Re: Composition using Notation Software

Robert W. McAdams a écrit :
RVG wrote:
Advantage:
well, it's like typing text: you can do what you want in a very precise
way. Writing a theme + variation is just a matter of copy and paste,
then change the height of some notes, link some others, etc.

Actually, a better analogy would be the difference between writing text
by hand or typing it on a word processor: With the word processor, when
you find errors in what you typed, you can correct them and then print
out the result, and what you get looks like you typed the whole thing
perfectly the first time. With the handwritten text, you have to erase
mistakes and rewrite them, and if the correction takes more space than
what you originally wrote, you have to write small to squeeze it in or
else write it above the line (which looks sloppy), and in the end you
have a handwritten text, which can be a lot harder to read than a
typewritten text.

With notation software, you have some additional advantages: the
ability to easily copy segments of notes that are repeated, the ability
to easily transpose to a different key or up or down an octave, the
ability (if you're writing for a group) to write a conductor's score and
then have it automatically copy the individual parts for you, and the
ability to hear what the music is going to sound like.


Finale is great for classical music, but not so for jazz where, apart
for the melody, the rest needs some indication of style and the
musicians know what's expected from them from a simple chord chart with
tempo and swing/even rythm. Even for the piano, except in tunes where
the melody is actually mixed in the harmony (George Shearing's style), I
leave the left hand part up to the interpreter: (s)he can play a bass
pedal or the classical swing rythm+chord, etc. I myself try to play my
own compositions in several styles that are just different angles of
approach to the same pattern of melody + harmony.
Considering that, as the composer, once the tune is written I'm only its
first reader, my own interpretation is not canonical: it's just one way
of experiencing a sound game among other possibilities. That's also why
I release everything under Creative Commons licence: I want people to
enjoy my music any way they can without money constraints. Either they
play an instrument and the scores are there for free, or they don't (or
don't feel like playing) and they can just download or listen to the
albums online.

Notation software can also do a certain amount of the work for you.
Let's say, for example, that you've written out a trombone part, but
then decide that all or part of it should really be played by a tenor
sax. If you're doing it by hand, you'll have to write out the whole
part by hand, and you'll also have to know that a tenor sax is written
in the treble cleff as a B flat instrument, up an octave from what you
actually want played, and even then you can do it incorrectly. But with
a product like Finale, you can just tell it to add a staff for a tenor
sax, and it knows what clef and key signature to use, and then you can
tell it to copy the whole trombone part or just sections of it, and it
will automatically transpose it, put it in treble clef, and move it up
an octave without you even telling it to do so.


That's why I don't write for transposing intruments: I only use them in
the solo/impro part. :-)
I just write for piano or vibraphone (I mostly compose a two-line right
hand counterpoint for the piano that also works with vibes), sometimes
flute + bass, then I let BiaB do the orchestral work. The tenor sax can
play the solo part or play some short riffs à la Miles Davis during the
pauses in the melody.

Disadvantage:
producing a full orchestral work this way is tedious, especially if you
don't know how to write all parts correctly (like transposing
instruments or drums notation).

That is the one place where the above analogy fails: I can type faster
than I can write, but it takes me longer to enter music in Finale than
it does to write it by hand on staff paper. You can attach an
electronic keyboard to your computer and enter the notes that way, but
you have to be able to play the music accurately against a metronome,
and even then you still have the problem of entering dynamics, tempo
markings, accents, etc. So it's a question of whether the ease of
making changes and corrections and of reusing repeated sections of
notes, and of having neat, readable scores when you finish, outweighs
the slower initial entry.


I've started to compose a string quartet some months ago with Finale,
and it took me like two weeks to write the first minute... of an adagio.
So I'm not in a hurry to consider writing something allegro with the
amount of notes it involves.


--
Jazz up your life!
Jazzez-vous la vie!

http://rvgmusic.bandcamp.com/
http://rvgjazznstuff.jamendo.net/

"Si on ne me laisse pas chanter ce que je veux, je préfère me taire." --
Colette Magny
.

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