Behind Bars: The Definitive Guide to Music Notation (Faber Edition)

If you're using modern notation software, most of them try to enforce the standards outlined in this book, but it's still a super engaging read if you care at all about how music notation looks and what all the little rules are behind it.The sections on scoring and page layout are still incredibly useful even if you don't care about all the little spacing details for notes and stems and articulations.

I recommend this book to any one who wants to know anything and just about everything about the rules of music notation. This book is completely thorough on this subject. I bought it since it had a positive review by Sir Simon Rattle who recently stepped down as the conductor of the Berlin Philharmonic. If someone with that type of music knowledge expertise has remarks like that, surely his opinion carries a lot of weight in my book. I am an arranger/composer for a wide variety of styles and I use the Finale software for my publishing. However, like the author in this book states: "I hope that a through understanding of the principles set out in this book will complement - indeed complete - the armoury of skills, short-cuts and techniques that the modern musician sitting at a computer has to hand." (--Introduction page xi). With that being said, I must say that NO music software can replace the human element. I personally am a perfectionist as to how the sheet music comes out of my printer. Matter of fact, I was one of those who used blank music sheets and ink to write down music not so long ago. My music school covered in a general way some of the notational aspects of this book. Some of these aspects needed to be refreshed in my mind; hence the functionality of this book. For instance, what length should the stems in a group of notes or a single note be? What determines the angle of the beams in a group of notes? No matter how much tweaking I constantly do in Finale, I still have to manually correct a big portion of the music within that software. Nowadays, many music schools do not even cover notational aspects like the ones found in this book and people tend to believe that any musical notational software will print out the perfect printed job. Do not get me wrong, using a notational software does aid in helping you publish music (I would not want to go back to using blank sheets of music and ink!) but as the author brilliantly mentions in her book's introduction: your acquired notational knowledge will complement your software skills and make you sheet music look awesome! Written music like any other written form of communication should be clear. Therefore, in the case of printed music, musicians should be able to focus on playing the music presented to them rather than having to do any guess work as to what could possibly be the arranger or composer's intention. With all of this being said, I strongly recommend this book!

I have been writing music for a long time, but primarily rock music. When I began writing orchestral music I very quickly learned that there is A LOT that I don't know about sheet music. After some helpful feedback to some of my early attempts at writing sheet music for an orchestra I found this book which contains information on "the correct way" to do almost everything in music engraving. Every thing you could imagine is in here: how to change key signatures, how to make symbols (like slurs, hairpins, accents, staccato marks, and ties) less messy, how to write for harp, how to write for transposing instruments, how to calculate alignment (by multiplying ratio figures or the lowest common multiple), how to angle beams, correct use of accidentals, voice leading between staves, handling different voices in one staff, etc.If you want to become a well-versed copyist, engraver, or even a composer who is not laughed at, you can either spend years studying hundreds of scores yourself, or you could let Elaine Gould do the work for you and read what her extremely well researched book has to say.This book will take you to a higher level as a composer and musician, and, I feel, this book should be in the library of every serious music lover.

I'm only an amateur musician, so I'll leave the serious reviews to wiser heads. But I am delighted with this work and wanted to say so.It's an expensive book for sure, but it has been well worth it on many occasions. The book has served its role as a reference quite admirably, but it is also a pleasure to spend time leafing through and reading. The entries are thorough and in some cases quite entertaining. Definitely a valued addition to my book library as well as my music library.

This is a fantastic book, but it may not be for everyone. It’s meant for composers, arrangers, and orchestrators, and music copyists who want the latest standards in music notation, wether writing by hand, or using a notation program.

…the dust jacket has a massive sticker with four additional barcodes on it so the dust cover will have to be trashed. If you care about such things, that is. If you don’t, then no worries.But the book itself is an excellent encyclopedia of music notation.

This huge (650-page) volume is a must addition to the library of anyone who is seriously involved in writing or editing published music. It covers virtually every conceivable notational dilemma, including writing for specific instrument groups, and the proper layout of scores. The author has decades of experience and it shows, but she is not pedantic and has a sense of humor (as the title might indicate). The book is loaded with musical examples as well as descriptive text.If you are not a music professional, do NOT spend 100 dollars on this book. There are plenty of simple volumes that will give you the basics of notation for most purposes. But as an editor for a music publisher, I consider it well worth the money and will keep it close to my desk along with my dictionary and orchestration manuals!