this issue of apologetic notation is one i come 
across often, more commonly in north america but 
also in europe.  i can't speak for jazz 
charts/musicians, but if you are working with 
professional musicians, you MUST take it for 
granted they know what the hell a bartók pizz is, 
or a quarter tone.

no musician working professionally today and 
playing new music can justify ignorance of these 
(and a host of other) basic things.

what happens when the composer notates everything 
is that the musician has to read a novel to 
discover the one thing that is unique or special 
to the composer/notation and given some don't 
read the legend anyways (!) you are making it 
even more likely your notation explanations won't 
get read.  at least until after the rehearsals 
without the composer present.

when you overannotate you can also come across as 
condescending to musicians who know what the hell 
a bartók pizz is.  again, if they know it and see 
it in your legend, they can easily assume they 
don't need to read any further because you have 
written a score for newbies or high school bands, 
which you should NEVER do.

if the musicians you are working with are 
inexperienced (for whatever reason) provide them 
with a glossary of terms as a separate sheet, but 
prepare a professional score, with only the 
ESSENTIAL information in it.  a win-win 
situation: whoever needs the supplement can read 
it, whoever doesn't can make a paper plane out of 
it to throw at the composer during the dress 
rehearsal (i know someone this happened to...).

side note: scans of fingerings from published 
texts should NEVER be included in your score, 
that is a copyright infringement.  this is the 
kind of thing that can be sent as a separate 
sheet (along with your glossary, for example).

-- 

neueweise -- fonts for new music (and traditional) notation
http://newmusicnotation.com/fonts.html

shirling & neueweise | http://newmusicnotation.com
new music notation  +  arts management  +  translation
[FB] http://facebook.com/neueweise  |  [TW] http://twitter.com/neueweise


_______________________________________________
Finale mailing list
[email protected]
https://lists.shsu.edu/mailman/listinfo/finale

To unsubscribe from finale send a message to:
[email protected]

Reply via email to