Musical transcription

“ As music grew more and more complex, and especially as writing in several parts came into use (cf. rise of organum, descant, and counterpoint) , it became increasingly difficult to express musical ideas on the basis of the old notation, and numerous attempts were made to invent a more accurate and usable system. Among these one of the most interesting was that in which the words of the text were written in the spaces between long, parallel lines, placing the initial letters of the words tone and semi-tone at the beginning of the line to indicate the scale interval. ”

“ It is not like the case of a composer who has a melody in his head, perhaps not even realizing that the reason he hears this melody is that it is the work of another which he had heard before. When you sample a sound recording you know you are taking another’s work product. [12]
This analysis admittedly raises the question of why one should, without infringing, be able to take three notes from a musical composition, for example, but not three notes by way of sampling from a sound recording. ”

“ As a rule, a natural should only be used where the sharp or flat to be cancelled would not have to be repeated were the inflection intended to continue.
Legibility.
52.—A common cause of illegibility in manuscript music is what may be called a spider-like sameness in the web. Stems and hooks—indeed sometimes stems and note-heads!—are much of the same thickness and blackness. Compare them in printed music, and it will be seen that a dozen, perhaps a score, of stems could be spun out of one hook. ”

“ Were it possible to transfer Orchestral passages to the keyboard notatim, the task of arranging would be a very simple one; but it would be a great mistake to suppose that the most literal transcription from the Score is invariably the best, or the most effective one. Many complicated passages need extensive simplification, in order to bring them within the compass even of four hands upon the Pianoforte; while the execution of many Violin passages is absolutely impossible upon Keyed Instruments. ”

“ It may, at a first glance, appear singular that nations have not generally such traditional records respecting the originators of their vocal music as they have respecting the invention of their musical instruments. The cause is however explicable; to sing is as natural to man as to speak, and uncivilised nations are not likely to speculate whether singing has ever been invented. ”

“ But if we were even to suppose each of the chords in the same key, and each of the signatures, of equally frequent occurrence, some chords would occur much [26] oftener, as forming an essential part of the harmony of more keys than others. The Vth DA, for example, forms one of the essential chords of six different keys; while the Vth GD forms a part only of the single key of four sharps.
Proposition IV.
To find a set of numbers, expressing the ratio of the probable number of times that each of the different consonances in the scale will occur, in any set of musical compositions. ”

“ Allowing for the fact that the male voice is an octave below the female voice, but in all other respects corresponds with it in range, the adjustment of the vocal tract throughout each register is the same for both men and women singers. There is, I fear, a prevalent notion on the part of the musical public that each voice has its own separate registers; that, for example, the registers of the soprano voice are at different points of the scale from those of the alto, and those of the tenor at different points from both of these. ”

“ Thus from the definite number of twenty-four notes, varied in different degrees, by sharps, flats, semi-tones, &c., are produced all that is so magical, enthusiastic, and transporting in the empire of omnipotent music. Like as the alphabetic characters may be varied into myriads of forms suitable to every multifarious species of conversation or composition; in a word, a few musical notes in the hands of a master may be made by his skill to produce, from agreeable interchanges of time, harmony, &c., every variety of musical sentiment which can affect the human soul. ”

“ Therefore, anybody making a cryptogram of musical notes would probably use one set of these duplicate positions to indicate other letters, and as h is in the lower part of the stave, that is where the variation comes in. Let us experiment by assuming that all the crotchets above f in ordinary musical notation have their usual values, and let us set the letters over their respective notes. Now things begin to shape. ”

“ Associated voice Lyrics with manual duration will be left-aligned to the position of the appropriate note in the score. Extender lines also cannot be generated as the lyrics are not associated with any note and the the length of the line cannot be determined. To overcome that, the \set associatedVoice command can be used to associate, or link, the lyrics with a melody in another block.
The block containing the melody (musical notation) must be created as
ew voice="foo". The block containing the lyrics must also contain the command \set associatedVoice = #"foo". ”

“ The common musical scale is derived from a tone and its overtones, by making, on separate strings, full tones corresponding to the overtones of some fundamental string-tone. That which produces a "chord" in music, where the harmony is made by full tones, would produce a vowel if the main tone only were full, and the "chording" tones overtones. When, then, a vowel is sung, high or low, it is still the same vowel at a different pitch—that is, the same "chord" in another key. But "chords" are music, and music means air-waves, so that vowels are musical air-waves. ”

“ In class-work it is hardly possible to get ten pupils with equal powers of picking up tunes and correct fingering. The ear may be compared to a machine which records musical compositions and sounds. In this respect the perfect machine has already been found. The phonograph will record and reproduce a tune in perfect form, but then it is only a reproduction, whereas the musician has life and power to create new and original tunes. ”

“ Short Score to Open Score.
47.—Co-relatively, in transcribing from short score to open, it will occasionally be necessary to put accidentals in the latter which are not in the former. The commonest form of this is probably in extracting a single part, soprano, alto, tenor, or bass, from an ordinary short score hymn or chant book, and writing it in a part-book for the particular voice. ”

“ Carrying a measure from the end of one score to the beginning of the next is not practised now, as it once was.
Bar-lines are usually drawn through each stave of vocal music separately, and in instrumental music through as many staves as belong to the same instrument or group of instruments, e.g., through the two staves of a piano part, and the four or five belonging to the "strings" in a full score. ”

“ Orchestral players and accompanists are frequently called upon to transpose, in order to accommodate the singer, for whose voice the written pitch of the song may be too high or too low, but it is probably extremely seldom that transposition takes place on so grand a scale as when Beethoven, having to play his Concerto in C major, and finding the piano half a tone too flat, transposed the whole into C♯ major! ”

“ Open strings are clearer and more powerful but less expressive than stopped strings.
Comparing the range of each stringed instrument with that of the human voice, we may assign: to the violin, the soprano and-10- contralto voice plus a much higher range; to the viola, the contralto and tenor voice plus a much higher register; to the 'cello, the tenor and bass voices plus a higher register; to the double bass, the bass voice plus a lower range.
The use of harmonics, the mute, and some special devices in bowing produce great difference in the resonance and tone quality of all these instruments. ”

“ Intelligent knowledge of Notation is the more necessary inasmuch as music-writing is in only a comparatively few cases mere copying. Even when writing from a copy, some alteration is frequently necessary, as will be shown in the following pages, requiring independent knowledge of the subject on the part of the copyist. ”

“ Among the few accidentals introduced into the older Part-books, we rarely find a Natural. Composers limited themselves to the use of the Sharp and Flat, in order to remove a trifling difficulty connected with the process of Transposition. It constantly happens, that, for the convenience of particular Singers, pieces, originally written in transposed Modes, are restored, in performance, to their natural pitch. ”

“ It may be mentioned that this Harmonical reproduction was hardly as loud and clear as those of most of the songs of our collection.
These tests of the phonograph and of the ear give a basis for considerable confidence in the novel method employed in this investigation of primitive musical performance. [22] The phonograph seems under favorable conditions to be able to reproduce a sequence of intervals with an accuracy which may be regarded as well-nigh perfect, and which one would call truly wonderful were not all wonder in connection with this instrument. ”

“ Usually, however, we find that if we can transmit and reproduce exactly all the notes which lie between a frequency of about 200 cycles a second and one of about 2000 cycles a second the reproduced speech will be quite natural and very intelligible. For singing and for transmitting instrumental music it is necessary to transmit and reproduce still higher notes. ”

“ But simple music can be made quite symmetrical, and in all music such beat-lines, actual or mental, are an invaluable check and guide.
Each note should be placed in the left-hand end of its space. This is for the simple reason that music, like words, is read from left to right and, roughly, space represents duration. Any other arrangement is misleading, as may be seen from old music, in which a note was often placed in the middle of its space. ”

“ Music question Is there ever a time that a musical note is notated (if that's the correct word) but not played? For example, the second "g" in the following:
Audio playback is not supported in your browser. You can download the audio file. If so, how would one "program" coding to make the note "play" silent? Apologies if I'm not clear. Also, I would like to try transcribing Chopin's Nocturne to Wikisource using a file from IA. Being that it contains no lyrics, is that something WS would include? If so, would you recommend LilyPond or ABC? ”

“ TRANSCRIPTION. A term which in ils strict meaning should be the exact equivalent of Arrangement, but which in practice implies a different, and in most cases a far less worthy production, since the transcriber rarely if ever fails to add something of his own to the work he selects for treatment. Among the earliest examples of the transcription in this sense are the versions of tunes, sacred and secular, contained in the Virginal Books, which no doubt were executed to order, or to show off the skill of some illustrious performer. ”

“ In the music of Corelli, Geminiani, Handel, &c., the general rules of finding the tonic, either in the major mode by the characteristic notes of the signature, or in the minor mode by the leading note accidentally inserted, are not always sufficient. When, instead of the complete series of sharps or flats of the signature, the last sharp or flat is suppressed, and inserted accidentally when requisite, like the leading note of the minor mode, such deviation from the usual method of notation is termed the ancient signature. ”

“ The piano can reproduce any sound that is composed of its musical notes. It will reproduce, for example, very distinctly, a vowel sound that is sung into it. And in truth physics has proved that the vowels may be regarded as composed of simple musical notes. ”

“ In open score (when one part only is being written on a stave) , the stems of notes above the middle line should be turned down, the stems of those below the middle line should be turned up (see b, Fig. 18) . The object of this is to keep the stems within the stave and prevent their sprawling above or below. The ill-equipped writer betrays himself by nothing more often than by sprawling stems.
The stems in a group of notes are generally turned according to the direction of the first note, or the majority. ”

“ It is called the 'voice harmonium,' because the securing of perfect intonation brings the tones much nearer to the quality of the human voice. The instrument has been invented and patented by Mr. Colin Brown of Glasgow, Ewing lecturer on music. By the use of additional reeds and a most ingenious keyboard, he has succeeded in giving each key in perfect tune. The 'wolf' is banished altogether, without the privilege of a single growl. ”

“ A common fault is in not making them thick enough. Notes are sometimes “hooked” in accordance, not with the rhythm, but with the hand which is to play them (see d, Fig. 22) . This is necessitated by the usage with regard to stems in such cases [see “Stems,” par. 22, exception (2) ] .
Fig. 22.
35.—In vocal music notes should not have the same hook which are sung to a different syllable (see “Vocal Music,” par. 37) . Subject to these exceptions, notes must be grouped according to their rhythm.
Leger-lines. ”

“ With the musical sound given out by these vibrating strings must inevitably be mixed the dull and unmusical sound of the blow that set them vibrating. The trained ear will detect not only the thud of the hammer against the string, but that of the finger against the key, and that of the key itself upon its base. The study of touch and tone upon the piano is the study of the combination and the control of these two elements of sound, the one musical, the other unmusical. ”