How much info is too much?

[Jody Stecher]

I'm still considering the optimum way to present my transcriptions of jigs, reels and hornpipes.  What do banjo players want to see in a banjo solo score? 

My thinking is that in a tutor book more info is better because the score is for learning techniques.  But when the score is for playing maybe a clean spacious page is better.  The player can make choices as to which fingers and frets and strings to use. Part of the beauty of music is that the same musical phrase can have different colors and create different feelings in the listener according to what techniques are used to create the sound. Below is an example of six ways to play the first measure of The Ship In Full Sail. The notes are the same; the effect is different and there are more than six ways.

How much guidance do the banjo players on this site want to see?  

And what about chord letters?  Some would like them to be there. Some don't. At first the chords I entered had such big letters that it competed with the musical notes. Then I found out how to reduce their size.  

Also below is a slightly revised version of The Ship In Full Sail with chords above the staff.  Does this look good or bad?

Scroll down a bit to see the full score.

[Jody Stecher]

Does this look better or worse than the previous version?  I find that the predominance of four measures per line creates a square or blocky feeling. Whereas an odd number of measures somehow conveys musical flow. Highly subjective, I know.  Scroll down a bit to see score.

[Trapdoor2]

I think it looks fine...but like you said, form is subjective. Many publishers just crammed the page as best they could. I prefer open and blocky...but I'm an old engineer. Symmetry and alignment! ;-)

Needs a little cleanup. M10 & M14 have a fingering symbol covering the D note. M18 has the same problem and a spurious line at the tail of the slur to G.

Another reason I like the voltas, it cues me to look for the variation and my lazy brain likes only having to read the variation, the rest is repetition.

[Jody Stecher]

Well spotted! As you can see, the covered D note wasn't in the previous version. Somehow this was caused by changing the voltas I guess.  The spurious line has been there for a while. 

You've been so helpful, Marc. Thanks so much.   Thanks as well to everyone else who has given an opinion.   

Trapdoor2 said:

I think it looks fine...but like you said, form is subjective. Many publishers just crammed the page as best they could. I prefer open and blocky...but I'm an old engineer. Symmetry and alignment! ;-)

Needs a little cleanup. M10 & M14 have a fingering symbol covering the D note. M18 has the same problem and a spurious line at the tail of the slur to G.

Another reason I like the voltas, it cues me to look for the variation and my lazy brain likes only having to read the variation, the rest is repetition.

[Trapdoor2]

I've been enjoying this discussion (I think it shows). I think I started computer scoring back in the mid 80s with a 128 Mac (my first real home computer). In the 90s, someone introduced a program called "Tabrite" (I keyed in "Tyro Mazurka" first). Then there was TablEdit and then Musescore. I like Musescore because I can just type the letter of each note. I took touch-typing in Jr. High School and still type at 80wpm. Simple stuff like jigs & reels are a doddle but, as I said, it is all in the formatting after the notes are keyed in. Some of the two and three-page stuff (Morley, Grimshaw, et al) take simply forever to format.

There are many tricks and tips for Musescore. Wait till you start doing dotted jigs...you'll go dotty (I have a pile of tips!).

[Jody Stecher]

Yes, very enjoyable.

 I use Musescore because it's free. It also seems to be simpler to use than the expensive alternatives. 

I've done some dotted note transcriptions in the past but none in 6/8 time. It was still annoying. I would enter a dotted pair at the start of a measure and Musescore would predict what time values should follow not just for the rest of the measure but into the next one as well. And it was always bizarrely wrong.  Particularly time-consuming is transcribing strathspeys. The typical strathspey contains both long-short and short-long dotted combinations in a typical measure, Musescore doesn't like this and Gets Even by wreaking havoc.

With dotted hornpipes in the past I've sometimes entered them in straight time and put in a note saying to play in dotted time or swing time. 

I am ready for your Pile-O-Tips for dotted music. Please. Thank You. Yes.

Trapdoor2 said:

I've been enjoying this discussion (I think it shows). I think I started computer scoring back in the mid 80s with a 128 Mac (my first real home computer). In the 90s, someone introduced a program called "Tabrite" (I keyed in "Tyro Mazurka" first). Then there was TablEdit and then Musescore. I like Musescore because I can just type the letter of each note. I took touch-typing in Jr. High School and still type at 80wpm. Simple stuff like jigs & reels are a doddle but, as I said, it is all in the formatting after the notes are keyed in. Some of the two and three-page stuff (Morley, Grimshaw, et al) take simply forever to format.

There are many tricks and tips for Musescore. Wait till you start doing dotted jigs...you'll go dotty (I have a pile of tips!).

[Trapdoor2]

I think they deleted the predictive notation. I haven't seen it in a long time. TablEdit had it and it was usually about 50% wrong. What I would like is a lock for triplets. So much of this 19th Century stuff is long strings of triplets...if I could just lock it down as needed, that would be great.

