[HANASHIR:13726] Re: New tech for songleaders?

[Joshua Miller <jmiller...>]

Hey All,

Well, I had a long list of ideas going in my head in response to Daniel
Hoffer's posting, and then Adrian  hit just about every one of my
points one by one in his very thorough response! In addition to a large
"ditto" from me to most of what Adrian said, here are a few
additional thoughts:

I too have kicked around the idea of investing some time into site
development efforts for the Jewish songleading community (hence the
purchase of songleaders.org) but am still waiting for the window of time
to present itself for me to move forward on this. I think that one of the
greatest challenges would be the ongoing maintenance effort once the site
is built, which could surely turn into a life-long commitment!

Some thoughts about overcoming the challenges Adrian raised:

Copyright Issues - I agree that it is of utmost importance that any open
music / lyrics exchange respect all of the songwriters' desires with
regards to ownership of their material. I do believe that these
challenges might be surmountable, but as I see it, the effort would
involve making contact with a lot of song writers one at a time, figuring
out their comfort levels with sharing their music, and/or possibly
compensating folks (and maybe there would be grant or donation money out
there to help cover this cost?) I think that such an effort would greatly
benefit the Jewish music community if we could create one central source
for learning and sharing that was thorough, high quality, and legal, but
clearly the person who takes this on is committing to much more than just
a one-time web development project!

A Master List of Songs - I would love to have a giant searchable database
that I could use to help me compile songlists, that would have the names
of all the songs searchable by holiday, time of day, age-level
appropriateness, language, etc. Such a resource would, of course, be for
more useful to the outside world if each song title in the database was
linked to the correct lyrics (in hebrew, english, and translit) and
an mp3 and perhaps even sheet music. An automated songsheet generated
would also be a wonderful feature! Again, wonderful dream, major major
effort to get all of those permisssions and to do the necessary
proofreading effort that would make the database thorough and correct
enough to be useful! But what a resource it would be!!!

A Master List of Songleaders - I do also think that it would be useful to
have an interactive dynamic database that has more information than is
available on the songleaders list currently on the Kesher site. It would
be nice to have little bios on those songleaders, and to know what
people's focuses are (some songleaders specialize in early childhood,
some do just services, some won't play guitar on Shabbat etc). Would the
effort of compiling all of this information be worth the value it would
add? Hard to say, but my guess is probably not since most people using
the database will end up picking up the phone to call references
anyhow...

Resources for Learning to Songlead - I think another great addition to
such a project would be information on resources for learning to
songlead, and another idea I've kicked around is investing time into
creating more non-virtual resources for this sort of thing on a more
local level through songleader trainings at camps, synagogues, jccs, etc.
I think the two projects would complement each other nicely, although for
this sort of thing to be done right I think it would have to be someone's
full time job.

Anyhow, Daniel, if you'd like to talk in person at some point about this,
feel free to send me a personal note. I'd love to brainstorm more on
these ideas, and perhaps combine our intended efforts at some
point!

Happy Adar II!

- Josh Miller
  jmiller (at) songleaders(dot)org

Daniel Hoffer Wrote:
> Dear fellow songleaders,
>
> Hello! This is my first post to the list. I've been songleading for 
> the last 10 years or so, mostly in the Boston area, and now in San 
> Francisco. I'm a technology entrepreneur at heart and I used to do 
> tech work for Jewish Family & Life Magazine, Jewish Web Week, 
> Shamash, AJFCA, and other organizations.
>
> I've been talking with Adrian about how more technology can help 
> benefit the songleading community, and about some possible ways to 
> expand the songleaders.org web site and even possibly the mailing 
> list. We'd love to get your thoughts, if you have any, on what can be
> done.
>
> Some ideas we were toying with -
>
> - an online music library for people to upload audio clips of 
> themselves playing songs, and also for scanned sheet music
> - a Monster.com-like interface for synagogues and temples to search a
> database of songleaders, to hire people who match their criteria 
> (same geographic area, applicable experience, etc. - songleaders can
> register themselves and include resumes or audio clips of themselves
> playing)
> - online discussion forums where people can discuss subjects of 
> interest - sorta like this email list, but on the web, so people can
> read through older messages and not get lots of email each day
>
> The advantage of something like a music library is that everyone can
> learn quickly the songs they might need, whenever they want, and not
> need to depend on a fellow songleader happening to see their email 
> request that day. But how do we control for quality songs? And are 
> there copyright issues?
>
> Wouuld *you* be interested in registering once so that temples in 
> your area could find your name in a database and call you whenever 
> they needed songleading, just like Monster.com?
>
> What do you think of all this?
>
> B'vracha,
>
> /dan (and Adrian)

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