Best music staff boards according to redditors
We found 5 Reddit comments discussing the best music staff boards. We ranked the 4 resulting products by number of redditors who mentioned them. Here are the top 20.
We found 5 Reddit comments discussing the best music staff boards. We ranked the 4 resulting products by number of redditors who mentioned them. Here are the top 20.
Hey man,
Same thing happened to me a few years ago. I just started writing on paper with piano if I needed help with pitches. I'd write as many pages as possible and then put what I did on finale just to hear what I wrote. It seems like a good method because nothing really beats the formatting of a good notation program but as many of my Comp. Prof.'s have said, "Midi isn't real. It will trick you." I think that's the most important part of this whole process. Something you write on midi might be very impossible (or uselessly difficult). Also, feel free to bring some music to someone who actually play the instrument you are writing for and asking them to play through it. Most performers I know are always willing to do this if they aren't too busy already!
When I started composing microtonaly (year or so ago) this became an even bigger problem for me and I started having to rely on my ear and experimenting with different types of synthesizers to determine an approximate sound. It gets better as you write things out though. Just by working things out from your head to paper for a while you develop a stronger ability to compose without midi crutches.
Some benefits of doing this you might not have thought of:
Hope this convinces you this is a good idea.
Make sure you have a strong hold on proper notation/orchestration (A useful resource - http://www.amazon.com/The-Study-Orchestration-Third-Edition/dp/039397572X, bit pricey though) And also, this site has been a miracle for me - http://www.music.indiana.edu/department/composition/isfee/. This will save you a lot of time.
Best of luck! Also, just trust yourself and your ear. This stuff takes time, patience, and practice (like all things music).
Edit: Some Trivia - many composers of the past (those without the miracle/curse of notation software) would just sketch things out and short hand things ("repeat this here", "ostinato bass" etc.) and then hand it to a publisher to put together when it was done. For example, Beethoven. I mean look at this crap - https://www.google.com/search?q=beethoven+hand+written+music&client=firefox-a&hs=fUD&rls=org.mozilla:en-US:official&channel=fflb&source=lnms&tbm=isch&sa=X&ei=8kpKUqyCL4fi2AXV0YGQBA&ved=0CAkQ_AUoAQ&biw=1600&bih=701&dpr=1#facrc=_&imgdii=_&imgrc=MP65Ypeh4KL_nM%3A%3B-WsvncUQEMICJM%3Bhttp%253A%252F%252Fclassicalmusicblog.com%252F2007%252F09%252Fimages%252Fmvt1-facsimile-s.jpg%3Bhttp%253A%252F%252Fclassicalmusicblog.com%252F2007%252F09%252Fbeethoven-sonata.html%3B580%3B463. Think of the notation software as your robotic publisher. That's what I do.
I don't know if they do it anymore, but when I was in grade school our music teacher went through a lot of blank sheet music paper teaching us to write the notes.
Amazon has some pretty good stuff. This is my favorite brand of staff paper, I like the 12 x 16 size but there is also a smaller size.
Composers also tend to collect musical scores. There is a publisher called Dover that sells anthologies of scores for cheap, I own about a dozen myself. I really like the Beethoven Sonatas and the Ravel Masterpieces. Something like that might be cool.
Archives Spiral Bound Manuscript Paper Book, 10 Stave, 96 Pages https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0002GFPA2/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_apa_i_oI4XDbPWG4881
Have used those for many years