The Music Loft Project

I am happy to say that the Music Loft Project has been completed as of September of 2001.

When I became Music Director in 1999, I was presented with a disaster area: the Music Loft.  Sheet music was everywhere.  The music was put into brown envelopes and labeled by title, by number, and occasionally by composer.  These brown envelopes, bulging with copies stuffed inside them, were put into old filing cabinets at either side of the balcony, in seemingly no particular order (although a lot of Christmas music was found in one area, that's about it).  The envelopes were crammed so tightly it was a waste of effort trying to see what music was in the back of each of the drawers.

    Clearly, something needed to be done.

In July of 2000, the most daunting task I have faced (at least musically) so far began: organizing alphebetically, by season, each title of music.  But I wanted more than that - I wanted to have a computer database, capable of sorting and cross-referencing music by title, composer, part (SATB or otherwise), and difficulty level.  Also, the music definitely needed to be housed in a better way.

The first step was to document all the music titles, their composers and their previously assigned numbers.  Over a series of Saturdays, volunteers from the church came armed with pencils to write down every title and composer we found in brown envelopes.  We went through one drawer at a time (there were 32 drawers), and after each was documented, we put them in three sections: Christmas, Easter, and General.

After all the music from the filing cabinets were sorted, we disposed of the empty cabinets.  They were falling apart themselves, and we needed something else: lateral files.  From the Music budget we were able to purchase three large four-drawer lateral files to put in the Music Loft.  The brown envelopes also had to go, so hundreds of file folders were purchased.  To go with that, we bought computer-printable tabs that could be fitted to each folder.  At the same time, all the documented music was typed in a simple database made in Microsoft Excel.

Let me illustrate for you the gargantuan task we had: after all titles were put into the database, we were found to have over 1,100 titles of sheet music (this does not count Oratorios, cantatas,  and other large Choral pieces).  Each piece of music had at least ten copies.  That means, after a simple math equation, that more than 11,000 pieces of music were found in the music loft.  I have had to recycle some music to keep the numbers from getting out of control.

Just a fraction of the music involved; a few oratorios and cantatas

Once all the music was in the database, we were able to sort the music alphabetically.  Finding the corresponding number in the database with the number on the envelopes turned out to be a lot harder than it sounds; it was like being on a treasure hunt.  To make this less difficult, the music was put into stacks of roughly ten envelopes, and a piece of paper was placed on the top of each stack with all the numbers of the music written on the paper.  This made hunting a lot easier, for instead of rifling through each stack to find the number, one could simply glance at the top of each stack to see what was there.  After that, the music would be taken out of the envelope, put in the new file folder, and placed in its new home in the lateral files.  Before they would be put away, I would look through a copy of each title of music to see what part, what composer, and what difficulty level they had (the difficulty level is made based upon my own interpretation, from a level of 1 (easiest) to 3 (most difficult).  This would be added later to the database.

On July 23rd, all the Christmas, Easter, and General music were successfully sorted, filed, and put into a database exactly as how I hoped.  

The Music Loft Library; each drawer contains around 60 titles of music

On August 10th, all the large choral works were successfully put into new bookcases.  This includes both Junior and Senior Choir music.  The next step is to go through the Junior Choir sheet music, which will be organized in a separate drawer in the lateral files.

All this work could not have been done without the help of so many people at the church.  Many thanks to all of you.