This WEB site needs your help to survive

Twenty years of work are a lot of work. Yet, this may all disappear in a few seconds, with a single unpaid bill.

While we are all enjoying a lot of free material on the WEB, the reality is that someone has to pay for it. What is free for the visitor costs money to the provider. Think about what would happen to Starbucks if they had to pay for your coffee!

Luckily, the fees to maintain a WEB site are relatively low, but not non-existant. And this does not take into account the work that has to be done in the background to add and update documents or the interface. Focusing on a small market means that we cannot rely on large numbers of visitors to try and offset these costs. This site is completely free of advertisements and relatively few documents are restricted to people who have contributed with their donations. I would like to keep it this way. As I hate to ask for your supported without at least offering a few extras, here are some highlights of the work done this year as well as some new things:

• Facsimile index: now offers links to over 1000 facsimile volumes of pluckable early music
• Fandango documents: over 300 documents representing over 1000 pieces in transcription.
• Searchable unified index of lute pieces,totalling about 35000 links.
• MIDI to audio format on the fly converter and automatic notation generator.

After a year off from development, I have already re-taken the task of pushing Fandango's limits, cleaning bugs, . and adding new features. The next version will support Fronimo import and will offer better support for notation. Finally, I added a new tablature font, called "Ennemond" that is already available for download.

But ultimately, it is up to you to prove that this work is worthy of your support by making a small donation. There are many other sites begging for your support of course, and worthy of it. I hope this site is a useful resource for you, and that you will chose to keep it going with your generosity. My last fund-raiser was some years ago, more than I am able to remember. I hope this one will be successful enough to avoid the need for another one for at least as many years!