The trick to heavily dotted tunes is to type in the rhythm first. I usually just type a string of Bs (middle line) varying only the note values (and depend heavily on copy/paste). Once I have the piece full of Bs (no note stacks, you fill those in when you key in the note names) in the right rhythm, there is a button that allows you to "re-pitch" a string of notes. Once you're in that mode, you just type the note letter, and it automatically follows the note values you previously entered. Yah, you have to visit each measure twice...but it ends up being faster overall. And thank Dog, this music tends to be repetitive...!

There's a new mode that is for rhythm only entry...but I've only tried it once and quickly got cornfused. Some of the entries become backwards or reverse from what I normally do. For some reason, dotted entry in that mode requires you to enter the dot first, then the note value (instead of typing a 4 for an 8th note and then "period" to make it dotted, I had to type the period first, then hit 4). Triplets require something different too. I guess I need to study that mode more. It may end up being faster, once learned.

There's also a new "input by duration" mode that I haven't explored. These seem to be set up for specific tasks that people have requested. 

[Jody Stecher]

What Musescore predicted was not melody notes but rhythms without pitch. It still does that when I try to follow short- long (known as the Scots Snap) with long-short.  The rhythms that appear to the right of what I enter are not just wrong, they're downright unmusical.

Trapdoor2 said:

I think they deleted the predictive notation. I haven't seen it in a long time. TablEdit had it and it was usually about 50% wrong. What I would like is a lock for triplets. So much of this 19th Century stuff is long strings of triplets...if I could just lock it down as needed, that would be great.

The trick to heavily dotted tunes is to type in the rhythm first. I usually just type a string of Bs (middle line) varying only the note values (and depend heavily on copy/paste). Once I have the piece full of Bs (no note stacks, you fill those in when you key in the note names) in the right rhythm, there is a button that allows you to "re-pitch" a string of notes. Once you're in that mode, you just type the note letter, and it automatically follows the note values you previously entered. Yah, you have to visit each measure twice...but it ends up being faster overall. And thank Dog, this music tends to be repetitive...!

There's a new mode that is for rhythm only entry...but I've only tried it once and quickly got cornfused. Some of the entries become backwards or reverse from what I normally do. For some reason, dotted entry in that mode requires you to enter the dot first, then the note value (instead of typing a 4 for an 8th note and then "period" to make it dotted, I had to type the period first, then hit 4). Triplets require something different too. I guess I need to study that mode more. It may end up being faster, once learned.

There's also a new "input by duration" mode that I haven't explored. These seem to be set up for specific tasks that people have requested. 

[Trapdoor2]

Strange. My version does nothing like that. I type "N" to get into note entry mode and no rhythms show up.

Are you using the input by duration mode? It is a little signpost icon (or type M to start). I just watched a video on it, and it puts up predictive hashmarks based on the note entered. They're really not predicting your next move, they're letting you know what's left in the measure at your last selected value.

That's the mode that requires the dot be toggled on or off. You type M to start, type the number of the note value (4 for 8th note, etc.) and it sets a note on the B. Poke it up or down for the pitch you want. If you want a dotted note, you first hit the period key, then the value...but you have to toggle it off if you're using dotted pairs (dotted 8th paired with 16th) and it is hard not to screw it up. I see value in it...so I'm going to give it a solid try. I'll go find a Strathspey or something crazy and see how it works.

[Jody Stecher]

The rhythms show up AFTER I begin entering short-long followed by long-short. Typing N just allows me to enter notes by number, it doesn't enter anything for me.  I'm not using duration mode. All the same I do get helpful rests filling up the rest of the measure. That's good.  The thing I'm talking about is a combination of 32nd and 16th notes spilling over into the next measure and connected by ties and slurs and other unwanted things.

Trapdoor2 said:

Strange. My version does nothing like that. I type "N" to get into note entry mode and no rhythms show up.

Are you using the input by duration mode? It is a little signpost icon (or type M to start). I just watched a video on it, and it puts up predictive hashmarks based on the note entered. They're really not predicting your next move, they're letting you know what's left in the measure at your last selected value.

[Trapdoor2]

Nope, never seen that. Must be a Mac thing.

[Jody Stecher]

I've now  completed the banjo version of The Ship In Full Sail and also an arrangement of The Shaskeen, a reel in G to which I've applied the same banjo techniques. I've decide to indicate chords on both transcriptions and a few fingering suggestions, all of which can be ignored or used. Both are nicely aligned now and sparse enough to be easily read. For each I would like to include a sound file of me playing the tune on the banjo and also the playback from Musescore so that the melody and chords can be heard together.  How do I attach the banjo file? Via the paper clip in the menu here? If there is no way I suppose I can email an MP3 to Ian (really nice man) and he'll be able to do it. But doing it directly would be preferable.

And how do I get the Musescore sound  into a post here on the classic banjo Ning site?   The Musescore handbook has not been helpful about this.

[Trapdoor2]

Musescore uses "Export" for both pdf and mp3 files. I have successfully done both via "add attachments" and via the paperclip.

In the Export pulldown, it will ask you to select the file. Then it should show a "file type" box where you can choose various formats, including .pdf and .mp3. You have to do it separately for every file type.