Sunday 29 March 2015

Summary status

I realize I have posted a status this month, but this one is a little different, and will be a model for subsequent posts every month or two depending on progress.

The task is to read in Hebrew and report each chapter or section in music, in English, with recurring word tables, and semantic domain analysis, all computer aided.

What is done so far?

1. Seeing the Psalter. The text and recurrence patterns in the Psalms are in book form and will not be repeated on the blog for now. The book is the base for my work on the rest of the Tanakh. It is, of course, itself subject to change. Every new piece of data has ripple effects in the perception of the overall pattern of information in the words of Scripture. Therefore every new piece of data may impact my prior decisions. All the data for the book is in the database so the impact is mediated through automation. The changes may find themselves in a subsequent edition. They are for the most part very minor at present.

2. I had previously also 'translated' Job, the Song, Ruth, Jonah, Lamentations, and Qohelet. These were all very rough and preliminary work. As I look through them now with a tiny bit more understanding of the accents, and with my computer control of concordance, I see how rough they are. So they are all being put through the grinder a second or third time according to the process outlined in my earlier post. That status report probably makes for difficult reading. The monthly report will be perhaps more interesting, summarizing the month's work, if any.

3. Posts to date which represent readings that have gone through my process
This month (March)
Job 3, the beginning of the Poetry in Job
Song chapters 1 to 3Song 4
Genesis 1, the first 6 days
Genesis 2:1-3, the seventh day
Last two months (February - January 2015)
Lamentations 1, 3
Last year
Lamentations 1, Hebrew and English (whether the same as above or not, I do not know at this point)

I have more than these done, Job 1 and 2, Eccl 1 and 2, but I don't see them in the blog - O well... Maybe later they will appear. Eventually I will come up with a more fixed format - hmmm later in the project of course. A long project does have that impact of learning and tool development. It is unavoidable.

4. The music and miscellaneous other notes are at this link. This is in various stages done over the last year and a half. As I do each new section, I will be regenerating the score if it has changed for any reason. The software from last spring (version 2.5) is somewhat behind what I currently generate (version 3.1). There are still a few rare bugs in syllabification. These can be caused by unexpected sequences of accents in the syllables. They are rare and are usually obvious. But I may not be able to fix them in the program, so the score may have to be manually adjusted.

At 7 chapters a month I will not finish in fewer than 100 months - aauugghh! That's more like 10 years than 5. I'll be nearly 80.

And if we be so bold, four score years... Help, I need somebody. Help, not just anybody. Just not a committee with an agenda!


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