Re: Half-sheet music

[Benjamin Esham]

Rick Hansen (aka RickH) wrote:

> Mattl wrote:
>
> > I am trying to re-write a hard-to-read half sheet of music for my  
> > marching
> > band.  It needs to take up a half sheet, and i can't figure out  
> > how to do
> > this.  The dimensions I need are 8.5 by 5.5 inches, and i need  
> > them ASAP.
> > Thanks in advance for any help!
> >
> > P.S. I have tried everything i can think of.  Nothing worked.  I have
> > spent about 2 hours trying to figure it out.
>
> I dont know what platform you are on, but I use custom paper sizes  
> all the
> time on WindowsXP, here are the steps to follow: [...]

I had to do this same thing recently, except that my paper was even  
smaller than a half-sheet.  I've tried to use non-standard paper  
sizes with LilyPond before, and it never worked, so here's what I  
did.  These instructions will only work directly in OS X, but are  
probably adaptable to anything.  (I'm not actually printing on  
smaller paper, I'm just cutting pieces out of a US Letter page.)

1. Typeset your piece in LilyPond as usual.  Use a larger staff size  
than you normally would; use no headers and set tagline="" so that  
nothing but the music is output.

2. Use pdfcrop on the output PDF.

3. In OmniGraffle (or another vector-based drawing program), make a  
rectangle of the size of your paper.

4. Drag the cropped PDF into the OmniGraffle document and resize it  
to fit the paper.  Add the piece title or whatever.

5. Print and cut out your music.

Hope this helps someone somewhere!

--
Benjamin D. Esham
address@hidden  |  AIM: bdesham128  |  Jabber: same as e-mail

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