How to Write Music

Clement A. Harris

• Publisher: Books on Demand
• Year: 2018
• eBook ISBN: 9783748166122
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Media & Performing Arts
• Subtopic: Music

It is reasonable to expect that a musician shall be at least an accurate and legible writer as well as a reader of the language of his Art. The immense increase in the amount of music published, and its cheapness, seem rather to have increased than decreased this necessity, for they have vastly multiplied activity in the Art. If they have not intensified the necessity for music-writing, they have increased the number of those by whom the necessity is felt.Intelligent knowledge of Notation is the more necessary inasmuch as music writing is in only a comparatively few cases mere copying. Even when writing from a copy, some alteration is frequently necessary, as will be shown in the following pages, requiring independent knowledge of the subject on the part of the copyist.Yet many musicians, thoroughly competent as performers, cannot write a measure of music without bringing a smile to the lips of the initiated.Many performers will play or sing a note at sight without hesitation, which, asked to write, they will first falter over and then bungle-at least by writing it at the wrong octave.The admirable working of theoretical examination papers is sometimes in ridiculous contrast with the puerility of the writing.Psychologists would probably say that this was because conceptual action is a higher mental function than perceptual: in other words, that recollection is harder than recognition.The remedy is simple. Recognition must be developed till it becomes recollection: the writing of music must be taught concurrently with the reading of it.

Open Score to Short Score.

41.—In transcribing from open score to short score, a single sound sung by two voices simultaneously beginning and ending at the same time, should, if a whole note, be represented by two note-heads linked; if a half note or shorter note, by having two stems, one up and the other down:

Fig. 29.

42.— Black notes, though of different lengths, may have the same note-head if they begin at the same time, the difference being shown in the hook or hooks:

Fig. 30.

But a whole note and a half note must have separate note-heads, since a stem would turn a whole note into a half note; and a whole note or half note and a quarter note must have separate note-heads, since a note cannot be white and black at the same time. In this case the note-head of shorter duration must be written first :

Fig. 31.

The rule is sometimes relaxed, and the longer note written first, when the shorter note is the first of a group.

Albeit a half note and an eighth, or other hooked note, may have the same note-head, provided this be that of the half note , because the hook shows that in one part the note is intended to be read as an eighth note. They cannot have an eighth note-head because there is nothing to distinguish the stem of a half note from that of a quarter:

Fig. 32.

43.—Notes cannot have the same note-head which begin at different times, even though they end at the same time. This would involve writing one of them in the wrong part of the measure (see “Placing of Notes,” par. 14).

Fig. 33.

Hence, as a dotted quarter is a sixteenth shorter than two dotted eighths and a sixteenth, and therefore the final note does not begin at the same time (though it ends at the same time) in the treble and alto parts of the last group of Fig. 16 (par. 35), the example is inaccurate. It should have been written thus:

Fig. 34.

and would be so played were the passage given, say, to two violins.

[The tyro must not mistake the above two final note-heads, the longer of which comes first, for a breach of the rule exemplified in Fig. 31 (par. 42), and which applies to two notes which begin at the same time. Here the longer note begins before the shorter one.]

44.—In part-music all the accidentals in an open score will have to be reproduced in short score. Each performer is only supposed to read his own part, and cannot be assumed to have seen an accidental in another part which, had it been seen, would have rendered one in his own unnecessary. Thus the sharps in Fig. 35

Fig. 35.

will remain in a transcription to short score,

Fig. 36.

if intended for part-singers or players. (A pianist or organist would not need the second sharp in each stave, while probably preferring it as a recognition of the part-writing character of the music.)

45.—In music which is not part-writing, the transcriber will have to use his discretion as to the repetition of accidentals which have already appeared in another “part” in the same measure. The guiding principle will be to avoid the likelihood of error on the part of a competent reader.

46.—Care must be taken to turn the stems of half notes and shorter notes according to the principles of short score, and not necessarily as they are in the open score.

Short Score to Open Score.

47.—Co-relatively, in transcribing from short score to open, it will occasionally be necessary to put accidentals in the latter which are not in the former. The commonest form of this is probably in extracting a single part, soprano, alto, tenor, or bass, from an ordinary short score hymn or chant book, and writing it in a part-book for the particular voice. Thus, in transcribing the tenor of the following extract from the hymn-tune “H...

Table of contents

• How to Write Music
• Introductory.
• Choice of Paper.
• Scoring.
• Barring.
• Clefs.
• Signatures.
• Notation of Rhythm.
• Placing of Notes.
• Rests.
• Dots.
• Stems.
• Hooks.
• Vocal Music.
• Open Score to Short Score.
• Short Score to Open Score.
• Extracting a Single Part.
• Accidentals.
• Legibility.
• Facility.
• Copyright.
• Copyright