On Musical Detail (3)

I just finished going through a submitted score for this second project, and, in the interest of saving you all some time and potential grief, I'll share with you some of the detail issues that came up. You may be feeling as though you understand all that needs to be understood about musical detail ("I get it! My score must be really detailed!"), but your score may be suggesting otherwise. In no particular order, here are some of the issues that came up in the score I just saw:

• Tempo indication (i.e., metronome marking, and/or tempo adjective like Moderato) and starting mood descriptor (e.g., "intense") should only be at the top of the first system (i.e., violin) in the score, and sometimes above the piano as well since piano usually reads from the score.


• This applies to the score, but when generating parts each part gets its own tempo indication.


• In orchestra scores, each instrument family gets its own tempo marking; the top woodwind instrument, top brass instrument, top percussion staff, and violin I all have tempo indications.


• Tempo indications should be left-aligned with the metre indication; the start of the tempo indication should align with the metre.


• It is good practice to indicate how much or an accell. or rit. you want by writing a target tempo.


• If accell. and rit. move to a new tempo that is only slightly different from the previous tempo, use the "poco" modifier, eg, poco accell. or poco rit.


• When the rit. or accell. is over, write "a tempo" to continue at the new tempo indicated by the target tempo referenced above.


• If you want to return to the starting tempo, write tempo 1° (tempo primo).


• If you change tempo, indicate the change using the same format used at the beginning of your score. In most cases, that will mean having a metronome marking ("quarter = 92") as well as a mood descriptor (e.g., "playful"). If the new tempo does not coincide with a metre indication, left-align the tempo indication with the start of the bar (as opposed to left-aligning it with the metre, which you do at the start of the composition).


• A new tempo should not start in the middle of a bar; it must be at the start of a bar. If, for example, you want a tempo change to occur on beat 3 of a 4/4 bar, make it into a 2/4 bar so that the tempo change can occur on the downbeat of the next bar.


• As mentioned above, the pianist typically reads from the score, presumably because someone in the ensemble needs to know how it all is supposed to fit together. Sometimes the instruments above the piano use slightly smaller staff sizes, in part to make it easier for the pianist to easily distinguish their part from the others, and in part to allow more systems per page. But don't try for, say, 3 systems on a page if doing so results in a cramped appearance.


• EVERY entry following more than a bar of rest should get its own dynamic.


• Hairpins should have a destination dynamic, like "f" if crescendo, or "pp" if diminuendo; don't write a hairpin with no indication as to how loud or soft you want to be at the end of the hairpin. They also need a starting dynamic, but it isn't necessary to write a starting dynamic if it is clear from the previous measures what the dynamic should be.


• Hairpin lengths should be reasonable, taking into account the amount of dynamic change over the span of the hairpin. For example, an increase of one dynamic level, such as p to mp, is very small, so the corresponding hairpin should be very short. If the dynamic change is larger, such as p to f, the corresponding hairpin can be longer. But even with a p to f hairpin, the length should be reasonable. It is obviously difficult to exactly how long a hairpin can reasonably be, but I have seen hairpins spanning 8 or more bars with very little dynamic change, and this is definitely unreasonable!


• If you want to write longer, more gradual crescendi and diminuendi, I recommend orchestrating the dynamic change. For example, if you want a long cresc. start with a very thin texture and a pp dynamic, then gradually add instruments and expand the register to include increasingly higher and lower notes, and this by itself will create an effective cresc. even if the dynamic remains at pp for the added instruments. Increasing the dynamic beyond pp in this fuller texture will result in a more dynamic crescendo. 


• Don't attach dynamics to rests (!).


• Make sure there are no improperly-grouped rests or beams. Groupings usually follow the basic beat structure of the metre and its subdivisions,


• If writing for wind instruments, where do they breathe? If you whistle through the part at tempo (don't worry if you don't get all the pitches right!), it will make it easier to determine where the best places to breathe would be.


• String bowings MUST be in the score. This doesn't mean the 'up' and 'down' direction indicators, necessarily (although you can put them in when there is some specific direction that you want, like a series of downbows, for example), but it does mean putting slurs over groups of notes that are to be played with one bow. How to do this if you're not a violinist? Go through your string part playing 'air violin' or 'air cello' (in other words, bowing through the music on an invisible instrument; probably best attempted in private!), and feel what the best way to group notes would be. Then, once you have marked in your bowings, take it to a string player and ask them to play through it with a real instrument, and figure out how close you came to achieving what you actually want. If you do this a lot, you eventually develop a natural feel for how best to bow your own music.


• Don't create big, loopy slurs; they tend to collide with other score elements, like other slurs, dynamics, notes, accents, etc.


• Speaking of collisions, AVOID THEM! Notation software sometimes creates (or at least allows) collisions between dynamics and articulations, or slurs and notes, or written instructions and slurs, etc. These must be fixed.


• Be picky in your page layout. If using multiple systems per page (which applies to everybody), make sure the systems are far enough apart so that dynamics, articulations, slurs, etc. in the bottom line of one system do not collide with anything in the top line of the next system. There is sometimes slightly more space between the piano part and the instruments above it, again to facilitate reading from the score for the pianist.


• Also, keyboard instruments only need one dynamic, in the space between the LH and RH, unless the LH and RH are playing different dynamics.


• And don't forget to find the clearest enharmonic note spellings possible; notation software is notorious for occasionally making poor choices for you in this regard.


• Proof-read everything, especially parts. It's amazing what you can miss if you don't go through every part, bar by bar, checking to make sure all dynamics and other score information are there.