New answers tagged notation
6
Omitting either I or J appears to be fairly commonplace. Gardner Read's Music Notation: A Manual of Modern Practice says that "the letters I or J are usually omitted, the consecutive lettering going from H to J or from I to K" (p. 43). G. Schirmer's internal style guide, The G. Schirmer/AMP Manual of Style and Usage (3rd edition), says of rehearsal marks "[w]...
4
this is called Jianpu which is the numbered musical notation of most Chinese music
0
E2 is what I’ll consider a problematic chord spelling that has been sooooo commonly seen until it’s become acceptable.
Some definitions:
Esus2: E F# B, the 3rd (G#) is replaced by a major 2nd
Eadd9: E G# B + F#, a major triad extended by adding a major 9th (3rd is still present)
E9: E G# B D + F#, this is a dominant chord, ie the dominant 7 (D) MUST be ...
1
There are no half notes with flags here. Notationally, there are two voices. The lower voice is moving in half notes. The half notes have downward-pointed stems to indicate that they belong to the lower voice, but these are somewhat hard to notice because of the X marks. These half-note stems have no flags.
The upper voice is notated in eighth note ...
1
I also found a term tirata (or tirade), which I am not sure can be applicable to Chopin.
According to Artopium Music Index, tirata is a
baroque ornament consisting of a long scale passage
Another source, that is actually referenceable, "Musica Poetica: Musical-Rhetorical Figures in German Baroque Music" by D. Bartel has
Tirata: a rapid scalar ...
7
There is nothing mysterious here. As you say, if it were slurred that would make it a tie, and that wouldn't make much sense in this setting. It all looks clear to me. Simply play the slashed Eb slightly before the beat and then start the trill on another Eb.
2
It doesn‘t make much sense to analyze music like temporary film music that is not written in this spirit or context by Roman numbers. You can compare this minimal music with the chord material of early Renaissance music.
We even don‘t know actually the key. Has the key sign f# been set originally by the composer or by the editor? Compare the added sheet ...
2
They are arpeggios, and the minims (2 beat notes/half notes) are a sort of accompaniment, being played and kept hold of, so they continue to sound, until the next one gets played.
It's common to actually hold down the whole chord (all the notes involved) and play them so they all continue to ring out. Normally, each would be stopped in time to play the next,...
4
It's commonly called a roulade, or sometimes fioritura from Italian "flourish." In his later compositions, they're often more elaborate than just a scale.
It makes no sense to call it a tuplet, unless it's Ferneyhough or Berio ironically quoting Chopin.
3
For a start, if it IS considered to be in A minor, V would be E major. The E minor chord in bar 2 could be labelled v. You could call the F chord ♭VI. Roman numeral analysis covers chromatic chords. No need to 'borrow' unless a chromatic chord DOES lead into a new tonality, and this one doesn't.
But this isn't functional harmony. Functional analysis ...
3
As marcelloverylongname commented, this is a run. The notation is easier than trying to notate 29 notes into 5 eighth-notes. ( 6-6-6-6-5 ? ugh)
Given that this is in the middle of the piece, in 3/4 time, with only an eighth-note in that bar, you should make the run come more or less close to using up the remainder of the meter in that bar. A ...
-1
It's all about context. Playing a note after the triplet distorts the overall feel, unless the melody is all clearly in duple time.
6
The overlaid circle and plus generally mean damping a string. Combining that with small noteheads and a range shows which strings to damp. Harmonically this makes sense here, to prevent those low strings, plucked in the previous bar and a half, from polluting the C major chord that follows.
Here's another example of exactly that symbol, along with ...
0
Whilst it looks rather like a Coda sign, I think it means damp the strings. But exactly how, and when I couldn't find. It's not any kind of gliss.
3
I'd guess you're trying to improve readability by reducing the use of ledger lines? below or above? The thing is, the piano is an instrument which is notable for it's range (on paper, a wider range of pitches than a standard orchestra). So pianists have to handle these a lot, and most will be used to reading off either end of the score (depending on their ...
2
(This is supposed to be a comment!)
Maybe these scores you present are transcriptions of mensural notation, which allowed for a special notation for ligatures in vocal music. Brackets above the notes are used to represent ligatures in transcriptions of mensural notation to modern notation.
You may find many details on the transcription of mensural notation ...
1
E2 seems a vague way to name a chord. Could be construed as piiperi says, which ought to be called Eadd2, or, it could be Esus2, where the M3 of E is replaced by the 2nd note ( F♯).
If there were some E4 chords also I'd consider they could be Esus4, where the M3 is replaced with the P4 (A).
Whether it actually means add2 or sus2, there's the second ...
0
You can select "file", "export" then select "Midi". Then open that newly saved midi file. All the fingering is gone. If the song contains a Capo, you need to remove it before saving as a Midi file but have it keep the fingering, this is done under Tuning.
18
Certainly not the first. The second is unobjectionable. But why not the third? It's the standard notation, and is just fine.
