Editing music scores help please.

[Retired]

Hi,

For the last two days I've gone round in circles using both Gimp & Irfanview in an attempt to modify violin music scores.

   

I'm 75 and just learning to play my violins in my small music studio; the sheet music scores are placed on a bench music stand but my eyesight isn't up to reading them whilst playing a violin hence I want to modify by deleting sections whilst enlarging the sections remaining to fit an A4 page when printed.

   

I can delete the unwanted sections as seen but then I get stuck wasting no end of time trying to enlarge the remaining sections to 8" x 1.75" and stacking them to fill the new spaces. I can enlarge each but don't know how to move them as wanted. I'm also having problems printing the 8 x 1.75 using my HP Laserjet P1102W mono printer. I want to print in Portrait then I can place three pages onto the stand meaning dividing each line but I could also print in landscape. I'd prefer to use Gimp.

   

My studio in June; I've now got four violins and a Balalaika plus lots of recording gear; all I need now is to sort out the music scores to suit me then I can concentrate on learning to read music and play my violins.

Any help will be most welcome.

Kind regards, Colin.

[Krikor]

Maybe dividing an A4 page into 6 horizontally equal parts, using grids for that, could be a solution.

After using grids to divide the page into 6 equal strips, I copied the individual parts of the score and using the Scale Tool enlarged each copy to 8x1.75.

Nice studio!

Link https://imgur.com/akkvre4 shows an example using the technique described above.

[Retired]

Hi,

Many thanks Krikor for your excellent informative reply; I'll have a go today and hopefully this will sort my problem out; I'll post an update. Thanks also for your kind words; the studio has moved on a bit since the picture was taken; it's now got lots more gear populating it.

Kind regards, Colin.

[Retired]

Hi,

Thanks to your help Krikor I'm making progress. I've been playing with Gimp this morning and so far achieved this;

   

As seen I've removed unwanted music score and enlarged as wanted; I used Grids as you kindly suggested but I couldn't understand how to quickly copy and enlarge each section and paste into the grid areas so I used "Unified Transform" possibly the hardest way to do this but I keep learning.

Now I've created more space on the page I'd like to add the next lines of the score to fill the page and I've spent quite a while trying to do this without success so far, I'll stick with it because as I want to read other enlarged music scores I need a quick way to enlarge from the original; getting old brings problems like reduced eyesight so I'm getting around this by enlarging the score; any problem usually has a solution and I try to help myself as much as possible; this morning I've spent time viewing YouTube videos hence I found out how to use Unified Transform which is handy to know.

I also now know how to create grids but don't yet know how to correctly paste to fill them. I can easily enlarge images but it's moving parts of images around in Gimp I still need to learn.

I've progressed a lot this morning though.

Kind regards, Colin.

[Krikor]

Hi Colin,

I don't doubt that there are better ways to approach this task.
I'm even willing to bet that rich2005 will soon come up with smarter and more practical options :-)

I recorded a short video (less than 1 min) detailing my suggestion.

Video --> https://imgur.com/LYJ590m

Sorry if the steps in the video were a bit rushed, but IMGUR only allows uploads of a maximum of 60 seconds.

The process is repeated for each copied track. Finally, merge the layers.

At the end of the process, applying an unsharp mask can be useful to recover some of the sharpness lost during the enlargement of the tracks. (Filters - Enhance - Sharp (Unsharp-Mask) with Amount around 4.3 could be an option.

Other options:

Directly enlarge the score to A4 page size;

Use a wide monitor with good resolution - digital score. It would avoid the need to print paper, and settings regarding size and brightness, among others, would be easier to adjust.

Congratulations on the progress made!

[Retired]

Hi,

This is so kind and helpful of you KirKor; you've gone to such a lot of time and effort to help me and it's very much appreciated and not lost on me.

I've spent all day working on this problem and have logged on to update; your video is very interesting indeed and strangely after your advice yesterday I've been doing a similar thing with this result;

   

   

I discovered how to delete the parts not wanted then having created the grid as you kindly suggested I differed from you in that I spent time learning how to use "Unified Transfer"; very difficult at first until I got to grips with it finding I could resize and even aline things better as seen; you'll see the  sections I need are now enlarged the rest deleted; it's really tested me me but I got there in the end. Without your help I'm sure there would be steam coming out of my ears by now; if I'm pointed in the right direction all I need is a start not wanting to take up too much members time which is valuable.

I now know a great deal more about using Gimp; it's a fabulous editing program but does take a lot of learning; I've used Gimp for over ten years but only on a need to do basis never venturing into grids etc so I've found it highly interesting even though it's also been frustrating.

Now I'm going to learn how to read this violin music at last able to see it whilst playing my violins; I never stop learning and can recommend violins as a wonderful hobby never too old to have a go.

Many thanks once again Kirkor for your help.

Kind regards, Colin.

[Retired]

Hi,

I could kick myself DOHHHHH.

Having spent days working out how to modify the music scores my friend David emailed last night. David has used "MIcrosoft Paint" for many years; I too have used paint but not for a very long time so had problems with screen size then matching to my printer in the end I tried other sites ending up here on Gimp which did sort my problem with many thanks to Krikor (sorry Krikor for spelling your name wrongly in the previous post).

It took about five minutes for me to modify "Amazing Grace" using Paint it being incredibly easy once I got back into using Paint and sorting out the printer adjustments.

Using Paint I just opened the music score page then used the rectangular select tool to draw a box around what I wanted to delete then hit delete clearing the box contents; having done this until I'd deleted everything unwanted I then drew a box around each wanted section this allowed changing the size taking only seconds also the selection within the box could be moved around and placed as wanted. Why do I do things the hard way first every time.

Kind regards, Colin.