Musical notation

Musical notation is any system used to visually represent auditorily perceived music, played with instruments or sung by the human voice through the use of symbols, including notation for durations of absence of sound such as rests. For this reason, the act of deciphering or reading a piece using musical notation, is known as "reading music".

This article is about a notation for music. For the "musical" notation in mathematics, see Musical isomorphism.

The types and methods of notation have varied between cultures and throughout history, and much information about ancient music notation is fragmentary. Even in the same time frames, different styles of music and different cultures use different music notation methods; for example, classical performers most often use sheet music using staves, time signatures, key signatures, and noteheads for writing and deciphering pieces. But even so, there are far more systems just that, for instance in professional country music, the Nashville Number System is the main method, and for string instruments such as guitar, it is quite common for tablature to be used by players.

The symbols used include ancient symbols and modern symbols made upon any media such as symbols cut into stone, made in clay tablets, made using a pen on papyrus or parchment or manuscript paper; printed using a printing press (c. 1400s), a computer printer (c. 1980s) or other printing or modern copying technology.

Although many ancient cultures used symbols to represent melodies and rhythms, none of them was particularly comprehensive, which has limited today's understanding of their music. The seeds of what would eventually become modern Western notation were sown in medieval Europe, starting with the Christian Church's goal for ecclesiastical uniformity. The church began notating plainchant melodies so that the same chants could be used throughout the church. Music notation developed further during the Renaissance and Baroque music eras. In the classical period (1750–1820) and the Romantic music era (1820–1900), notation continued to develop as new musical instrument technologies were developed. In the contemporary classical music of the 20th and 21st century, music notation has continued to develop, with the introduction of graphical notation by some modern composers and the use, since the 1980s, of computer-based score writer programs for notating music. Music notation has been adapted to many kinds of music, including classical music, popular music, and traditional music.

conventions are varied because of the wide range of percussion instruments. Percussion instruments are generally grouped into two categories: pitched (e.g. glockenspiel or tubular bells) and non-pitched (e.g. bass drum and snare drum). The notation of non-pitched percussion instruments is less standardized. Pitched instruments use standard Western classical notation for the pitches and rhythms. In general, notation for unpitched percussion uses the five line staff, with different lines and spaces representing different drum kit instruments. Standard Western rhythmic notation is used to indicate the rhythm.

Percussion notation

notation originated in Baroque basso continuo parts. It is also used extensively in accordion notation. The bass notes of the music are conventionally notated, along with numbers and other signs that determine which chords the harpsichordist, organist or lutenist should improvise. It does not, however, specify the exact pitches of the harmony, leaving that for the performer to improvise.

Figured bass

A specifies only the melody, lyrics and harmony, using one staff with chord symbols placed above and lyrics below. It is used to capture the essential elements of a popular song without specifying how the song should be arranged or performed.

lead sheet

A or "chart" contains little or no melodic or voice-leading information at all, but provides basic harmonic information about the chord progression. Some chord charts also contain rhythmic information, indicated using slash notation for full beats and rhythmic notation for rhythms. This is the most common kind of written music used by professional session musicians playing jazz or other forms of popular music and is intended primarily for the rhythm section (usually containing piano, guitar, bass and drums).

chord chart

Simpler chord charts for songs may contain only the chord changes, placed above the lyrics where they occur. Such charts depend on prior knowledge of the melody, and are used as reminders in performance or informal . Some chord charts intended for rhythm section accompanists contain only the chord progression.

group singing

The system is found in some church hymnals, sheet music, and song books, especially in the Southern United States. Instead of the customary elliptical note head, note heads of various shapes are used to show the position of the note on the major scale. The Sacred Harp is one of the most popular tune books using shape notes.

shape note

A short melody in slendro notated using the Surakarta method.^[28]

The same notated using the Yogyakarta method or 'chequered notation'.^[28]

The same notated using Kepatihan notation.^[28]

The same approximated using Western notation.^[28] Play^ⓘ

Music notation on computers[edit]

Unicode[edit]

The Musical Symbols Unicode block encodes an extensive system of formal musical notation.

The Miscellaneous Symbols block has a few of the more common symbols:

Perspectives of musical notation in composition and musical performance[edit]

According to Philip Tagg and Richard Middleton, musicology and to a degree European-influenced musical practice suffer from a 'notational centricity', a methodology slanted by the characteristics of notation.^[45]^[46] A variety of 20th- and 21st-century composers have dealt with this problem, either by adapting standard Western musical notation or by using graphic notation. These include George Crumb, Luciano Berio, Krzystof Penderecki, Earl Brown, John Cage, Witold Lutoslawski, and others.^[47]^[48]

of modern notation.

List of musical symbols

Hebrew cantillation

Colored music notation

Eye movement in music reading

inventor of modern musical notation

Guido of Arezzo

History of music publishing

List of scorewriters

Mensural notation

Modal notation

drawing music notation for the purpose of mechanical reproduction

Music engraving

the application of optical character recognition to interpret sheet music

Music OCR

(plainchant notation)

Neume

Pitch class

a five-pointed writing implement used to draw parallel staff lines across a blank piece of sheet music

Rastrum

Scorewriter

Semasiography

Sheet music

a notation system useful for polyrhythms

Time unit box system

a subset of standard music notation

Tongan music notation

Tonnetz

Znamenny chant

. Contains a Guide to Byzantine Music Notation (neumes).

Byzantine Music Notation

Information on Stanford University Course on music representation. Links page shows examples of different notations.

CCARH—Center for Computer Assisted Research in the Humanities

. XML-based language for music notation.

Music Markup Language

. Encyclopædia Britannica. Vol. 19 (11th ed.). 1911. pp. 96–87.

"Musical Notation"

Synopsis of Musical Notation Encyclopedias (An index from topics of CWN into the books of Gould, Vinci, Wanske, Stone and Read.)

Gehrkens, Karl Wilson . Project Gutenberg.

Music Notation and Terminology

Gilbert, Nina. "." Posted 17 June 1998; updated 7 September 2000.