MORRISTOWN, N.J. – A major contribution to the world of Ukrainian song has recently been released to the general public on the Internet. WikiSpiv is a collaborative, editable, digital encyclopedia of Ukrainian songs that was created and developed by Daniel Centore and launched in January at www.WikiSpiv.com.
A key feature that differentiates the WikiSpiv digital anthology from other online song books is that it is structured in the style of “Wiki” free-content websites. Users of WikiSpiv are able to contribute songs to the collection or edit the songs already available. Since anyone can add content, the goal is to grow the collection and provide Ukrainian song lovers a comprehensive compilation of songs, centrally located and accessible to anyone on the Internet.
Each song page offers the words to the most common version of the song, the chords to the melody, and links to one or more recorded renditions of the song so that the melody can be easily heard and learned. A song can be located from the main page of the WikiSpiv site by its title, words or phrases using the search window, or in one of the 24 categories such as love songs, patriotic songs, Plast Ukrainian Scouting Organization or Ukrainian American Youth Association songs, and English-language songs composed for diaspora Ukrainians. The site currently carries 386 songs, several of which have been added by users since the site’s debut.
The concept was initiated by Mr. Centore in 2016 while he was a computer science/computer engineering sophomore at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute in Troy, N.Y. Although not a musician himself, he enjoyed singing Ukrainian songs that he learned as a Plast scout, and was frustrated by the lack of a single source of lyrics for the songs he wanted to sing. It was also difficult to obtain lyrics and chords for contemporary songs coming from Ukraine, or for once-popular songs that were no longer in demand.
Recognizing that no one editor could compile the wealth of Ukrainian songs, Mr. Centore constructed an editable songbook, based on the open-sourced coding framework of the Wikipedia database, where anyone from around the world could contribute his or her knowledge to the site and grow a comprehensive encyclopedia that was usable and sharable by everyone.
Daniel Centore
Mr. Centore has been developing WikiSpiv for the past two years as a side project to his studies at Rensselaer, and he launched the site in January of this year. So far, the project has been self-funded. A new feature that has just been released is a print version of the complete songbook, available for sale in time for the summer camp season. The site for the songbook can be found at the link for the Printed Edition on the WikiSpiv.com homepage. Any profits that may come from sales of the hard copy will be donated to charitable causes after covering hosting costs.
WikiSpiv has additional features that make it user-friendly and help a user easily learn a song’s melody and lyrics. The linked recordings reflect various ways a song can be sung or played. One of the most time-consuming challenges Mr. Centore faced was to review recorded renditions with non-uniform titles and associate these renditions with a common title. On the technical side, he also made a significant effort to code the lyrics and chords so that the chords aligned accurately with the corresponding lyrics, regardless of the browser used to view the song page or the font used to display or print the song. This is a major improvement over other online songbooks and improves usability. The home website page has an attractive and easy-to-use presentation, facilitating the user experience.
Mr. Centore is already working on coding the next phase of a print version of the songbook. Users will be able to create their own custom songbooks, selecting and “dropping” their song choices into a file they’ll be able to print.
Mr. Centore has worked with several collaborators to accumulate the song content of WikiSpiv, which has been derived mostly from Plast song books and the website pisna.org.ua. If a user wishes to add or edit a song, the home page has a “contribute” link that leads to a set of instructions. The lead paragraph titled “Coding is too Complicated” instructs the non-coder contributor to send the information directly to Mr. Centore. For the more knowledgeable contributor, there are a series of relatively easy coding rules and examples. The goal is to encourage song lovers to add and/or edit content and strengthen the comprehensiveness of the site.
Mr. Centore graduated from Rensselaer in May, and will start employment as a software engineer with Facebook in September. He plans to continue to support and expand the WikiSpiv project.
For any comments or questions about WikiSpiv, readers can e-mail contact@wikispiv.com or message its Facebook page at www.facebook.com/wikispiv.