Making Piano Music

Another goal I have at the moment is to create my own piano piece.. in memory of my cat who passed away recently. I have never composed a piece of music in my life. And I only got to Grade 3 or 4 in piano about 10 years ago!

With the help from friends, I have found there is a way to do so on my computer! After much deliberation, I decided to try Ableton as it seemed simpler than Cubase - and using the True Piano VST.

Ableton

I would definitely recommend Ableton to anyone who hasn't used this type of software before. Cubase looked a bit too professional and complex for me. Ableton is fairly straightforward or fairly simple to work out - at least for the basic standard things I have been doing such as changing settings like BPM. To be fair, there are bound to be a lot of functions that I have not used which could be useful but for a first attempt with little knowledge, I feel it is going fairly well! Unfortunately, I don't have a MIDI keyboard (yet?) so I have had to use the mouse to click to choose notes which is a much longer process.

However, as a beginner, I reckon you would get used to whichever software you choose to use. I just thought Ableton seemed simpler and I would be able to use it to reach my goal.

True Piano

This is a wonderful VST which sounds brilliant and gives you different settings (Reverb, pitch, etc). I love seeing my piece played on the virtual piano too! I would definitely recommend.

My Piece

My inspiration for this piece was Final Fantasy X - To Zanarkand and a piece of beautiful music I heard on YouTube that was made using True Piano (hopefully I can find the link later and edit the post!). However, my piece sounds NOTHING like them whatsoever. I'm clearly not a natural composer! It definitely doesn't flow as well as theirs do and some parts sound so different that I'm not sure if it sounds right or not. I don't know exactly what I'm doing wrong but I'm going to keep working at it and hopefully I will find a way to improve it! I got to a point where I wanted others to listen to it and give me some constructive criticism. However, I asked my mum...

On a scale from 0 (Children bashing random keys) to 10 (Beethoven), I would say it is a 3 currently. But as it is a personal piece of music that was intended to be in memory of my cat rather than for the enjoyment of others, it doesn't need to be brilliant as long as it is meaningful to me. And doesn't hurt the ears.

Maybe one day I will feel happy enough with it to post here... one day...

Where to print or publish a book?

Today I'm researching just another personal venture of mine.

I want to create a children's book based around my two cats - or rather one cat as one passed away recently which lead to my desire to create a book with my cats as the main characters. Another reason is that Christmas is coming up and I thought it would be a nice personal gift for my nephews and nieces who adore the two cats. I haven't finished writing or creating the book as I am researching prices and what the websites offer - and some offer software to create the book on.

Two websites have particularly caught my eye:

1. Blurb.com

This site offers a range of book sizes and options (such as hardback, paperback, different paper types and other more expensive options that I haven't bothered to explore as they don't seem necessary for my purpose). The smallest page count is 20 which is enough for a children's book. If you order more than 7 copies of the book that you make, there is discount which starts at 5% and slowly increases which I could find useful if the children seem to like my book and their friends might like a copy.. you never know! However, I did find one site with better bulk discounts but have yet to find it again!

Your book can optionally (or so I believe) be available for people to buy - something I am intrigued about. However, flicking through, most of the books appear to be photo books whereas I wasn't sure whether I wanted the pictures of my cats to be photos or to appear more like illustrations.

I downloaded the free software BookSmart and it doesn't offer any photo editing at all. It is quite simple and basic - just adding photos and changing the size and layout or adding text. This isn't such a problem for me as I have Adobe Photoshop and I'm confident in editing the photos so that they look more like illustrations.

The book size I would go for on this site is 7 x 7 inches (the smallest).

It would be a paperback and in colour.

If I use up to 20 pages it will be £7.95 excluding P&P.

If I use from 21-40 pages it will be £11.95 excluding P&P.

Personally, I was thinking of spending around £50 to start with until I could get a reaction from the children whether they liked it or not.

If I buy 5 copies with no discount, it would cost £39.75 (ex. P&P) for 20 pages, or £59.75 for 21-40.

If I buy 7 I would get a 5% discount, which would give me £52.86 (only £2.78 off) for 20 pages or £79.46 (only £4.18 off ) for 21-40 pages.

This would mean if the book is 21-40 pages long, I could only buy 5 copies or if it is 20 pages long I could buy 7 copies.

Advantages

• It is available for others to buy on the site (not sure how it works e.g. if you get profit from it or not) N.B. this is also available on other sites
• There is discount for bulk purchases even if it is relatively small
• BookSmart is simple and easy to use and offers lots of different layouts (including just text) and makes it easy to upload your book.

Disadvantages

• The book will be printed with the Blurb logo on it unless you pay extra (which I think averages at around £2 more for every book)
• This site doesn't seem to offer help to publish the book properly with an ISBN - so maybe not the site for an amateur author who wants to publish a book
• Doesn't state whether they take a cut or the whole proceeds from your book being sold on the site

2. Lulu

This site is available in America and the UK. It offers lots of different services, especially for publishing books such as 'pre-publishing packages', which I didn't look very much into! They also offer many different sizes and printing options such as various types of bounding. I'm not entirely sure what the minimum page length is but for the size that I would choose (7.5 x 7.5) I found that the minimum length was 32 pages - more than Blurb - but on Lulu the cost is worked out per page ($0.20 per page) rather than one price for a certain limit of pages.

Again, the book is available for purchase on the site and Lulu claims that for each copy sold, the author gets 80%. I can't compare this to Blurb as it doesn't seem to say anywhere whether they take a cut or how much of a cut. So I'm a bit weary of Blurb for that. Lulu also offers marketing on Amazon and other places if you buy an ISBN (around $125 for 1), which would suit someone wanting to publish their book and have it sold globally.

I'm not entirely sure how you upload your book but it definitely seems more confusing than it is on Blurb - especially as Lulu seems more targeted at purely textual books. However, if the book is just text, it is probably very easy.

Lulu doesn't offer discounts on orders until they reach 250 or more copies. However, the overall price is marginally cheaper. Again, the size is 7.5 x 7.5, paperback and in colour.

I have chosen perfect bounding which costs $4.50.

It works out around $2 for every 10 pages ($0.20 for every page) which is handy although the minimum length is 32 pages.

However, even with 32 pages, that would overall cost $10.90 - a lot cheaper - depending on P&P.

Advantages

• It is quite cheap and offers a price per page that is printed
• It is available for others to buy on the site N.B. this is also available on other sites
• They offer publishing the book properly with an ISBN and placing it on Amazon and other places
• Offers a book cost calculator http://www.lulu.com/uk/includes/calc_retail_inc.php

Disadvantages

• Doesn't state whether a Lulu logo is printed on the book but it most likely is
• Discount for bulk purchases only starts when you order 250 or more - may be suitable for some
• No software offered