The post below is copied from my other blog, called Creative Laurels.

The post below is copied from my other blog, called Creative Laurels. 

Musical Arts and Crafts

I love playing marimba. What I happen to love just as much (...besides sewing and writing...and playing the piano) is mounting a score into my pretty little book. What do I mean by this?? Let me show you.

When a piece is 14 pages long, it takes up this much space:

SO MANY PAGES.

And in case you were wondering, I have two Shakespeare quotes on my office wall:

"Thought is free."

"Say as you think and speak it from your soul."

The center quote says, "In order to live a creative life we must lose our fear of being wrong." - Joseph Chilton Pearce

I have always made my own little posters of my favorite quotes, but as that's not what this post is about I shall move on. 

So, turning 14 pages is not an option in performance, especially when my hands are tied up holding mallets. And, since nobody wants to be the person with 6 stands in front of them to make a row of music 9 feet wide, seriously, never be that person it just makes you look pretentious and stupid, we come to the solution of "my pretty little book." The first person I saw do this was Nancy Zeltsman, but I must say that my buddy Matt Sharrock makes his scores into works of art. Perhaps it's all that time working in a library. He's so crafty. Intellectually crafty.

Anyway, here's my book.  Ooh....aaah....

 Here's the inside of my book.  Ooh...aaah....

Essentially, I take a score and figure out the few places I can turn pages. Knowing those places, I mount/tape/glue the pages onto the larger sheets of paper, with those page-turnable spots at the ends of the large sheets. I use a mixed media sketch book because the pages are nice and thick, so adding weight to them is no problem. 

Occasionally, it works out to where you can mount one page at a time. It's very aesthetically pleasing.

Like this one. Pretty page. No craziness here.

But other times, things get to looking kind of crazy. 

I LOVE putting my scores into my book. It makes me feel like I'm taking care of the music...or something like that. I don't have children, so I suppose I don't truly understand the concept of "nesting," but I bet it is creepily close to the feeling I get when I mount a score. I have to get to know it, figure out its quirks and problems, and make a tidy little home for it in my pretty blue book. 

Go ahead. Judge me. Some of us are supposed to be normal; others of us aren't. I have accepted my fate.

Once I finish taping the pages, the large sheets look like this:When there need to be page turn tabs, I make those out of scraps of the heavy mixed media paper. I'm holding one in the next photo. (You may or may not be able to tell, but this piece has 5 page turns, so there are levels of tabs. I number them, too, that way I don't accidentally flip to the end of the score. Or worse yet, flip to a different piece in my book!)

I then insert the pages into the spiral of my book, and then voila! Gorgeous sketch book full of music.

I only need one stand to set up 4 pages of music. Awesome.

I love it when music-making incorporates arts and crafts. That's the best.