Website Upgrade.. behind the scenes

[thereallyniceman]

Thanks for the kind comments on the new site design. I have to thank my son who is a web developer and programmer (that helps!) for making everything work as I wanted it to, Mike who has contributed articles and Steve who has been busy collecting sheet music with pictures of a banjos, all 200 of them!

I once posted an article about what goes on behind the scenes in the MUSIC LIBRARY,

Behind the scenes in the MUSIC LIBRARY

 but I thought that you may like to take a quick squint at the processes for the website upgrade:

 

The BANJO DJ and JUKEBOX:

I already had collected a large number of original recordings in MP3 format and all these needed was a little tweaking in Adobe Audition to remove lead in and out noise and some of the sizzling from the cylinders with very bad reproduction quality.

 

The time consuming part was to extract the audio tracks from the YouTube recordings that members had posted on site.  I used a program from MediaHuman called Youtube to MP3 to grab the audio from the video, but first had to locate all the videos on Youtube!

 

The process involves starting the video on Youtube and then pasting the URL into MediaHuman…  then zip…  an MP3 of the audio track is extracted to your computer.

The tracks had to go into the "Audition" program to reduce the extraneous noises and then the ID3 Meta Tags had to be created… ID3 Meta Tags, you say??  These include text and images embedded into the audio track giving details of the Artist, Track Name, date etc etc.

I need to edit these  tags as the clever database that controls the JUKEBOX players on site reads the ID3 information to display artist and track name in the players. I also add a Classic Banjo ID3 image to the files in software called “Tagr”.

 

 

The above messing about produces a file suitable to go in to the Database.

The database reads the ID3 information and allocates a file entry number, in this instance 586.

  I now change the MP3 file name to:  586_Fred_Van_Eps__Havanola.mp3  and upload it, via FTP, to the hosting server in Los Angeles. This is done using a program called  “Cyberduck” !!

 

 

The database automatically loads the file to the Banjo DJ and the JUKEBOX player. Having done this I edit a photograph of the artist who is playing the track, usually from a screen capture from Youtube, and this too is uploaded using Cyberduck and this image file is named in such a way that it displays in Banjo DJ player when an artist’s track is selected.

 

 

So that was one track done… only 585 to go.   This process has been under way for several weeks and Jody nearly spotted what I was doing when he commented in one post that there seemed to be a lot more tracks in the Jukebox than the last time he looked!

 

The TUTOR BOOKS.

I have been collecting these for some time and have been sent books from all over the World. I would like to particularly thank Skipsail from Australia for mailing me a few that I have now included. Many have come in PDF format and without exception had one thing in common… the scan quality was dreadful!!

 

I went through all the pages in Photoshop cleaning aligning and generally messing about making them look tidier. There are around 30 tutors on site with an average of 50 pages each… that is 1500 pages that have been opened and edited in Photoshop and then recompiled into the downloadable PDFs…..  I need my head examining :-)

 

The PLAYER BIOGRAPHIES.

 With Mike’s help we chose the performers we felt should be featured and I went about researching.  I have a large pile of old BMG Magazines and the pile was made even bigger when Steve sent me another pile to go through. I used the net and other banjo publications dating from the 1880s to the 1970s.

The web was helpful but the information is scattered all over the place, so with many hours of compiling I eventually had the information from hundreds of sources that I put together into each of the biographies.

 

Fortunately my son’s clever database comes in here and the text can be pasted into an Artist's Biography entry and the picture files reside in a section called MediaPool.

These pictures are available for use in other parts of the website too. There is also a link to the JUKEBOX MP3 database tracks and by entering the MP3 file number eg. 586, a player will be installed at the bottom of the Biography page.

So after a great deal of messing about over the last weeks in design, layout editing, compiling information etc., we managed to upload the newly designed site last weekend, so it is now time for me to get back to the banjo that I have  completely forgotten how to play :-)

German Patarroyo said in a post: “Thanks for sharing all your enthusiasm with the banjo, because it is incredibly contagious"... well German, my enthusiasm has all gone  now ;-)

…and Jody asked if I got any help.. Well, I did get some, particularly from my son who made it all happen, but more especially from Lynn who kept arriving with teas and coffees!

 

 

[Thomas Edgar]

Well, certainly, thanks for all ya'all do! 

[Mike Moss]

The amount of work that went into this is just astounding. This is professional-grade work for which we have to thank Ian and his son, Thereallyniceman Jr.

I would also personally like to thank Tom Gocze and Richard Baskowski for their kindness and generosity in taking the time and the trouble to scan and send their copies of the two rare Farland tutors to us!

(BTW... the Ellis tutor for the zither-banjo is quite a find. Definitely a hidden gem and one of the best tutors out there)

[Trapdoor2]

Very well done, Ian (and everyone else involved). The amount of background work is astonishing. I've broken a sweat just reading it... ;-)

[Shawn McSweeny]

Ian :

I'm taking a break from my winter project (building a couple of Minstrel banjos)  and find you have been very busy indeed with a winter project of your own!

Congrats on the site's fresh look and the many added features, especially the performer bios and the tidy tutors.  Good of you to provide a behind the scenes look so one can follow the process and better appreciate the towering effort involved. (And I thought my banjo builds were a challenge ?)