An up-to-date guide to musical notation
Does anyone know a complete guide to musical notation that is relevant today (or if it appears in the future)? Over the past century, more than a dozen such manuals have been released, and each of them stood out in some way. I would like to see a modern (and, most importantly, Up-to-date) manual that includes everything related to musical notation, instructions, engraving rules, notation for percussion, design schemes, standard designation of chord symbols etc. Does anyone have information about such a manual? And if it does, then there is a PDF file?
Comments
No such manual exists or will ever exist. For someone, somewhere, it will never be up-to-date enough for them.
In reply to No such manual exists or… by underquark
A widely respected and quite comprehensive authority is "Behind Bars" by Elaine Gould. It covers traditional and some some of the more common avante garde notation. But of course, there are many "out there" notation schemes that will probably never have wide adoption and probably for good reason.
Also, some music publishers provide their "house style guides" which can be useful.
In reply to A widely respected and quite… by SteveBlower
Thank you for such information! Do you also know of any standardized guidelines for the design of chord symbols?
In reply to Thank you for such… by Dima S.
" Do you also know of any standardized guidelines for the design of chord symbols?"
MuseScore always follows the standards set by W3C for music notation, as laid out in SMuFL (Standard Music Font Layout). For info see the Wikipedia page about SMuFL: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SMuFL
Have a look at the SMuFL definitions for Chord Symbols on this web page:
https://w3c.github.io/smufl/latest/tables/chord-symbols.html
In reply to " Do you also know of any… by DanielR
I don't think we're using all these glyphs in the current chord symbols.
@Marc Sabatella?
In reply to I don't think we're using… by Jojo-Schmitz
Really? I didn't see any that aren't in MuS? Which ones are you thinking aren't here???
[A few moments later]
I take it back: I've never seen the square brackets used in MuS chords. But all the rest.
In reply to Really? I didn't see any… by TheHutch
No, MuseScore doesn't use any of these SMuFL glyps. It uses some Unicode glyphs instead for the slashed 0 and the triangle, and plain ASCII parens, plus, minus and slash (, ), +, -, /
In reply to " Do you also know of any… by DanielR
I'm more interested in alphanumeric chord design rather than chord symbols.
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To make it easier for you to understand me, I will give you some examples.
A major triad with an added 6th and 9th can be written as follows:
An augmented major seventh chord can be written as follows:
A slash chord can be written as follows:
A power chord can be written as follows:
Which of these methods is correct and appropriate is unclear. Telling me that any of these methods is allowed is useless, because I always try to adhere to generally accepted rules. In both Dorico and Sibelius, chord symbols are designed differently than in MuseScore (for example).
Those symbols that are represented in the SMuFL are rather used more for the jazz repertoire, and in practice, for notation, for example, pop, they are practically not used in order not to turn the implied harmony into overly encoded information.
Apart from "Behind Bars", I'm using "GEROU-LUSK - Essential Dictionary of Music Notation". The latter seems to be more"modern" but of I search for specific issues, I go back to Behind Bars.
In reply to Apart from "Behind Bars", I… by TomStrand
You might check this page:
https://notat.io/viewtopic.php?t=1128
(Behind Bars is basically a Faber style manual that got out of hand....!)
In reply to You might check this page:… by graffesmusic
Thank you!)