Contents
Introduction
A brilliant composer has written some stunning melodies for an upcoming film soundtrack. The orchestrator spent weeks turning these melodies into a brilliant score that will be sure to make audiences weep. The studio engineers are finishing setting up the microphones to record the orchestra. The musicians are warming up in Studio 1, preparing for a thrilling session. The producer looks excitedly at the room full of people about to make wonderful music. The conductor arrives and raises their baton in the air…
And then…
Silence.
There's no music on any of the music stands. Nobody remembered to hire a music copyist!
Of course the scenario above has probably never happened, but whenever I work on a recording session I always live by the motto of "if no-one knows that a music copyist exists, then the music copyist did a good job". The music copyist is the invisible perfectionist, making sure every note and mark on the page is in exactly the right place to make the sight-reading session musicians' jobs as easy and simple as possible, then printing all the music and sneaking into the studio before any musician has arrived, delivering each folder to its relevant music stand, and then leaving, with only the studio receptionist knowing of their existence.
Let's dive in and take a closer look at each task of a recording session music copyist.
Proofreading
Earlier on I said that the orchestrator spends weeks turning melodies into full scores, but sometimes this isn't quite true… A simplified chain of events in creating a studio recording is fairly linear, starting with the creation of the film, the composer writing melodies to fit with what's on screen, the orchestrator writing the music for each specific instrument, and finally the copyist typesetting and printing the parts, before the music gets recorded, edited, and added to the film. For some reason (which I've never been able to figure out), deadlines tend to get scrunched up at every stage, so that by the time the notation files arrive in the copyist's inbox, it's 11pm the night before the session. I'd like to say that I'm exaggerating, but more than once has this clock reading been true, and I've finished taping at 3am, got a few hours' sleep, and dropped off the music at the studio at 8am before the musicians arrive.
But I digress!
The copyist works closely with the orchestrator, with the copyist's first job being to proofread the orchestrations - checking for things such as any instrument changes transposing correctly, any missing accidentals or potential wrong notes, or any other errors that could have snuck in at earlier stages in the process.
Once the back-and-forth proofreading process is complete and the orchestrator is happy, it's time for the copyist to make the scores and parts as easy to read as possible for the musicians.
Score and Part Typesetting
Typesetting scores and parts for recording sessions isn't too dissimilar to typesetting scores and parts for any other genre, such as orchestral music, theatre shows, or chamber music. In a previous LMP blog post, we've gone into extensive detail about the general typesetting process, so in this section I'm just going to focus on the particular differences for session music, though if you want to read that blog it can be found here: Music Preparation for Composers and Arrangers
The main difference between recording sessions and orchestral performances is that the musicians rarely get to see the music in advance of the session, so they have to arrive at the studio and sight-read flawlessly. For the copyist, this means that the music needs to be organised as logically as possible on the page, even if this means more system breaks than one might find on a tighter-spaced orchestral part.
There's no room for any confusion or complications in the parts. One will rarely, if ever, find any repeat sections or coda jumps on a session part, instead the passage will just be replicated so the music always flows from top to bottom. This avoids any chance of not finding the start of the repeat or the segno symbol quick enough, which would mean a recording restart and a loss of valuable studio time.
It's less common to find cues in session parts, as the music isn't always recorded from beginning to end, so adding cues may be a waste of time, or worse, the cued instrument may not be playing at all if different parts are being recorded separately, which will confuse the musician reading the cue. For these reasons, cues tend not to be added, but this isn't a hard-and-fast rule.
Session music has its own conventions in many other typesetting details, such as having bar numbers every single bar, to make it much quicker to find the conductor's chosen starting place, and making sure the staff size isn't too small, so the notes and details are easily legible.
Perhaps the most important aspect of session part typesetting is page turns. The quicker the page turn, the noisier the paper is, which makes it more likely to be picked up by the microphones and ruin the take. For this reason, the copyist should prioritise page turns with longer rests, even if this means some half-empty pages. The exception to this is if the cue (a single piece in a recording session) can be fitted onto three pages or fewer, as this means no page turns at all, which is always optimal. More on this in the Binding section below.
The copyist will then create PDFs from the notation file and give all the scores and parts one final round of proofreading before switching the printer on.
Printing
The third viola player does a particularly vigorous downbow and a small gust of wind blows the music off the music stand. That transcendent take is now ruined. This was because a copyist wasn't hired, and instead a non-musician who knew how to work the office printer printed the music onto 60gsm super-light budget copy paper.
Ok, another scenario which probably hasn't happened exactly like that, but if such thin paper is used then it will definitely fall off the music stand at some point and waste multiple thousands of pounds of studio time.
At LMP, we use 120gsm paper as standard, which is closer to card than cheap copy paper, so it's very unlikely to be blown off music stands, and will never crumple under its own weight as thin paper sometimes does.
Around the world, different paper sizes are used. In the UK, the standard is A4 parts and A3 scores for recording sessions, but other countries may use sizes such as letter and tabloid.
Whether the music is printed double-sided or single-sided depends on the binding method. Let's start a new section for that, shall we?
Binding
Session parts are always printed single-sided and then taped using an accordion fold. This means that the musician can stretch out a three-page part across the music stand without needing to turn any pages. Or a five-page part can start with a three-page spread and only have one page turn. Being taped means any page turns are also much quieter than other binding methods such as plastic comb binding, so sound technicians love it. We've previously written a whole blog dedicated to accordion fold taping, so have a read of that if you want to try it yourself: How To Tape Bind Sheet Music (Accordion Fold)
Session conductor scores are always printed double-sided and then taped into booklets. Again, this makes page turns super-quiet, and again, we've detailed the step-by-step on its very own blog post: How To Tape Bind Sheet Music (Booklet)
The people in the recording booth usually want their own copies of the score too, but as they won't be picked up by the microphones, they're usually happy to have the scores in a ring binder. We're not going to make a separate blog post about this as it's really very simple to do: print double sided, hole punch paper, pop it in a ring binder. Sometimes they ask for A3 scores, but jumbo ring binders do exist, so that works nicely.
Now that everything's printed, it's time to make sure it doesn't get lost in the post…
Delivering
The copyist enters the post office… and turns back around: there's no way they're going to risk losing all the music in the postal system, even if they pay extra for tracked delivery - session time is just too expensive for a whole day to be wasted because the postie was on strike. That is, unless the music is ready weeks in advance of the session, but if you think that's a possibility, go back and read the start of the Proofreading section.
The only solution to this is for the copyist to hand-deliver the music directly to each music stand. Which the copyist will do with pride. And then leave the studio before any of the musicians arrive. And then on to the next job.
Unless…
In-Person Copyist
Sometimes the copyist has the privilege of not sneaking off at 8:02am and instead bringing along their laptop and printer to the studio as well as all of the music. This can be requested in the case of where the composer or the orchestrator or the producer or all three think the music might change once the session starts, such as if new ideas might like to be tried, or if something doesn't work in reality how the orchestrator intended. When this happens, the copyist can prepare the new parts straight away and they can be re-recorded in minutes, rather than having to wait until the next session day.
The copyist is the last in a long chain of people when it comes to creating the music that ends up on the musicians' stands, and is an often unacknowledged but absolutely essential part of the recording process.
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 recording sessions.
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 project, 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 on your production by emailing contact@londonmusicpreparation.co.uk
We hope you found this blog useful and interesting. This is our fifth 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: