Computerized music notation

[carl-swanson]

Catherine- I have pages and pages and pages of notes. Every two or three days, I go through them and update my “cheat sheet.” I’m very slowly (very slowly!) memorizing the commands. Bill has been wonderful and patient at helping me out. I spent a half hour on the phone with him today as he figured out how to do a 10 note run of 32nd notes over 2 staves. I spent the better part of an hour tonight re-doing it numerous times until it looked the way I wanted it to look. I’m also learning basic commands that then allow you to do many different things. Option + click is the gateway for many commands. I just keep telling myself when I run into a roadblock, which is often, that there is a way to do anything you want to do. It’s just a matter of figuring it out.

The most amazing thing about this whole project is that I am setting one of Tournier’s most glorious pieces, the Sonatine for solo harp. Years later, he went back to it and added a violin and cello part. So I’m setting all three instruments. With it set, I can listen to it with pretty realistic sound. I listened to what I had set last night and the piece is just incredible with those strings. I think I’m the first person to hear this version in at least 70 years. I have never seen the published music, never heard it in recital or recording, and I don’t believe more than 5 people in the harp world even know that the string parts exist. But I heard them last night!

[balfour-knight]

Carl, that is so exciting about the string parts added by Tournier to his Sonatine. I can’t wait to hear it done by a harpist, violinist, and cellist and put on YouTube so all of us can hear it. I know it was already incredible for you to hear it done on your new-found computer program, but I bet the “real thing” would be much superior, especially with all the musical expression that each individual musician could give to the interpretation of this gorgeous music.

Thanks so much for giving the world the benefit of all your knowledge and expertise, and making this rare find something of a legacy for today’s musicians and all the future ones. We already owe you so much!

Best regards,
Balfour

[Saul Davis Zlatkovski]

In my experience and exploration of them, none are easy to use, and it will consume many hours to learn how they work. None are set up to do harp music without customizing. You’re better off writing by hand and giving it to a professional to copy. Unless you have a lot of free time, and enjoy being on a computer all the time. If you can do a neat copy by hand, then you can photocopy it, take it to a printer. You can more easily learn notation by hand than on computer. You don’t have your workflow interrupted then by updates to the software and continuing expenses. My regret is that when I could have taken a class in copying, I did not. I’m sure there’s someone in Boston who can still teach it. As much as the software can do, there’s so much it can’t and the frustration level is very high.

[carl-swanson]

OK, here’s the latest update. I’ve been working with Finale now for maybe 6 weeks and, with a lot of help from one of the readers here, have managed to set the entire Sonatine, Op. 30 of Tournier, with the string parts that Tournier added years later. The full score that I made, which has the violin, cello, and harp parts on it, is 46 pages long!! The violin and cello parts, which those players will play from, are each 6 pages long. So I’ve set 58 pages of music!

OMG what a lot of work this has been, and not simply because of the sheer length. I retrospect, I should have started with something simpler. The Sonatine presents every complicated and difficult issue you could imagine, and without the help of Bill, who knows everything there is to know about Finale, I would have given up after the first few days.

Here are the first two pages of the complete score.

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[balfour-knight]

Wow, Carl, that is BEAUTIFUL! I am so glad that you have persevered. I would most probably have given up after just trying to do a simple first page, ha, ha!

In response to what Saul mentioned above about hand “copying,” I was schooled very well in that technique while in college doing my BM and MM degrees, but I hated to do it so much that I just about never write down any music now. That is why my few harp “arrangements” are limited to the very simple ones for harp hobbyists. Others have the “gift” of loving to write down beautiful arrangements and compositions, but I do not. I love performing my own versions of many pieces, but I loathe trying to write them down. To each his own…..

Very good wishes, everyone! Happy Holidays!
Balfour

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