Norton Manual of Music Notation

Comprehensive and concise. Formatted in such a way as to quickly provide answers to a multitude of questions regarding proper scoring notation. A must for the composers library.

I was a composition student at a prominent music school and no, I did not know all of the rules of proper notation even as I was turning out scores. Instead of taking a semester class in music copying, why not get this book? It is the clearest and easiest to use manual on music notation that I have ever seen. You will find the information you need quickly and you will see immediate improvement in the quality of your scores. Believe me, composers and arrangers need all the help they can get. Sometimes musicians won't even play your whole notes unless they look just right, honest! With the new computer programs you may not have that particular problem, but the same issue arises as when a non-musician writes music at his computer. Someone writes a violin piece in bass clef, nobody knows how to bow it, and the number of beats per measure does not match the time signature. The computer can sure write pretty notes, but you still have to know how to put them together properly.

I found particulary useful the advice about how actually to draw musical symbols, and I enjoyed reading the chapter on "Popular-Music Notation", which really has to do with special notational practices for film, television, and recording session use,--although I happen to have no need for this sort of thing myself. I have one small objection to lodge, however: the author uses the word "meter" through out to mean time signature. Though the distinction is moot in this context, at this stage of notation, it is important at an earlier stage of notation--that is to say, you need to understand the difference between "meter" and "time signature" in order to decide properly what time signature to use. The distinction is analogous to that between "key" and "key signature". A key signature of two sharps, for example, tells us to sharp all F's and C's and only implies that we are in the key of D major or B minor. A tonal piece of any length and complexity will at some point change key without changing its key signature. Just so, a time signature of 3/4 tells us there will be three quarter notes worth of time in each measure and only implies that we will hear groupings of three beats or pulses. A piece of any length and complexity written will at some point change meter without changing its time signature.

Everyone who writes down music needs to own a copy of this, not just composers and arrangers, but music students, copyists, transcribers, and so on. It is by far the clearest, most useful, and most practical book on the subject. It is not encyclopedic, though, so eventually you may need to supplement it with other books.Also recommended: PENTATONIC SCALES FOR THE JAZZ-ROCK KEYBOARDIST by Jeff Burns.