Reddit reviews Behind Bars: The Definitive Guide to Music Notation (Faber Edition)

As Elaine Gould establishes in her book:

>Notes are easiest to read and to pitch when they are spelled according to the following conventions, whether or not the music has a tonal context:

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>i. Use the most familiar intervals — perfect, minor and major — rather than augmented and diminished intervals
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>ii. Chromatic-scale figures use sharps to ascend, flats to descend
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>iii. Spell stepwise figures as a scale, i.e. as adjacent pitch letters: F# G Ab or D Eb Fb, not Gb G G# or Eb E Eb.

Why would handwriting make it any different? Elaine Gould's Behind Bars: The Definitive Guide to Music Notation is spot on.

It's the same reason we have double sharps and flats in music, instead of just writing the next note. Music notation should be easy to understand and be able to preserve the structural integrity of the harmonies.

Trust me, I know it looks funny, but sometimes music must be notated in such a fashion. If you're interested in music notation, I recommend you take a look at this book. I have it open in front of me right now.

Hey there, masters student in music composition here. Many, many kudos to you for throwing your stuff out there for all to see; I wish I could say I did the same at your stage in the game.

My undergraduate teacher would always harp on being absolutely meticulous with notation in our lessons. It is the first thing a conductor sees before a note is even played, and may mean the difference between your piece and another's getting performed. Plus, your music is your art and your craft, it should look as great as it sounds.

I would highly recommend you get your hands on Elaine Gould's Behind Bars, or maybe Heussenstamm's less intimidating Norton Manual of Music Notation to start with. These are just a few of the resources I've used thus far for everything relating to notation in music.

A few things I noticed are below, and I apologize if any of this is beyond MuseScore's capabilities:

1. Always start with some kind of tempo indication and dynamic level; this instantly gives the casual peruser something to latch on to, and sets the mood for the piece.
   
2. Make sure the division and grouping of beats is always clear. This is probably the most complicated to describe, but examples include beat 4 of m.5, RH, or beats 2/3 of m.14, LH. These could easily be misread by performers. I reference you to the above manuals or another musician who can explain it in person.
   
   
3. Accidentals, both "actual" and cautionary, as well as notation of pitches using the same written pitch class. Check out m.27, LH. It might be clearer to notate as "G-Bb-Cb-Bb-Cb", to avoid the confusion of the repeated "B". Avoid weird intervals like augmented seconds, diminished fourths, etc. A same-but-different scenario occurs between m.25-26, LH, where a G# and a G are written close to each other, but over the bar. The bar line cancels all accidentals, but the performer may not always realize it until it's too late.
   
   
4. Above all else, consider performance practice. For those that don't play the instruments they're writing for, this can be difficult. I recently wrote for guitar for the first time, and I spent hours trying to figure out if sonorities I wanted were congenial or even possible. For example, m.37, RH is impossible for any piano player, but can easily be restructured to have the lowest C in the left hand. A good player will do this naturally, but it's best to write it as exact as possible.
   
   I apologize that this is long-winded, music notation is complicated. But hopefully these tips get you started! Always think what you would want to see if given a completely new score to read, and write that.

I'm guessing that copy is for your performances but not for others? If you give it to someone else, do it in pen. Check out some of Crumb's scores for some hand-drawn inspiration.

When you hand-draw scores you should use a ruler on all lines.

In the last measure of the excerpt you should use ledger lines instead of staff crossing in the LH, it makes it easier to read.

You should pick up Behind Bars to address several other issues with spacing, size of noteheads, etc.

From a composition standpoint, switch it up from using so many 3rds/6ths. Maybe check out some of Ligeti as well.

Keep it up!

All good! As a composer myself, I ALWAYS send my works to performers and ask, could you understand how to play exactly this with simpler notation? The answer is usually yes!

This book is AMAZING. My friend got it, and we have been pouring over it ever since, absorbing as much as we can and rehashing our scores to make as much sense to performers as possible.

Your notation is fine, no problem there at all. If you want, you could put a indication above the staff when it first appears showing the grouping, e.g. half, half, dotted half | dotted half, half, half (sort of like you would with a metric modulation), but it's certainly not essential, since your notation is clear.

Whole rests are the norm for empty bars in any meter, as are multi rests, so you're fine there too.

It's worth picking up the Elaine Gould book Behind Bars for issues like this and many more. It's an excellent resource that will serve you well in all compositional endeavours.

I don't know what you mean by the "science" of it, but Gardner Read's Music Notation: A Manual of Modern Practice is a great reference (and covers microtones). Someone also recently recommended Elaine Gould's Behind Bars: The Definitive Guide to Music Notation to me, which is much more recent, but I don't know anything else about it.

• Essential Dictionary of Music Notation: http://www.amazon.com/dp/0882847309
  
• Behind Bars: http://www.amazon.com/dp/0571514561/
  
• The Complete Arranger: http://www.amazon.com/dp/1502745119

I learned from Gardner Read. The Norton Manual of Music Notation is handy. It's old enough (30 years) that it has some material on manuscript preparation, but you can just skip that. What I currently have is Elaine Gould's Behind Bars, which I like but is probably overkill.

I'm not sure quite what you mean by "the emotional connotation side of music theory." If you're looking for e.g. what 17-18C musicians thought and wrote about the "doctrine of the affections", there are historical texts out there. But books that try to go deeper, i.e. to help you understand why a certain piece makes you feel a certain way, are doubtful, and I haven't found any of use in my own work.

> "Music Notation: A Manual of Modern Practice"

While we're talking about notation books, I can't not mention 'Behind Bars: The Definitive Guide to Music Notation' by Elaine Gould. It has 46% more pages than the Read and was published in 2011, so when it comes to books about music notation, it's about as relevant as you're going to get!

Hey there - it depends on what sort of you music you want to write and how much you already know!

A good place to start is ... reading! :O

But seriously, books like Samuel Adler's ["Study of Orchestration"] (https://www.amazon.co.uk/Study-Orchestration-Samuel-Adler/dp/0393283739/ref=sr_1_1?keywords=study+of+orchestration&qid=1557587743&s=gateway&sr=8-1) is perfect for learning about the common orchestral instruments, and other books like Elaine Gould's ["Behind Bars"] (https://www.amazon.co.uk/Behind-Bars-Definitive-Guide-Notation/dp/0571514561/ref=sr_1_2?keywords=behind+bars&qid=1557587760&s=gateway&sr=8-2) is an excellent guide for creating professional scores.

Outside of reading, listening to orchestral music of the 20th century is also a great learning tool, particularly composers like Stravinsky, Holst, Britten, Tippett, etc.

And if you can read music, following the scores/sheet music as you listen is even more useful (you can find a lot of free scores on [IMSLP] (https://imslp.org/)). If you have time, follow one instrument at a time, see how the instrument is being used, what it typically plays ("idiomatic" writing), the general ranges and techniques, etc.

And then just have a go at it - it can't be learnt overnight (heck, I've been doing it for nearly 9 years now!), but if you keep chipping away at it every now and then, progress will start to show!

^^^/WallOfText

Thanks that was exactly what i was looking for and also explains the length of the exceptions! Perfect!

Gould, is that in reference of this book: https://www.amazon.com/Behind-Bars-Definitive-Guide-Notation/dp/0571514561