JamesGilbertMusic.com FAQ

1. Who are you and why do you have your music online for sale?

For more about James Gilbert, visit this link. In short, James Gilbert is a keyboardist (piano and pipe organ) as well as a composer/arranger, piano teacher, choir director and recording producer. Please see the Piano Lessons page for questions about piano lessons. In addition to information about piano lessons, this website also lists the arrangements and compositions that are available for sale. The music listed in the catalog represents a variety of music in many styles and levels of difficulty. Some music was written for specific needs in real world situations while other music was written just to write. Some music was written for amateur or inexperienced musicians while others were written for advanced groups and individual musicians. Please use the Contact form to ask us to custom adapt an existing piece or put together a new piece for you. We love to do those kind of things! Most of the music in this catalog has been used in real world situations quite effectively and we would like to make such practical and useable material available to all.

2. When I order a piece of music, in what form will the music be?

Our titles are available for immediate download in the PDF format. A significant number of titles are now available in the MusicPad (FreeHand Systems) format. For music requiring multiple copies in order to be performed (eg. Handbells, Choral, Piano trios, Chimes, etc.), we make available a letter of permission that allows you to print out as many copies as you need for performance by your group only. Any used music that might be available is usually in traditional printed sheet-music format and will be mailed to you.

3. Can you explain about the PDF format and how you provide music in that form?

The PDF format (sometimes called Adobe Acrobat format) is an industry standard documentation presentation method designed to replicate printed and electronic documents across various computer and printer formats. PDF stands for Portable Document Format. By using the PDF format it gives you the ability to print out additional copies should your existing copies go missing or become unreadable. It also allows us to make the music available for download to the widest number of users. These documents are optimized for printing and look great when printed. However, they usually require a minimum view of 175% in Acrobat Reader in order to be properly viewed on a computer monitor. The printed quality is only limited by the quality of your printer.

4. Can you explain about the MP (MusicPad) format and how you provide music in that form?

The MusicPad pro is an electronic music display unit available from various sources. It is an excellent way to view and store your music library. We are one of the few places carrying pieces specifically for this format. The MusicPad format is unique to the MusicPad. All MP formatted music is specially formatted to make the most of the MusicPad and to show the music in the best way possible. The MP music available here will look better than any scanned images you may of already imported into your MusicPad.

5. How do I obtain any of this music?

You can obtain PDF & MP music by adding it to your shopping cart in the Music Catalog. Once you have an item in your shopping cart, a link to your cart will appear. When you are ready to checkout, follow that link and the instructions that follow. For used music, you will need to send us a note using the contact form and follow whatever directions are listed on the used music page.

6. Do you have a privacy policy?

We do collect personal information as it is necessary to respond to your inquiries, discuss your order with you and collect payment. All information you provide is considered confidential and is not made available to anyone else outside of JamesGilbertMusic.com unless legally compelled to do so. We use your information to process and deliver orders and to keep you informed. We do use cookies, if you have them turned on, to keep track of your shopping cart but only while you are online. Cookies disappear when you close your browser. Please note that online payments are processed by another company which has its own privacy policy.

7. What software do you use to enter the music into the computer?

We use the Finale music notation software exclusively to typeset all of our music. It is also used in the compositional/arranging process. While there are other similar programs available, even though the claim to be easier to use, they are actually harder to use - in the long run - or slower to use and do not produce the same quality results as Finale does. We use the full Adobe Acrobat program to create PDF files from Finale. For MusicPad files, we create them directly from Finale.

8. You mention that some music is sold with a letter of permission. Would you explain?

In purchasing music from traditional print music publishers, you typically would buy as many copies as needed for the group. However, at this site, for pieces requiring multiple copies, you download the single file and then with the letter of permission, print as many copies as needed for your group. The letter is available here: Copyright Letter. By following the copyright law, not just with pieces requiring multiple copies for performances but with all music, you insure that this web site and other composers/arrangers can be composers and arrangers rather than serving hamburgers at the local fast-food joint or living under an overpass. And no, this is not an exaggeration. Even one person making illegal copies can seriously and negatively impact the composers and arrangers of music.

9. Where is your email address, telephone number or street address? I cannot seem to find it.

You will not find them listed on the website. Between spam, email spoofing and identity thieves not listing such information has bcome a necessary evil. For those persons purchasing music from us, we provide an email address and a US mailing address. If you need to contact us, please use the contact form. Since you are reading this on the internet, this should not be a problem for you. Once we receive your inquiry, we would be happy to provide you with additional means of contact should you require it.

10. I really am looking for xxxx type of arrangement or an arrangement of yyyy but I can't find it and you don't carry it. Can you write an arrangement for me?

