pianoBananaContent

Songs

A public library of piano song data. Each song points to a MusicXML file plus optional thumbnail and full-size images. A local helper script turns a MusicXML file into a songs.json entry and pushes the change to GitHub.

Repository structure

Songs/
├── songs.json      # the data — an array of song objects
├── content/        # MusicXML files
├── thumbnails/     # small preview images
├── images/         # larger / full images
├── scripts/        # LOCAL helper script (gitignored, not on GitHub)
└── README.md

The schema

songs.json is a plain JSON array of objects:

[
  {
    "title": "Happy Birthday",
    "artist": "Mildred J. Hill & Patty Hill",
    "difficulty": "medium",
    "content": "content/happy_birthday.musicxml",
    "thumbnail": "thumbnails/happy_birthday.png",
    "image": "images/happy_birthday.png"
  }
]
Field Description
title Song name
artist Singer or composer
difficulty Level of difficulty: veryeasy, easy, medium, hard, or veryhard
content Path to the MusicXML file (inside content/)
thumbnail Path to a small preview image (inside thumbnails/)
image Path to a larger image (inside images/)

All paths are relative to the repo root. If you skip a thumbnail or image, the field is stored as an empty string "".

How to add a song

Run the helper script with the path to your MusicXML file (you can drag & drop it into the terminal):

python3 scripts/add_song.py ~/Downloads/my_song.musicxml

The script asks for:

  1. Title — defaults to a cleaned-up version of the filename
  2. Artist — singer or composer
  3. Difficulty — veryeasy, easy, medium, hard, or veryhard (defaults to medium)
  4. Thumbnail path (optional) — drag & drop an image, or press Enter to skip
  5. Image path (optional) — drag & drop an image, or press Enter to skip

It then:

  1. Copies the MusicXML into content/
  2. Copies the thumbnail/image into thumbnails/ / images/
  3. Adds or updates the entry in songs.json (sorted by title)
  4. Commits and pushes to GitHub

Non-interactive mode

You can supply everything up front and skip the questions:

python3 scripts/add_song.py ~/Downloads/my_song.musicxml \
    --title "My Song" \
    --artist "Some Artist" \
    --difficulty "medium" \
    --thumbnail ~/Downloads/thumb.png \
    --image ~/Downloads/full.png

To commit locally without pushing, add --no-push.

First-time setup

Create the repo on GitHub, then link it locally:

cd Songs
git init
git add .
git commit -m "Initial commit"
git branch -M main
git remote add origin https://github.com/YOUR_USERNAME/Songs.git
git push -u origin main

After that, python3 scripts/add_song.py <file.musicxml> commits and pushes automatically.

Why is scripts/ gitignored?

add_song.py is a personal utility — it doesn’t belong in a public repo — so it’s listed in .gitignore. It still runs locally and does the git commit/push for you.

Requirements