New answers tagged notation
20
I cannot find an orchestral score of The Apostles on IMSLP, but the same notation can be find in other Elgar compositions, like The Kingdom, which seems to be part of the same edition, so it also follows the same "standard":
That score includes a page with the composer's notes, which explains those symbols as his own version of tempo change ...
4
TL;DR
The strumming pattern you want is:
Dudu DuDU dUDu DuDu
1e&a 2e&a 3e&a 4e&a
Why is that?
You are correctly interpreting the tab, but the tab itself is badly written.
The specific note durations, explained below, are as indicated in the question; however, the notes are grouped in a way that is difficult to read.
a straight vertical line ... which I'm ...
0
There's rarely a 'why' answer to this sort of question. You've now enriched your musical knowledge by knowing it happens. Yes, it could be confused with a marcato symbol. But the notation has been explained in this edition. Good.
-1
The ^ symbol in music, for a violin, generally indicates a Marcato bow, where you push down on the string more or put more force. It's an accent, but instead of playing it like >, (where you emphasize the start of the note) it looks like ^ because you're pretty much emphasizing the entire note, not just the start. Think of it as a 50% sfz.
1
Does this mean the texture is reduced to 3 parts or does it mean that the G is doubled?
I figure if someone splits stem directions, and the rhythm is the same for each "part", then the point is to indicate real parts. The OP's sample notation can't make up it's mind!
FWIW, it could have been notation with all shared stems, except for bar 2, beat 2,...
4
Note that with a piano voices have a bit of a different meaning than in an ensemble piece. Thus in musical engraving of such music the choice of voices would be made so that the music is easy to understand and to read.
In this case doubling the stem not only converys some three voice message (as Laurence rightfully said), it also makes the section more ...
4
It means to play the cymbal (ride, in this case) on its edge, as opposed to on the bell.
As per the drum guides at MIT and at Online Drummer.
From the MIT guide
From the Online Drummer guide
9
There seems to be an attempt to maintain 3-voice texture in the upper stave. (Whether there is any point in doing this in a keyboard part is another question. Maybe if it's a reduction of a choral score, used for rehearsal. Otherwise, why?)
But the attempt is abandoned on the second chord. If there's a 'rule', it's being broken!
Not all printed music is ...
4
This is some sort of old style tenor clef. Basically you have a G-clef with a tenor-C-clef superimposed, just to indicate that this is for tenor voice and thus transposed an octave down.
So this is bascially the same as an octavated G clef. It would be much more plausible if the C-clef actually were one note lower at the actual middle C, but I suppose this ...
5
I'd say trust the position of the flat and call it a G-clef. You can tell this is correct because the C instruments in the score are also in F.
A quick perusal through the score also shows that...
The tenors sing the same lines as the sopranos an octave lower on pages 125-126.
The tenors sing pitches that make sense with the orchestration (see tenors and ...
1
This is just to confirm something already mentioned above. This kind of music notation, AFAIK, comes from Edson Lopes. In fact, in one of his (free) scores, Daily Technique, this is his very own note on (P6) "apoiar o polegar sobre a 6 corda", meaning "rest your thumb on the 6th string".
Source: http://tinyurl.com/TecnicaDiaria
2
As this is from a hymn, the most likely explanation is that they are accompanist introduction brackets:
Source
In this example from “A Mighty Fortress is Our God,” the accompanist would introduce the tune by playing only the bracketed sections.
0
They are phrasing marks. They indicate that the portion between them constitutes a complete (lyrical) phrase.
3
How to mark the passages
Sforzando and related markings apply only to individual notes, so the single sffz on two adjacent notes within the same measure is technically incorrect, and I personally would find it confusing. Consider a sub ff followed by a separate marking to return to the prevailing dynamic. That would be unambiguous, especially with the other ...
2
If you want sffz on two notes, I'm afraid you have to write it twice.
Some would say sffz and a staccato dot were contradictory.
An alternative might be ff with an accent and tenuto line on each note.
2
For a single grace note:
The slash indicates it's a (crushed) acciaccatura (played before the beat, stealing time from the preceding note).
And not a (leaned) appoggiatura (played on the beat, stealing time from the principal note).
However, for an acciaccatura that is a group of notes, you don't need to write the slash.
Image from Standard Music Notation ...
2
If you have more than one grace note (either for appogiatura or for acciaccatura), then to avoid clutter they should anyway have a shared beam. (I guess, this is what you meant by "group of notes", but that term has no precision in musical respect.)
