers an inch apart## patience for discussion without action
M
Pull it all together (including financing) and get it typeset, and I’ll be happy to arrange and oversee the manufacturing of the book. I’ve been in the business of producing books for 20 years. I don’t do accounting or sales, though.
So we have, potentially, an editor, a compositor, and a production manager.
Looks like we still need a leader.
Come on, some brave yet foolish soul! Think how it will look on your resume!
M
My hubby’s best friend is an attorney. This isn’t his specialty, but I’ll speak with him tomorrow. If he doesn’t have the answers we need, he should be able to find someone who does. I’ll fill everyone in tomorrow. I don’t know how to lead a project of this type, however, I’m ready to help in any way I’m able.
[ This Message was edited by: whatzitt on 2002-12-28 22:21 ]
On 2002-12-28 22:02, whatzitt wrote:
My hubby’s best friend is an attorney. This isn’t his specialty, but I’ll speak with him tomorrow. If he doesn’t have the answers we need, he should be able to find someone who does. I’ll fill everyone in tomorrow.
I have been contacted by one of our number who is a paralegal, and who pointed me in the right direction. My surmise was apparently incorrect - your stuff on the board is copyright by you. Even your email is copyright by you. If someone wants to use your post or your email in a publication, they must obtain your permission. I would assume (and we know just about how good my assumptions can be 
) that it would be best to get it in writing.
Whomever said that it would take some dedication to do this sort of task, got it more right than s/he knew, apparently! :roll:
I asked about my “blanket release”, and will let you know as soon as I hear whether such a thing is even legal.
It’s a complicated old world out there!
Cheers,
serpent
On 2002-12-28 21:47, mvhplank wrote:
So we have, potentially, an editor, a compositor, and a production manager.Looks like we still need a leader.
Come on, some brave yet foolish soul! Think how it will look on your resume!
M
I think I may have already done the brave & foolish bit already, when putting together the Wooden Flute Obsession CDs as a non-profit project/organization, and even thinking about WFO2. About 90 contracts to do WFO1. BTW, the ITMS has received a determination letter from the IRS approving our tax-exempt status.
I’ll certainly put this on my list of things to think about, though. I can envision ways in which it can work legally through a process of contract permission from contributors, as well as complete re-writing but with the content from messages as a guide to needed material.
Regardless, would those with the special skills related to publishing please contact me with some info about what they do and how to reach them for possible other projects?
Kevin Krell
kevin@worldtrad.org
International Traditional Music Society, Inc.
Wooden Flute Obsession CDs
http://www.worldtrad.org
[ This Message was edited by: kkrell on 2002-12-29 00:44 ]
On 2002-12-28 23:22, kkrell wrote:
[snip]
Regardless, would those with the special skills related to publishing please contact me with some info about what they do and how to reach them for possible other projects?Kevin Krell
kevin@worldtrad.org
An e-mail will be on its way shortly.
M
On 2002-12-28 18:02, serpent wrote:
(I don’t care about non-attorneys’ opinions. They are legally equivalent to mine in weight, which is zero.)
Speak about your own opinions, some people actually DO know things from experience or whatever.
Cees, it was me who suggested this a while back. This was based on my experience as a newbie and how I had learned so much here. I felt I needed a knowlegeable whistler with whom to work ..an expert…and for a while I had found one (in Ireland, and now departed from this list). But he suddenly became incommunicado. So I dropped the idea.
I still have my organization notes if anyone wants them. I would be happy to work on a chapter or two, especially from a newbie’s perspective. I write professionally and can also edit.
Hey Everyone!
I think this is a great idea, but I know from my own limited experience in putting together the WhisleAnnex/Chiffboard Matrix site that the key to success is focus focus focus. Few of the visitors to the Annex go to the Matrix these days (perhaps my fault for not updating the info regularly)…almost all clicks go to the pages covering how to read ABC files, how to find tune notation, and how to find online tutorials, whistle teachers and sessions. A website answers these questions very nicely because it links people directly to what they want (i.e., a link to Norbeck or Moon or the Virtual Sesion or to the teacher’s email address). Since I launched the Annex in, uh, I think it was May last year, the site’s had about 17,000 total hits, which I hear isnt bad for a home-brew GeoAtrocities site, and about half of those are led to Annex from a link on C&F.
