Reference: "Standard Music Notation Practice"

[Sherry C]

Hi friends,

I was tidying up my hard drive today, and came across this resource that I picked up some time back, iirc (if I recall correctly), on the MENC website.

It's a handy little guide for writing "proper" sheet music. Fortunately for most of us (myself included), Notation Musician and Notation Composer already do the actual music notation symbols (notes, accidentals, etc.) automatically, and also makes really good first-guess placements of many other symbols.

This guide is therefore more useful for the "standard practice" tips for placement of other items such as barline types, text annotations (tempo and dynamic changes) and such. Of course you can always put them where ever you want using the flexible tools in Musician and Composer. But you may find some of these tips helpful for putting certain elements in their "expected" places, making it easier for the most musicians to easily read your sheets.

Enjoy!
Sherry

standard_practice.pdf

[rrayner]

Golly, Sherry! What a wonderful document! Thank you very much for making this available. I have to say I'm very thankful that Notation is taking care of these little items for me. This would have been really handy back when I was doing everything freehand. I know on a number of occasions back in those days when I would scour printed music looking for an example of the proper way to show what I wanted to write.

Still, what a wonderful primer for anyone wanting to know the nitty-gritty of notating music. I hope many people will get to see the great reference book.

Ralph