So in case of the latter the slash should be positioned in a way it crosses the tail of the first ...
4
The first part of the question is answered here: Difference between appoggiatura, acciaccatura and grace note
Regarding groups of grace notes: yes, the slash needs only to go through the first.
1
I have found it a revelation to learn the chord and improvisation way of learning a song.
Improvisation is the critical word.
I think what you mean is learning how to improvise rhythmic patterns that fit chord progressions.
Why don't piano teachers teach that?
Because most of them are preparing students for piano recitals where you're judged by some notion ...
-3
As an addendum to other great answers: Playing "chords and melody" can be a lot of fun and discovering it can be a thrill, but it's not actually something that ever gets played by any sort of pianist in practice.
Classical pianists - don't play chords and melody. This one is obvious.
Pop/Rock pianists never (!) play chords and melody - that would ...
1
Yes, as in other comments and answers, there is a distance between various genres and their performance styles.
One aspect that is "beyond chords", and relevant to both classical and jazz, is "voicing" of chords, that is, a choice of notes to express that chord, but/and fitting smoothly (as in "voice leading" and such) with ...
1
To add some "weight" to the answers that say this means each note is played twice, here's an example from a G&S score. You can see they explicitly wrote in the "slash" so you know there are two notes to be played per written flag.
I agree that the OP's example is already pretty crowded, so sticking in the slashes is pretty much ...
2
Here's another way to look at the issue. As you say, you were able to throw together your arrangement for "All of Me" in minutes. And it wasn't hard, was it?
Someone with no musical background and no piano instruction probably couldn't do this, but you could. I have a hunch that that background and that instruction were more useful to you than you'...
2
I suggest you consider articulation in general. How do you want your piece to sound? To give you an idea, I also suggest you look at some examples with score. Poulenc's Sonata for flute and piano (example with score) lets you see tonguing, slurring and also double tonguing. You can see that, in this piece, slurred passages are melancholic, calming, smooth. ...
3
I'm afraid I'll have to play devil's advocate, too.
Arguably, you never actually learn how to play a piece from its lead sheet (melody + chords). You learn the melody, yes. You learn how to harmonize it, yes. But you never learn precisely how to play the accompaniment (was it straight 8ths block chords, or was I supposed to add syncopation?), so unless you ...
3
In concert band, we were all taught to tongue all notes not connected by slurs and play all notes under the same slur between two tonguings. This tip applied regardless of wind instrument - including flute.
The composer is therefore expected to know where to put the slurs.
My personal rule of thumb, as someone who played clarinet but never flute, is to put ...
12
The sign for a trill is 'tr' (in bold italics). The wavy trill line is used to indicate the extent of the trill. The trill line is optional for a single note value, but it's necessary for tied notes.
The wavy line by itself is not enough (sometimes it's misused for other purposes e.g. vibrato).
1
The beginning of a slur will have a different 'attack' from a note anywhere else in that slur. It's, as you say, the tonguing of that note. The others are simply blown, in the same breath, so there's no attack apeart from the start note.
Often, the music itself will tell the player how to slur, but that's maybe a different interpretation from that of the ...
3
The wavy line alone means 'trill', so there's no real need to put 'tr' at all. So, it's one or the other. If there's tr and a long wavy line, that means keep on trilling until the end of that line, where there's often a couple of grace notes leading to the next, un-trilled, note.
3
Playing a group of notes with or without a slur will sound different.
Hopefully, the composer should know how he/she wants the flute part to sound like and put the slurs accordingly.
11
Devil's advocate: would most of us go along to a classical concert and enjoy a pianist playing a rough approximation of, say, Moonlight Sonata, a Bach fugue, et al?
Somewhat doubtful - the jazzers amongst us might love it, but the purists might walk out.
The answer is - what does one go to a piano teacher for?
It was always the case - say up to 50 years ago -...
3
You could argue that any notation can only ever be an approximation of "what a piece should actually sound like", but reducing a whole arrangement to a sequence of chords is quite an extreme data reduction - you're looking at a very abstract form of what's actually being played.
Before the advent of recording (and the distribution of those ...
47
Just like there's pop, rock, folk, jazz, metal, etc. guitar, there are many different disciplines of piano playing, each with a different set of required skills:
classical piano
pop piano
jazz piano
I consider these as separate subjects, and in music schools there's usually a separation between at least classical and pop/rock/jazz. Additionally, you might ...
