http://www.youtube.com/user/jamesgilbertmusic
Regarding books with music, if it is not too complicated, say a portion of text, then a musical example, then text, etc. without any wrapping of text around the examples, I suggest the following: Follow the steps listed here for exporting the music to a graphics file. You may want to lasso a section in Sibelius and export just the selection. In any case, use Word or some similar program that allows you to insert pictures/graphics into the program. At the end of a paragraph, insert the example, re-size in Word so it looks good. Once you are finished with the book, save as an html file. Review how that looks – it will never look as good in Kindle as it does in your favorite authoring software – and make any changes. Then load that html file into MobiPocket as described below.
Creating a Kindle Book consisting of only music
Step 1
• Open your piece of music in Sibelius
• Change your settings to match these sizes:
All units are POINTS
Page size: 450×550; Staff size: 24 (adjust as needed)
Page margins: All are 5 points
1st page Staff margins: 125 top, 60 bottom
No instrument names: 13.
After first page, margins 40 top, 35 bottom
Now that your music is formatted to optimum display for the Kindle, you need to export the music to graphics files. I have found that exporting PNG files at 300dpi work best. You can export to BMP, JPG, GIF or PNG but I recommend PNG files.
After exporting, the files will be bigger than 450×550 I’ve sometimes resized the images to that size and other times I’ve left them at their huge (2000+ x 2000+) size and everything seems to work fine. Experiment with resizing the exported graphics files.
You will now have a folder with several graphics files.
There are two ways of continuing. The first: Create an html file as a ‘wrapper’ for the graphics. The Amazon Kindle Direct Publishing website contains details on what is required. I also include text showing the title, publisher, composer and a brief note about the piece. I’ve discovered since doing this example that it is good to pick one of the pages of sheet music and place it as the very first element in the body of the html. If someone requests a sample via Amazon, they usually will be sent the first page (I think).
Here is the html wrapper
<html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml" lang="en" xml:lang="en">
<head>
<meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=iso-8859-1" />
<title>Canon In D</title>
</head>
<body>
<h1>JamesGilbertMusic.com</h1>
<h2>Canon In D</h2>
<><br>
<br>
<br>
<br>
<br>
<br>
<br>
<br>
<>
<h2>Classical Piano Series</h2>
<><br>
<br>
<br>
<br>
<br>
<br>
<br>
<p>This and hundreds of other titles are available for download in PDF and Freehand
MusicPad format at http://www.jamesgilbertmusic.com. A selection of used music is also
available.<>
<mbp:pagebreak/>
<p>The Canon in D was written Johann Pachelbel around 1680. The original version
was paired with a Gigue and was known as <i>Canon and Gigue in D major for
three Violins and Basso Continuo (Kanon und Gigue in D-Dur für drei Violinen
und Basso Continuo).</i> It has become very popular over the years, especially since
it was <i>re-discovered</i> in the 1920's. It is used in many weddings as well
as background music for film, television and advertising productions. This
arrangement is based on the Canon and is for solo piano. Although a
performance consistent with Barqoue tempos would require a medium to fast tempo,
it has become quite acceptable to perform this piece as slowly as one wishes.
Pedal should be added as needed.
</p>
<mbp:pagebreak/>
<img src="Canon_0001.bmp" />
<mbp:pagebreak/>
<img src="Canon_0002.bmp" />
<mbp:pagebreak/>
<img src="Canon_0003.bmp" />
<mbp:pagebreak/>
<img src="Canon_0004.bmp" />
<mbp:pagebreak/>
<img src="Canon_0005.bmp" />
<mbp:pagebreak/>
<img src="Canon_0006.bmp" />
<mbp:pagebreak/>
<img src="Canon_0007.bmp" />
<mbp:pagebreak/>
<img src="Canon_0008.bmp" />
<mbp:pagebreak/>
<img src="Canon_0009.bmp" />
<mbp:pagebreak/>
<img src="Canon_0010.bmp" />
<mbp:pagebreak/>
<img src="Canon_0011.bmp" />
</body>
</html>
Notice the <mbp:pagebreak/> tag. This is not part of regular HTML. This forces each image (a page of sheet music) to be placed on a single page. We want this, so it works best to include this before each <img> tag.
Now open MobiPocket, a free software program from Amazon. Load the HTML file into it. A table of contents is really optional since it is only one piece of music. The cover image you will add during the upload process so it is not needed at this point. Build the book, check for errors or warnings. (You may need to move the png files into the same folder as the publication location you specified at the start of MobiPocket).
An alternate method is to skip the HTML wrapper step shown earlier. Instead, load all the PNG files into MobiPocket. I put a sample page at the start and an html file that has the one text only page. That page contains the title, copyright and publisher info. (I’ve switched to a different title to illustrate this since I didn’t do Canon in D this way).
<body>
<h1>A Mighty Fortress Is Our God</h1>
<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
<h2>Arranged by James Gilbert</h2>
<br />
<br />
<br />
</p>
Questions, comments or suggestions about this title are always welcome. They may be
addressed to http://www.JamesGilbertMusic.com
</p>
<br />
<br />
This music Copyright © by James Gilbert.
</body>
The PRC file that MobiPocket creates is the one you will want to upload to the KDP site. If you have Amazon for PC (or Mac) you can open the PRC file in that to get a rough idea of what the document will look like in a Kindle. The process for the NOOK is similar but with different dimensions and I use SIGIL software for the creation process instead of MobiPocket. Mac users may want to try Calibre as MobiPocket only works for the PC (as of this writing).
The examples shown in the video were of the piano arrangement of Canon In D and a setting of A Mighty Fortress. The audio was an MP3 recording of the organ arrangement of Canon In D. All titles are available for purchase at the website.
Alicia
August 8, 2011
You got a really nice looking site here. use the same theme on mine but with some modifications because it is a music maker site. I have linked to your site to because i really Liked it!
Sharda Ramachandran
September 6, 2012
Howdy just wanted to give you a quick heads up and
let you know a few of the pictures aren’t loading correctly. I’m
not sure why but I think its a linking issue. I’ve tried it in two different web browsers and both show the same results.
jamesgilbertmusic
September 6, 2012
No problems here. Must be a network issue with your setup or your browser.