Hot answers tagged notation
13
In addition to indicating the end of a distinct section of the piece, a change in key signature, time signature or major tempo change, the double bar is also used to mark the location of a Da Capo or Dal Segno (a notation system that marks the repeating of a certain section of music without requiring additional measures to be written/printed.)
It is also ...
12
This is an Turn, an ornament consisting of four notes. The double-sharp symbol indicates that the lower note to be performed is a g double-sharp rather than a natural g, so the sequnce to be performed is b, a sharp, g double-sharp, a sharp.
9
While Raskolnikov's answer is correct, I'd like to explain the theory behind this. Based on your question, you currently understand music as a collection of equal notes. That is, there are various sounds/notes/pitches that are played at the same volume at certain times. Sometimes they are on, and sometimes they are off. One is not more important than the ...
9
These are known as stickings. Use only one row of stickings at a time.
Depending on context, a repeat sign as well as a set of alternate stickings could mean either to play one sticking and then switch to the other on the second time, or to choose a sticking but use the same sticking throughout. Your no. 8 example, for instance offers a basic alternating ...
8
Unfortunately for all questions of music notation, the answer is technically "whatever the composer meant." If you have a recording of the composer conducting the piece and they do it one way, then that's probably the right answer (unless the composer edited the piece later and that's the edition you have).
Of course, there are also generally accepted ...
8
As @NReilingh says, it's probably a Japanese alternative to "slash notation".
"C/B" for example -- often read aloud as "C over B" means a C chord played over a prominent B bass note.
The easy way to play these is to have a bassist! You play a normal C, the bassist plays the B.
Without a bassist, you need to sound the bass note yourself. For example, to ...
8
There is exactly one note that is a diminished 3rd above Db: Fb.
Db to Eb is not a diminished third, it is a major second. Those comments are wrong. This question explains the difference between two enharmonically equivalent notes.
8
NC (or N.C.) is short for "No Chord".
It means that you should only play the indicated notes or melody, and not try to infer or add a chordal accompaniment. This is as opposed to the chord symbols that you probably find everywhere else than where the N.C. notation is.
See for example
http://www.music.vt.edu/musicdictionary/textn/NoChord.html
(Although their ...
8
You are correct in your interpretation of the two lines.
In the 1 & a example, you can see that the numbered beat is being divided up into three equal parts, and that there are four total beats per measure. This means we are in 12/8, and that each symbol corresponds to the value of an eighth note.
In the 1 e & a example, the numbered beat is being ...
8
It means you have two voices here. The lower voice plays a half-note F# and the upper voice plays the arpeggio. Basically you would play it by keeping the F# down and playing the upper voice as usually. If you use pedal, you don't need to keep the key physically down. To get the illusion of two voices in this case, you can accentuate the first note a bit.
7
"Tacet" is a Latin musical term meaning (literally) "it is silent". in this case, the number preceding it identifies which repetitions it is to be silent for. Here, the first time through is to be silent. The second time through, do play that segment.
In jazz and other more 'modern' genres, tacet is often used for very short breaks (such as one or two ...
7
My response will be in part influenced by the information I gathered from reading your profile.
My first suggestion to you is to strongly encourage you to learn an instrument. If you're serious about writing music and about having it played by live performers, having a working knowledge of the instruments is important. It is paramount to be technically ...
7
To follow up Wheat's definition answer, here's how I would play this:
When playing glisses on wind instruments, especially in a contemporary or jazz context, the change in pitch should be as continuous as possible. In contrast, a piano is only capable of playing absolutely defined pitches, so glisses all sound like a fast scale (chromatic or otherwise).
...
6
The arranger probably wants you to play the chords in the right hand.
Generally, composers/arrangers and typesetters are pretty good at reserving the treble clef for the right hand and the bass clef for the left. With no other markings, this is what you would assume is intended.
Now, if they had intended to have the left hand jump, they would have put some ...
6
It is not actually a tremolo. The thick line represents an eighth-note beam, and is shorthand for four eighth notes. And yes, the four dots -- one for each eighth-note -- indicate staccato.
In drum music, a roll is frequently indicated by two thick beams over a long note. This is exactly the same notation as sixteenth notes. How do you know whether to ...