So, if you want a PDF book on Everything Whistle, in reality you kinda have to decide what you are really gonna cover that lends itself to a PDF format. For example, as I’ve said on the Annex, I think Brother Steve’s tutorials are the best available anywhere, and the online format linking WAVE files with text works very well as a teaching format…you can’t do this with a downloable PDF (at least I dont think you can).
So is the book a pretty PDF version of a cocktail table book with lots of pretty pictures of whistles (not a bad idea anyway, by the way) or is it something more?
Sound is so integral to the whistle experience that when you really sit down and start focusing on the project, it looks to me more like a soooper duuupper hyped up jacked on steroids supplement to the Chiff site with BrotherSteve-style interactive tutorials and downloadable photos and perhaps articles on specific topics written either by Whistle/Flute Worthies (Maddens, Crawfords, Bergins, etc) or Experienced Chiffers…basically, the stuff that I lacked the time, experience and resources to do with the WhistleAnnex site. Unless someone really is willing to spend the time to take a complete approach, and lay out in nice, book-like format, the whole whistle physics, history etc of the whistle, then add all the wierd escoteric stuff like how to deal with moisture, tunings, whistle keys, perfect pitch, temperaments, sessions and their varied ettiquettes, and whatever else.
There is hope for a project such as this…Anyone with time, experience and a quivver of Adobe software products like PhotoShop, Illustrator and Pagemaker can do wonderful things these days, and the whistle community is surprising willing to contribute…at one point J. Madden was signed up and agreeable to do online whistle tutorials for the Annex…and then I was seduced by the Fiddle, and well suddenly all of my spare time was consumed with the mad concept of dragging the hair of a horse over the guts of a cat..
Not trying to douse enthusiasm for the project, just offering some hard-won perspective. Good Luck all!!!
Kev/Dazed
P.S.: I encourage anyone and everyone to give the proposed project a try…I certainly enjoyed getting the Annex site up and running, and learned a lot in the process…and I’m the first to say that my effort doesn’t even begin to do the topic justice–it was just my own little effort to aid my fellow beginning whistlers. In any event, you’re certainly not stepping on any of my toes with this…if you guys can pull together a book that handles this stuff, you do so with my sincere and enthusiastic encouragement.
[ This Message was edited by: DazedinLA on 2002-12-29 11:11 ]
You’d have to take a modular approach to make it manageable–hence the suggestion to assign out chapters.
In fact, creating free-standing chapters for later collation into one source would make it manageable as well as providing feedback and course correction for the final product.
Also, the PDF format is much more versatile than you might think, if you have mostly used it to download things like health insurance forms.
You can treat Acrobat like an authoring tool, but not as high-powered as Director. You can set actions to pages and buttons, run JavaScript, and play sound files and QuickTime movies in the PDF file.
That kind of interactivity does make the file pretty big, though. Once it reaches a certain size, you might as well distribute it on CD-ROM.
M
On 2002-12-29 10:50, DazedinLA wrote:
The mad concept of dragging the hair of a horse over the guts of a cat..
Hi Kev, never mind the Whistle Book Project, You could sell a book with quotes like that.
Cheers, Mac
On 2002-12-29 08:47, Peter Laban wrote:
On 2002-12-28 18:02, serpent wrote:
(I don’t care about non-attorneys’ opinions. They are legally equivalent to mine in weight, which is zero.)
Speak about your own opinions, some people actually DO know things from experience or whatever.
Oh, Peter, chill! I’ve admitted above that I’m a legal dumbass! I ain’t picking on you, or anyone else - it was a generalization, and only reflected my opinion on the subject. I know something about nuclear energy, but it doesn’t qualify me to give advice on building a reactor… omigod!!! “Uh, mom, how come the sky’s so bright over by Kansas City?”
Cheers, all!
serpent