13
Piano teachers routinely teach chord-reading, just not the teachers you studied with, it seems. Teachers who focus on jazz and popular music are the most likely, since chord charts (sheet music) are most common in those genres.
Teachers who focus on classical music often have not themselves learned to read chord charts, though this is changing. But the ...
4
This suffers from the confusing fact that the "small perfect circle" symbol is being used in two ways simultaneously. You're right that the 1st violins have plain old harmonics (midpoint of G and D strings). However, many publications, especially from French turn-of-the-century printers, used the circle as a "0" to indicate open strings ...
1
Judging by recordings, these violin chords definitely sound as if they're supposed to contain e, g and d. Therefore I assume that the second violins are supposed to touch the G string at the d and simultaneously play an e on the D string normally. (You can generate the second harmonic either by touching the string at 2/3 or at 1/3 of its length; presumably ...
2
It is indeed the NNS - Nashville Number System. Each chord in a key is given a number, corresponding to the note number in that key. Here, in D♭ - D♭ =1, E♭ = 2, F = 3, G♭ = 4, A♭ = 5, and B♭ = 6.
That may seem to be extra stuff for little purpose - just write the perishing chords, please!
But, the idea is far reaching. In the recording studio, for example, ...
1
The Nashville Number System is a direct translation of standard chord symbols in which letter names are replaced by scale degrees.
For a piece in the key of C major:
C = 1
Cm = 1m
D = 2
Dm7 = 2m7
Eb = 3b
EbM7 = 3bM7
F/A = 4/6
Fdim/G = 4dim/5
G7b5/Bb = 57b5/7b
G#aug = 5#aug
and so forth.
This allows for easier ...
6
This is Nashville chord notation system
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nashville_Number_System
The numbers refer to the scale steps on which the chords are built.
The song is in the key of Db major. 1 means chord built on the first step, Db major. 1/3 means Db chord with 3rd scale degree in bass, F. 3m is a minor chord built on the 3rd scale degree, F minor. ...
4
The notation is very ambiguous, but it's most likely that something like this is intended:
This preserves the legato tremolo of the original.
3
The double dots indicate that each chord should be played twice within the tremolo (see below). Stravinsky is attempting to incorporate both the smooth tremolos in the woodwinds with the pizzicato in the violins. Note that the violins play each pitch (chord) twice before changing.
X: 1
T: Petrouchka tremolos
K: F
M: 6/4
L: 1/16
([Acfa]d[Acfa]d) .[Acd].[Acd].[...
10
I think this is a not very good shorthand for
4
This is a fascinating question, and although I don't have a definite source that says this or that, I believe I've triangulated the data as best we can. For simplicity's sake, I'll refer to some entries in the Harvard Dictionary of Music.
The entry for dotted note isn't all that helpful, but the entry for tie tells us that "[t]he advent of the tie ...
0
You may use two ossia staffs above the treble staff.
-1
Depends how well it's written!!
I've seen both written wrongly, and it's only when it's performed that the choice is made.
The whole point of the differences has been aired many times - 3/4 is a bar split into 3, 6/8 is a bar split both into 6 and 2 almost simultaneously.
Returning to my opening gambit - if there are six quavers written in a bar, but none of ...
1
This question was originally closed but I lobbied for reopening and posted a comment with the info below. Since it was reopened I’m converting my comment to an answer.
It all comes down to grouping of the notes. 3/4 is simply 3 quarter notes but 6/8 is two groups of 3 eighth notes each within an bar and shows an imaginary bar line between beats 3 and 4. In ...
2
This question provides a nice complement to Does 3/4 time signature differ from 6/8?. The linked question addresses the "feel" of 3/4 vs. 6/8; the present question addresses the difference in notation.
3/4 as 3 beats per measure; 6/8 as two beats per measure
In terms of single beats, a typical measure of 3/4 time would contain three quarter notes:
...
0
EZ Play Today song books offer a stepping stone into reading notation. They are available in a wide variety of musical genres. They feature melodies in single notes with the note name within the note accompanied by the lyrics and the appropriate harmonizing chord. You gradually begin reading simple standard notation without reference to the printed name.
2
After thinking about this and trying a few things out, I am now in the happy position of being able to answer my own question! This is what I did:
create all the notes I needed as conventional chords.
create a special note-head for my needs (called "Alternate"), starting from the standard small notehead on the notepad types panel. As well as being ...
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