6
The double notes indicate that the note serves two purposes in the piece. It's not uncommon as you progress through keyboard literature to find a single hand doing two independent things at the same time, with different rhythms, and that's what's happening here: a slow-moving bass line and an arpeggiated accompaniment. Let's call them parts, though you'll ...
6
The issue of learning quickly and then playing "by ear" isn't so much of a problem, since every musician, after reading and practicing from notation for a particular piece of music, will "chunk" it and no longer be reading every single note on the page. Even when sight-reading for the first time, a pianist isn't going to read "C-E-G", they're just going to ...
5
Note: This answer refers to the chord symbols ("Gm", "C7", "F", etc) found on top of the song staff. Colonel Panic's question was actually not about this, but about the notated chords in the upper piano treble staff. I'm leaving this here since it might help someone else.
The chord notations/symbols are merely provided as support, or for letting you make ...
5
Examples for beat repeat, single measure repeat and double measure repeat:
Also see this for more examples and details on repetition in music notation.
5
Doubletime feel means that you double the speed of your accompaniment but the time length of the bars (and thus the speed of the melody) stays the same. That is, for a bar in double time you sort of play your accompaniment of a non-doubletime bar twice at double the speed.
Here's an example to illustrate the idea, with the same passage played as regular ...
5
The first example I would play as a chord that is pressed in a rolling motion so the notes are heard separately in order but still held together. This can be called arpeggiato or a rolled chord.
If the notes should not be held together, as in an arpeggio, then second is what you want. If the notes should be of equal duration then you'd want to just go ...
5
With a fast enough tempo, it could be quite a few! :-)
Necessarily, you would need to time it out at your score's tempo to find a number, but the clarinet in general has a lot of resistance compared to other wind instruments, so the amount of airflow is relatively small.
Depending on the range of the instrument in which this note occurs, a good clarinetist ...
5
I've stumbled up on the answer to my own question. Either of the following should work:
\set restNumberThreshold = #1000 % Some large number
\override MultiMeasureRestNumber #'stencil = ##f
The first is a bit hackish and not very robust (it sets the number of rests required to display the number extremely high), but the second may have unintended ...
5
Well, normal hihat IS closed hihat, ain't it?
Google tells me that an X note sitting on top staff line (that'd be G5 for a piano player) is normal hihat (closed). If you want to SPECIFICALLY state that it's closed (not open) put a + on top of it. Open having an o on top of the X note.
according to page 3 of http://web.mit.edu/merolish/Public/drums.pdf
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Musescore is free as opposed to many other programs such as Sibelius or Finale. However, it is still very good and can do almost everything that paid programs can do.
One of the input files accepted in Musescore is MIDI and it can output PDF among other formats. However, as guidot said, it takes a human to do it right because a MIDI file does not contain ...
5
There's an iOS (iPhone/iPad) app, Music Spectrograph, designed for just this purpose (Disclaimer. It's my app in the iTunes App Store.) The Y axis is scaled to a midi keyboard. Works both with live audio and with sound files. "Assist" is the right word, as a spectrograph can display a lot and lots of overtones, leaving a human with musical training to ...
4
Indian Classical Music uses relative syllables as well.
Sa Re Ga Ma Pa Da Ni (Sa).
The Re is pronounced "Ri" often.
It is the same system as Italian only with different names. This is no surprise because they came up independently with the same tone system as western Europe:
You have the same 12 chromatic sounds in total and you choose 7 of them as ...
4
It is true, Germans refer to B♮ (B-natural) as "H", possibly because of its similarity to the 'natural' sign (♮). B-flat (B♭) is just known as B. I believe Poland, Hungary, Norway and Finland also use this naming.
This naming convention is needed to make sense of the "musical pun" that is the BACH motif, i.e. the German notes B, A, C and H arranged to form ...
4
You are asking about tablature notation, which indicates not only the pitch to play, but which string to play it on. Tablature was developed for the lute and is used to this day for the guitar.
Standard notation for classical guitar addresses this also, by providing numbers next to notes. Certain numbers indicate which string to play the note on, or ...
4
The Harvard Dictionary of Music defines Sesqui- as "Prefix used to denote fractions whose numerator is larger by one than the denominator, e.g., sesquialtera: 3:2 (one plus one half)." It goes on to say that "Another term for sesquialtera is hemiola."
It seems that they are two words for the same thing really. Both words, in early music theory, could ...
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