Yes we can, just use the contact form and ask us. As to how long that might take and how much it might cost, that would depend on the nature of the request. But, our prices are reasonable.

11. All the church music you have listed are hymn arrangements. We only do contemporary music at my church, where is the praise & worship music?

Have you taked a through look at our catalog? We have quite a bit of praise & worship music and contemporary styled material. Browse the music catalog. If you have a specific need, ask, we can help. We do find that very few people involved in praise-worship music actually purchase music -- it seems they are more interested in obtaining music for free, by any means, legal or not and as such, what we do have doesn't seem to be of much help to them. For those of you that actually feel that composers and arrangers should be paid for the work they do, please consider our praise & worship music or ask us to arrange your favorite praise music title for you.

12. I am having problems downloading my music. Sometimes it seems to baffle logic. Can you help?

If you paid for an order and never saw a way to download your order, you missed the instructions to click on the link to return to this site and download your order. We've tried to make that step as clear as possible and the majority of people who purchase music do not miss the instructions, but you would not be the first who did. Simply send us a message via the contact form (or the email address provided during the order process) and we will send you a link where you can download your music.
We've also encountered some situations where various combinations of events beyond our control have conspired to make it difficult to download order music. Here is a checklist that we've put together that might help:

1. Do you have Adobe Acrobat (version 5.0 or better) installed? Go no further until you do have it installed.
2. See if your browser has security options that can be changed. (For Internet Explorer go to Tools->Internet Options->Security and look at the options available). Some of these settings may make it impossible to use our site. Consider marking us as a trusted site.
3. On the download your music now page do you see the titles of the various pieces you've ordered along with a 'Download' button to the right of each title? If not, you aren't on the right page for downloading music or you have nothing to download (eg. special orders).
4. When you do a mouse click on the 'Download' button, *EXACTLY* what happens? What do you see? You should be prompted to either open or save the file. In some cases the music is automatically loaded into your browser and you will need to save the file from there. If none of these things happen, make sure the other tips listed here have been considered.
5. If a completely different web page comes up, what is the address shown in the address bar of your browser? If index.php comes up, please use the contact form to let us know.
6. Are you on a local area network and behind a firewall? If so, contact your system administrator.
7. Do you have a personal, non-network firewall installed? If so, try adjusting its settings or temporarily disabling it.
8. Do you have any anti-virus software installed that might be blocking downloads from web sites? If so, turn off those options that are blocking the downloads.
9. Are you using an internet provider that likes to add its own content inside your web browser, such as a logo or ad at the top, just above our own logo? Are you using a proprietary viewer? Are you viewing the site inside a frame, perhaps via a search engine? If so, you need to break out of the frames and view *just* our website. Usually typing in the web address into the browser will do this. We've tried to design the web pages so they will eventually break out of the frames, but sometimes the internet providers find ways to work around this. If you are stuck viewing within a frame or some other proprietary method your provider uses, it is possible that you may not be able to properly use this web site. If you do have problems with the ordering or downloading process and you are sure it is not your problem or ours, please complain fiercely to your internet provider as there is nothing we can do.
10. You've tried everything above and you still can't get the downloads to work? Use the contact form to let us know and we'll see what can be done to get your music to you.

13. Can you tell me about the audio samples? Some don't sound right or I can't get them to playback on my system.

The audio samples are only intended to be demonstrations of what the music might sound like when performed. They are NOT full recordings designed for entertaiment or listening purposes but rather are strictly for evaluation purposes.
The majority of our music is recorded in the MP3 format. Consult your operating system or browser help for information on how to listen to such files. Some of the music is encoded in the mp4 format -- a format that at the time worked with the largest number of computer operating systems and were relatively small.
The mp4 audio samples are known to work flawlessly with the following playback software: Windows Media Player (9 or greater), Apple Quicktime, and Nero media player.
If you have trouble getting the music to play from within your browser, try saving the file to your computer and use your favorite media player to play it later. Please use the contact form to let us know if you are completely unable to play the samples.

14. Tell me about the advertisements you have on your site

In order to try and keep this site up and running, we are running selected advertising that is (hopefully) related to the content on each page. Unfortunately, the advertisements we do carry do not, in a six month period, make enough money to cover gas money for a single fillup (even before gas prices went through the roof)!! Contractual and proprietary restrictions prevent us from saying much more. As you may know on the internet, advertisements are often based on whether a person clicks on (or selects) a given advertisment. We would certainly welcome your clicking on any of our ads to help support the advertisers who in turn support us. If any of the advertisements seem inappropriate or offensive, please let us know so we can block such advertisements in the future.

15. I am buying for a church or school and need to be invoiced and/or need to see a printed catalog. What do I do?

Use the contact form and we will provide you with all the information you need.

16. More questions to come........ do you have any?