<glacius:metadata>

    <title>Sources of Light - The Book</title>

    <description>Details about my 2024 album "Sources of Light"</description>

    <image>sources-of-light-cover-600x600.jpeg</image>

    <visibility>public</visibility>

    <category>Music</category>

    <category>Music recording</category>

    <category>Music transcription</category>

    <category>Guitar</category>

    <category>Acoustic guitar</category>

    <category>Piano</category>

</glacius:metadata>

<p>

    I really like <glacius:link category="Music transcription">music transcriptions</glacius:link>.

    I've used <a href="https://www.avid.com/sibelius">Sibelius</a> in the past for 

    transcribing/engraving some of my music, and while it can be rather obnoxious, I like

    it better than the other "big" ones (Finale, MuseScore, Dorico). I've also

    used <glacius:link category="Lilypond">Lilypond</glacius:link> and

    <a href="https://frescobaldi.org/">Frescobaldi</a> extensively. In fact, my normal

    method is to transcribe stuff in Lilypond/Frescobaldi as I'm writing, and then

    engrave it in Sibelius later. So I only use like 10% of Sibelius' features, but

    that's the way I like it.

</p>

<p>

    Anyway, in 2023/2024, I recorded 

    <glacius:link page="music/albums/sources-of-light">an album</glacius:link>, and of course

    I transcribed/engraved the whole thing. But this time, I thought it might be "fun"

    to make an actual physical book out of it. So I did.

</p>

<p>

    Eventually I will go into more detail about how I formatted everything and tools

    I used to do so, but for now, a terse list:

</p>

<ul>

    <li>

        <a href="https://www.avid.com/sibelius">Sibelius v8.6.0</a> - I would use a more 

        recent version, but I refuse to deal with modern Windows or MacOS, so I run it in my

        trusty Windows 7 VM via VirtualBox.

    </li>

    <li>

        <a href="https://github.com/pdfcpu/pdfcpu">pdfcpu</a> - a nifty CLI toolchain 

        for manipulating PDFs

    </li>

    <li>

        <a href="https://manpages.ubuntu.com/manpages/bionic/man1/pdfunite.1.html">pdfunite</a> -

        CLI tool used to combine multiple PDFs into one

    </li>

    <li>

        <a href="https://manpages.ubuntu.com/manpages/trusty/man1/pdftocairo.1.html">pdftocairo</a>

        - CLI tool that I used for something, although I don't remember what, maybe my original

        overly convoluted attempts at adding page numbers

    </li>

    <li>

        <a href="https://krita.org/en/">Krita</a> - image manipulation software, mostly

        used for manhandling colorspaces for print

    </li>

    <li>

        <a href="https://inkscape.org/">Inkscape</a> - image manipulation software, 

        used for tweaking vector designs that I received from the artist

    </li>

    <li>

        Firefox and <a href="https://pptr.dev/">Puppeteer</a> to generate the inside

        pages (title page, table of contents, etc.). Chrome embedded the fonts in

        some weird way that was not compatible with print, but Firefox did it right.

    </li>

</ul>

<hr />

<glacius:figure glacius:src="sibelius-screenshot.png" type="image" glacius:thumbnail="sibelius-screenshot-thumb.jpeg">

    <caption>Sibelius 8.6.0 running in a Windows 7 VM on Linux</caption>

</glacius:figure>

<hr />

<p>

    Music songbooks (in North America, anyway) are 9in x 12in, which is a slightly

    odd size (apparently it's officially "ARCH A" paper size). I was mostly going

    for easing the amount of time and effort I would spend on this, which was

    growing rapidly, so I just looked at a bunch of online book printing/publishing

    companies and narrowed it down to two that actually advertised supporting

    that paper size: <a href="https://www.bookbaby.com/">BookBaby</a>

    and <a href="https://www.dazzleprinting.com/">Dazzle Printing</a>.

</p>

<p>

    BookBaby was ~$450 for 25 copies of the book, while Dazzle was ~$600. So the choice

    was clear: I went with BookBaby. I really only wanted a maximum of like five copies,

    but I figured I could get maybe find 10 people that might actually want a copy of the

    book, and I'd just keep the rest. But then the closer I was getting to the end, it

    seemed like a gigantic waste of money to receive 25 copies of what was probably going

    to end up looking like trash, that no one besides me would want to read. I discovered

    that BookBaby's actual minimum order was 1, not 25, so I figured I'd save $350 and

    just get one for myself. Although they ended up sending me two copies, but I'm not

    sure if that was a mistake or I didn't read things properly.

</p>

<p>

    Anyway, after all the annoyances with margins, figuring how to retroactively apply

    page numbers in the proper position, and endless editing and tweaking of the actual

    content, the book turned out pretty amazing, at least for something made by a 

    non-professional.

</p>

<h2>Gratuitous images</h2>

<glacius:grid cols="2">

    <glacius:figure glacius:src="sol-cover-front.jpeg" type="image" glacius:thumbnail="sol-cover-front-thumb.jpeg">

        <caption>Front cover</caption>

    </glacius:figure>

    <glacius:figure glacius:src="sol-cover-back.jpeg" type="image" glacius:thumbnail="sol-cover-back-thumb.jpeg">

        <caption>Back cover</caption>

    </glacius:figure>

    <glacius:figure glacius:src="sol-open-01.jpeg" type="image" glacius:thumbnail="sol-open-01-thumb.jpeg">

        <caption>Book content sample #1</caption>

    </glacius:figure>

    <glacius:figure glacius:src="sol-open-02.jpeg" type="image" glacius:thumbnail="sol-open-02-thumb.jpeg">

        <caption>Book content sample #2</caption>

    </glacius:figure>

    <glacius:figure glacius:src="sol-binding.jpeg" type="image" glacius:thumbnail="sol-binding-thumb.jpeg">

        <caption>Book spine, in rainbow colors nestled between Metallica and Muse in my bookshelf</caption>

    </glacius:figure>

</glacius:grid>