Contents
Introduction
Behind every expertly crafted piece of music lies the meticulous process of making the score and parts practical to play and visually appealing. This process goes by many names, including Music Preparation, Music Typesetting, Music Engraving, Music Copying and Music Editing. Some Composers and Arrangers will spend many hours on this process, others will hire a dedicated Music Copyist to take their score and turn it into beautiful parts that the musicians will be overjoyed to read and play, and an uninformed few will just press "print" on their notation software and end up with disappointed musicians:
Take a look at the two instrumental parts below: the first a musical theatre part, the second an orchestral part. For each part, you can see how the music looks before it has been typeset, and after a skilled music copyist has worked their magic. Different styles of music can have distinct conventions, such as musical theatre parts often having four bars in each system and bar numbers every bar, neither of which would be standard in orchestral typesetting, but the majority of preparation principles are the same across all genres.
In this blog, we'll explore several of the essential tasks that are involved in the process of Music Preparation.
Page Turns and System Breaks
One of the most crucial aspects of instrumental part preparation is ensuring that every note is playable for the musician. If a phrase begins at the bottom of a right-hand page and continues at the start of a left-hand page, the musician would have to turn the page while playing - a daunting prospect for any instrumentalist. For some instruments, like the trombone, this can be impossible due to the constant use of both hands. For others, such as the trumpet, turning the page while playing might work, but would still be a frustrating distraction from the performance.
The best solution to this issue is to make sure that there are sufficient beats or bars rest at the point where the page needs to be turned. A skilled music copyist will carefully consider the layout of the music to identify the ideal points for page turns. Different formats require different approaches: for music that will be printed and bound into booklets, every right-hand page of a two-page spread should end in a rest, while music displayed on a tablet or iPad should have a rest at the end of every page. In some cases, there are alternative solutions to avoid page turns altogether, such as taping music into a three-page spread. This approach is common in recording sessions, where page turns can create unwanted noise that is picked up by the microphones.
At the same time as selecting the best points for a page break, the copyist will also consider where each system break should occur. A system break is where the music reaches the right side of the page and continues on the next system below. If there are too many bars on one system, the music will be cramped and difficult to read. Too few bars per system, and the music will be too spread out, again difficult to read. In some genres such as pop, rock, and musical theatre, the phrases are also shown by system breaks, often by having four bars per line, so that every section starts on a new system. This convention does not exist in orchestral music; system breaks are chosen purely on ideal horizontal spacing of the notes.
Cues
During long periods of silence for a particular instrument, such as the brass resting during a long passage of string writing, the musician might miscount the bars rest before they play again. This would waste rehearsal time, or worse, ruin a performance. The best way to avoid this is to provide "cues" in the part. A cue is a brief excerpt of another player's part, placed shortly before the musician needs to start playing again, notated with smaller noteheads. The player can listen out for this cue to double check that they have counted the bars rest correctly.
The best cues are ones that are audible even if there are lots of other parts happening at the same time. There is no use providing a viola cue to a tuba player if the trumpets and trombones are playing loudly, as the tuba player would have no chance of hearing the viola over the brass. For this reason, it's usually best to provide cues from instruments in the same section, unless the music is thinly scored.
A professional copyist will be very careful about what cues they choose. If another instrument plays a similar phrase three times in a row and a careless copyist uses the second of these phrases as a cue, the musician will have no idea which of the three phrases is being cued and so will likely enter at the wrong time.
Cues are usually shown with the clef of the instrument being cued - a tuba part with a flute cue should display a treble clef at the start of the cue, and a bass clef immediately after the cue. The exception to this is if the cue may need to be optionally played by the musician, such as if the cued instrument is absent from the rehearsal, then the clef should stay in the normal clef for that instrument.
Cues should always be in the same transposition as the surrounding music. If a Bb clarinet cue is in an oboe part, the pitches should be written in concert pitch like the surrounding oboe music, not transposed up a tone like the clarinet's music.
Staff Size and Spacing
Choosing what size the staves should be is an important decision. Staff size is measured from the top line to the bottom line in millimetres, with instrumental parts usually having a stave size of around 7mm, big orchestral scores as small as 4mm, and piano-vocal scores somewhere in between. A good copyist will know what staff size is most appropriate, taking into account the genre of music and whether the music will be printed or displayed on a screen.
Horizontal spacing is determined by system breaks as mentioned above, but the copyist must also consider the vertical spacing. This includes how many systems should be on each page, and how tightly packed these systems should be. In general, orchestral music tends to be quite compact with many staves per page to reduce page turns, differing with theatre and session music, which usually have fewer staves per page to make following the music with very little rehearsal easier.
Rehearsal Marks and Bar Numbers
Rehearsing music varies significantly across genres, and specific elements of music preparation adapt accordingly, particularly rehearsal marks and bar numbers.