3
An "E2" or "A2" chord most probably means an "add 2" chord, where a major second note is added between the root and third of the chord. For example, E2 might be played like: 024100. Add2 chords are often used in so-called "praise & worship" music. Maybe even so often that someone might consider it a cliché, but hey, genres are made of clichés.
Edit: as ...
7
I'd go with the second or the third, depending on the clef that you need before and after this passage.
The first one feels more uncomfortable that the others.
1
The rest really would be best to be written as a quarter note rest and then a half note rest. As a band director, I don't think I have ever seen a dotted half note used like this. Very rarely are dotted half note rests used
6
It is mathematically correct, but it tells the world (or at least, people who care about the details of notation) that whoever did it doesn't know much about music engraving, and presumably isn't using software that automatically does such things correctly.
A rest like that should always be written to show the two halves of a 4/4 bar - in other words, a ...
-1
As for the time, you have a (dotted half rest) = (3 beats) and a (quarter note chord) = (1 beat) for a total of 4 beats. So the accounting works, no problem.
-1
This doesn't look wrong to me.
However - is it the final bar of the piece?
If so then you need to look at the start of the piece to see if it started with a complete bar. If it did not (i.e. it started with a partial bar forming an anacrusis) then the length of the final bar is supposed to reflect that and the two together should add up to one complete ...
0
There is no error. The note shown is worth one beat. The rest is worth two beats, and with the dot is worth half that again. 1+3 =4. Job done. What is the question about?
8
All four staffs should be played simultaneously. Both treble staffs are for the right hand, both bass staffs are for the left hand.
It’s split up into double staffs just so that it doesn’t get as crowded as it would be on two staffs. This notation is fairly unusual but not exceptional, as a way to write densely-textured sections more readably.
Reference ...
1
You can play it all at once. It's pretty 'bravura', but there's plenty worse in Rachmaninoff. :-) You could just about write it all on two staves if you wanted to.
13
He was quite a good player - flamboyant, too. Looking carefully, in the double treble lines, he'd play the chord at the beginning of a bar, then the three quaver chords, come down again for the next octave on beat 3, then go back up again, and so on, all with the r.h. The l.h. is similarly played. There's so much going on, it's better to read (and write) ...
1
Yes, and yes. The beaming follows the old practice, and it merely obscures the beat. Already discussed in
Beams in classical vocal music
But there's something else going on here too. Look at 'gently' and 'boatman'. Does using an appoggiatura for an accented passing note add useful information? I think it does, both for the singer and for the musician ...
5
Your example was the standard notation for vocal parts up to about 1950. The beams indicate the notes sung to one syllable of the lyrics. You will find almost all "pre-computer-engraving" vocal scores written that way.
The slurs in your example show exactly the same thing as the beaming, and were sometimes omitted, except over quarter notes or longer which ...
5
Figured bass written when it was a living notation is often not so neatly formalized as modern figured bass used as a teaching aid for learning common practice harmony.
Also, most music editions published in this era have plenty of typos, so if something seems totally incomprehensible, it may just be nonsense!
The horizontal lines are continuation lines, ...
24
According to the list of musical symbols at Dolmetsch Online, that is a quarter-tone sharp sign; it signifies that a pitch should be raised by a quarter-tone. There is an analogous quarter-tone flat symbol.
5
Guido de Arezzo invented the line system around 1025. He used a "c" or "f" to originally describe half steps.
The drawing seems a little bit inaccurate, as in the beginning the top of "f" or "F" was positioned right at the second line, while later the two dots encompassed this line (which is the f.)
Also - the "f" key was originally derived from the Bariton ...
-1
Both the music examples are incorrect.
In the first, the two Ds on the top staff don't line up vertically with the D on the bottom staff. The player might wonder if the top staff D-G-A was intended to be a triplet, or something similar, starting after the left hand D.
In the second, there is nothing to say when the G on the top staff is supposed to be ...
1
Is there a reason why you would write it like that?
Yes, they are separate voices.
would you actually play it any different?
Yes. In this specific example it seems interchangeable, but you usually should see the role that specific note plays in each of the voices to which it belongs and play accordingly. When I say it should be played different I'm ...
3
It's written that way to make it clear there are two parts sharing that note, the melody (D G A ...) and the second part (D). Of course you only play the note once.
The second example is notated incorrectly, you need a quarter rest and an eighth rest above each other on the first beat. You would play it as if the melody started on the G.
-1
If the tone is indeed half a tone sharp, the solution is rather simple: use the finger setting for the flat version of that tone:
If you want to play a D, but it comes out as a D-sharp at that dynamic; play a D-flat instead, so what comes out will be a D-natural.
Using alternative fingerings for certain notes to account for detonation is quite common for ...
2
The recorder has a very limited range of dynamics. If the instrument is very sharp, you are blowing too hard.
3
As you've observed, the intonation of a recorder is highly sensitive to the pressure it's played at, i.e. to the dynamics. It should not be understood as a “keyed” instrument where the fingers just select from a discrete number of pitches and the mouth is only responsible for dynamics and phrasing, but rather as a “fretless” instrument where the fingers ...
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