ROCKET SCIENCE BANJO

The cover letter!

8/15/09
Clawers,

This is the final version of the first Edition of Rocket Science Banjo. There are some
major changes coming up and I hope to have the 2nd Edition ready by 2010. I first have
to complete the next two sections of the 300 Tabs aka The Big Tag Bonanza which will
bring it up to 200 completed tabs. At that time all of the tune tabs currently in RSB will
be re-numbered and with new notes to fit the Tab project format. Eventually some of the
tunes currently in RSB will be replaced with others that I feel better illustrate chapters of
the book. As I have hoped for several years now, organization is slowly emerging out of
the chaos.

I’d like to start with a couple acknowledgments for the help I have gotten with this
project.

Fred Bradbury aka banjo brad: is my technical advisor and Tabledit Guru. Without
him there would be no tabs at all.

Elliot Kirschbaum: has also greatly improved my Tabledit work and has done an
amazing amount of proofreading for the project.

Jim Allen: Compiler of the PDF version of RSB. He put in a great deal of work turning
the great messy mass of RSB into one simple to download and use file.

Frank Scholle: Has refined the original PDF file, and added our clip art rocket to the
title page. He has also done individual PDFs of all the exercise sheets and tabs. They will
be assembled into a zip file and available for download for those who would like them.

There are others, many others who have helped with the proofing of tabs and some of
the texts. Thank you one and all for your help, and thanks in advance for your future
efforts. I never could do any of this without your generous assistance.
Setting TEFView
In order to use the tabs and MIDI for RSB you will need TEFView, a free viewer for
Tabledit tabs available from: HYPERLINK
"http://www.tabledit.com/tefview/index.shtml"
http://www.tabledit.com/tefview/index.shtml
They take no user information.

I keep my Tabledit program and the viewer set for about the easiest readability, but
unfortunately the tabs I send out are not "fixed" by my settings. I have put a checkmark in
an Option item that should do this but I find it is not work every time, so I suggest you
also set your program to match mine – especially if you find overlapping words and
symbols in the wrong places when you print a file etc.

Here are the settings for TEFView:

Go to "Score, Options, Printing" and check "Fixed Width Measures" then set the
measures per line to 4. Make sure the “Print Scale Adjustment” is at 100%
Go to "Score, Options, General" and uncheck "Notation" unless you want to view
the standard musical notation. On the same menu beside the box for “Header of the first
page“ you will find a box marked “Height” set it to "30mm"

Here are the settings for anyone who has the full Tabledit program:
Go to "File, Options, Printing" and check "Fixed Width Measures" then set the
measures per line to 4. . Make sure the “Print Scale Adjustment” is at 100%
Go to "File, Options, General" and uncheck "Notation" unless you want to view the
standard musical notation. On the same menu beside the box for “Header of the first
page“ you will find a box marked “Height” set it to "30mm"

FONTS:
To be absolutely sure there will be no problems with things not fitting go to the
“Fonts” tab (also in the Options) and set the following:
Tablature: Arial 10 Bold
Title: Times New Roman 11 Bold
Text 1: Arial 10
Text 2: Times New Roman 9
Small Font: Arial 8
Tiny Font: Arial 7
There are other font choices in the list but I don’t use them. To change a font double
click on the name in the dialog box.

There may be some issues with the Mac version of TEFView concerning printing the
"notes" that are part of some tabs. if you experience any printing trouble please contact
Tabledit. I know nothing about computers and even less about Mac so I can be of no use
whatsoever.

Any time you get a new copy of RSB be sure to check this “Cover Letter” for the latest
news. Of course if like so many readers of RSB, you never check the cover letter.... I am
slowly getting the critical information into the book itself

Tony "The Woodchuck" Spadaro

oldwoodchuckb@yahoo.com