In orchestral music, rehearsal marks are boxed alphabetical letters placed at major sections. During rehearsals, conductors refer to these marks when indicating where to begin playing, such as "Let's go from the fourth bar of letter G". Bar numbers are either placed at the start of each system or omitted entirely. While this convention may not be the most efficient method for finding a starting point, it has long been established.
In theatre and session music, where rehearsal time is often limited, large boxed bar numbers are used as rehearsal marks at new sections, and small bar numbers are usually underneath every single bar. This makes it very quick to find the starting place when the conductor says "Let's go from bar 137".
Music involving a single musician, such as a solo piano work, may not include any rehearsal marks or bar numbers at all, since these do not affect the music and are just for communication between musicians.
Notation Details
A professional typesetting service will review every single bar throughout the score and make any edits as necessary to make the music as readable as possible for the musician, while keeping the composer's intentions intact. This includes:
Rhythmic notation
Beam grouping and stem direction
Use of clefs
Accidentals
Dynamics and articulations across parts
Slurs and ties
Use of ornaments and other symbols
And many other notation details
Proofreading
Throughout the preparation process, multiple proofreading stages are undertaken to ensure no errors reach the music stands. The copyist will listen to the score using virtual instruments in order to check any wrong notes with the composer or arranger. They will check that any transposing instrument is correctly transposed, especially if there are instrument changes in one part. For example, a musical theatre Reed part where one player changes between different transposing instruments such as Flute, Clarinet and Saxophone could have three or more different transpositions in this one part.
Once the copyist is satisfied with the prepared parts, they generate PDFs of the score and individual parts. A final thorough examination is conducted on these documents before they are sent to the printer.
Printing and Binding
The paper size used to print music on varies around the world. In the UK, A4 parts and A3 scores are the standard, whereas countries such as the US use paper sizes such as letter and tabloid.
Various types of binding are needed for different musical contexts. Theatre and session parts are typically taped into an accordion fold, and scores taped into booklets. Orchestral music is usually printed onto double-sized paper and then folded and stapled. Some music is comb-bound or ring-bound depending on what it's being used for.
At LMP, we print onto all paper sizes and provide all types of music binding. Read more about LMP's Printing, Binding & Delivery Service
MIDI Transcription and Score Digitalising
For composers or arrangers who write their music in a DAW (Digital Audio Workstation) such as Logic, Pro Tools or Cubase, converting it to readable sheet music is more difficult than for those who write straight into notation programmes. Using a MIDI file to transfer the notes from the DAW to the notation programme is the best way, but unfortunately doesn't give optimal results, with rhythms written illogically and no dynamics, articulations or technique markings transferred over. A copyist will take the DAW's MIDI file and audio exports to create beautiful and accurate sheet music to allow real musicians to play the music exactly how it was intended.
Read more about LMP's MIDI Transcription Service
For composers and arrangers who write music with pencil and paper, software that promises to convert their handwritten music into notation software files may seem quicker than inputting the notes manually, but the results are always littered with mistakes, which usually take longer to correct than inputting music by hand. A decent copyist spends all day, every day inputting music into notation programmes, so the results will always be better than using scanning software.
Read more about LMP's Note Inputting & Score Digitalising Service
Why You Should Hire A Music Copyist
Hiring a professional music copyist can greatly benefit composers and arrangers by alleviating the burdensome task of part preparation and ensuring exceptional quality in the final result. While composers possess remarkable musical expertise, dedicating extensive time to meticulously edit each instrument's part can be a time-consuming and labour-intensive process. By entrusting this responsibility to a skilled music copyist, composers and arrangers can focus their energy on the creative aspects of composition and arrangement. Copyists possess a deep understanding of music notation conventions, engraving techniques, and formatting standards, enabling them to produce beautifully crafted and highly legible parts that musicians will always enjoy playing.
Enquire About LMP's Services
London Music Preparation is a team of music preparation experts who are specialists in different aspects of music preparation, including all of the tasks outlined in this blog, and have experience as copyists for countless composers and arrangers.
As a large team, LMP is unique in that you can choose whether you'd like a single dedicated copyist to work on your whole production, or for last-minute jobs, a team of copyists can work together to get the job done quickly and to the highest quality.
Get in touch to find out how we could help your composition or arrangement by emailing contact@londonmusicpreparation.co.uk
We hope you found this blog useful and interesting. This is our fourth blog in a series of music preparation blogs, so please subscribe to our mailing list to be notified of future blogs.
LMP provides the highest quality music preparation services to clients in the whole of the UK and around the world, including score and part typesetting, music printing, all types of binding, transposing music, transcribing music, and more. Have a look at all the services we provide: