Manuscript paper

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Manuscript paper

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Paul Magnussen

Posts: 1805
Joined: Nov. 8 2010
From: London (living in the Bay Area)

Manuscript paper

Does anyone use manuscript paper to write down Flamenco any more, or is everyone using software? I’m revising an old article of mine about notation, and I'm wondering if manuscript paper is even worth mentioning.

If anybody does still use it, BTW, the Lute Society has free tab PDFs for download: portrait, landscape & staff+ tab:

https://www.lutesociety.org/pages/blank-tab-manuscript

REPORT THIS POST AS INAPPROPRIATE | Date Aug. 3 2019 17:57:23

edguerin

Posts: 1589
Joined: Dec. 24 2007
From: Siegburg, Alemania

RE: Manuscript paper (in reply to Paul Magnussen)

Yes, my teacher Manuel Berraquero in Sevilla jots down our classes on the fly.
(tabs, not notes).
When I get back home, I transfer things to GuitarPro, but I keep the original paper notation...

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El aficionado solitario
Alemania

REPORT THIS POST AS INAPPROPRIATE | Date Aug. 4 2019 8:07:51

Erik van Goch

Posts: 1787
Joined: Jul. 17 2012
From: Netherlands

RE: Manuscript paper (in reply to Paul Magnussen)

I used to annotate my ideas on paper but since I have a computer I made webcamrecordings in stead however most of those recordings were lost when my computer crashed. When ear plying I still use paper but I haven't done that for years. I did buy software once but have no clue how to use it. My father bought himself the best software available when there were plans to publish parts of his scores. It took him months to learn how to use it (it was the system used by publishers but not by the average non professional since it was quite complex to learn how to get things exactly the way you liked). It didn't came out well because my father didn't use an imac and when they run the end result on the publishers imac the intended layout became lost in translation with notes ending up all over the place.

Personaly I favor hand written scores over a printed one in the same way I prefer notes played by a guitarist over notes generated by a computer. Tino van der Sman wrote a column about my father stating that running true his hand written scores at the time (80ties/90ties) was kind of magic. "each note was as beautiful as a sunflower of van Goch" he wrote (making it the first time ever van Gogh was miswritten as van Goch rather then the other way around :-). Paco Serrano concidered my father's hand written scores as the very best scores in existence and is one of few owning copies of most of my father's hand written scores (including the scores of a Paco Serrano book that was never published). I'm pretty sure Bach performers value a Bach written score over a printed one when it comes to interpretation. So to me hand written scores are still of value and where written annotation is concerned my first choice of annotation.

In my father's case not only the notes were hand written but also the empty lines on the sheet of paper (one masterpage that is which was copied later on). That allowed him to mold the layout of the lines to his likings.

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REPORT THIS POST AS INAPPROPRIATE | Date Aug. 4 2019 12:10:17

flyeogh

Posts: 729
Joined: Oct. 13 2004

RE: Manuscript paper (in reply to Paul Magnussen)

I'm at the bottom of the pile but even down here I find writing out tabs and notes a very helpful process, and my prof writes on paper as well, and I then overwrite that with more notes (both types

) and then write it out again.

The problem with my laptop screen is that it usually contains my recording software. So paper on a stand contains the music.

The other nice thing with paper is that you can fit on a page what you need to see. I have A5, A4, landscape and portrait so can usually get it all in view. With the screen not only do you need to scroll but pop-ups can appear at the most annoying times.

And as Erik offers some hand-written scores are works of art. OK not mine but my hand-writing was always cr+p

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REPORT THIS POST AS INAPPROPRIATE | Date Aug. 4 2019 16:22:04

Paul Magnussen

Posts: 1805
Joined: Nov. 8 2010
From: London (living in the Bay Area)

RE: Manuscript paper (in reply to Erik van Goch)

quote:

I used to annotate my ideas on paper but since I have a computer I made webcamrecordings in stead however most of those recordings were lost when my computer crashed.

No back-ups? Oh dear.

quote:

My father bought himself the best software available when there were plans to publish parts of his scores. It took him months to learn how to use it (it was the system used by publishers but not by the average non professional since it was quite complex to learn how to get things exactly the way you liked).

Sounds like Finale. I got that in 1989, and it did indeed have a steep learning curve; but once I’d got used used to it, it was very powerful. In fact, the 1997 release (3.7.2, the first really stable one) was so good that it’s still adequate for almost all my guitar needs. The exceptions are printing in colour (for fugues, and other stuff with more than two melody-lines per stave); and easy tab.

But I gather that Sibelius is quicker to learn.

quote:

Paco Serrano concidered my father's hand written scores as the very best scores in existence and is one of few owning copies of most of my father's hand written scores (including the scores of a Paco Serrano book that was never published).

He could publish it himself these days.

(I don’t know what’s going on with pacoserranoflamenco.com; first it disappeared, now it’s all in Japanese.)

REPORT THIS POST AS INAPPROPRIATE | Date Aug. 4 2019 16:33:23

El Burdo

Posts: 632
Joined: Sep. 8 2011

[Deleted]

Post has been moved to the Recycle Bin at Dec. 22 2022 20:00:04

REPORT THIS POST AS INAPPROPRIATE | Date Aug. 4 2019 18:42:58

Escribano

Posts: 6415
Joined: Jul. 6 2003
From: England, living in Italy

RE: Manuscript paper (in reply to Paul Magnussen)

Easier and probably cheaper to print your own

http://www.musictheory.org.uk/pdf/manuscript-10.pdf

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REPORT THIS POST AS INAPPROPRIATE | Date Aug. 4 2019 20:18:14

Paul Magnussen

Posts: 1805
Joined: Nov. 8 2010
From: London (living in the Bay Area)

RE: Manuscript paper (in reply to Escribano)

quote:

Easier and probably cheaper to print your own

That’s only 5-line paper for staff notation; lutesoc’s is, as I said, 6-line for tab.

REPORT THIS POST AS INAPPROPRIATE | Date Aug. 4 2019 20:26:03

Paul Magnussen

Posts: 1805
Joined: Nov. 8 2010
From: London (living in the Bay Area)

RE: Manuscript paper (in reply to El Burdo)

quote:

authors of Sibelius have written a new application (Dorico) supported by Steinberg that is destined to be the market leader for sure.

The reviews so far on Amazon seem to bear you out. Two questions:

1) Can it import Finale files? and
2) Can it do tab?

I looked at the Dorico site, but the answers weren’t obvious.

REPORT THIS POST AS INAPPROPRIATE | Date Aug. 4 2019 20:30:43

Escribano

Posts: 6415
Joined: Jul. 6 2003
From: England, living in Italy

RE: Manuscript paper (in reply to Paul Magnussen)

quote:

lutesoc’s is, as I said, 6-line for tab.

No, you didn't and I didn't follow your link so apologies.

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REPORT THIS POST AS INAPPROPRIATE | Date Aug. 4 2019 20:36:09

Erik van Goch

Posts: 1787
Joined: Jul. 17 2012
From: Netherlands

RE: Manuscript paper (in reply to Paul Magnussen)

It was indeed finale. As far as the lost webcam recordings are concerned, I made backups but only the ones stored in a map were retrieved, not the ones stored in the imacs Webcam recording list although an expert might be able to track them as well.

When the foro announced the publication of Paco Serrano's latest book various years ago I assumed it was the lesson book he commissioned my father to put into writing many years before but it wasn't. Previously he would also have favored my father to do the encuentro transcriptions but the publisher already had a signed contract for the complete series and could not make an exception for that issue. Paco Serrano"s latest publication was indeed self written although I can clearly spot my father's inovations/influence in everything I like in that publication, not that surprising since in the in between years Paco Serrano took private lessons from my father in the art of writing music and became self supporting in that sence.

One of my fathers inovations is to annotate seguiryas just the way it is played meaning 5 irregular beats. Since that structure and lineup is unknown in classical music annotation he just annotated "siguiryas' in front of the line. At first Paco Pena was highly against that approach since all the famous experts in music annotation told him it should be written in 3/4-6/8 but my father refused to adapt claiming that would be dead wrong and not in line with the compas. A year later Pena was very proud on that decision telling everyone "we do it like that" :-). My father also included elements known in drum annotations. But his best influence is making very clear the musical relation between the notes for instance by writing selected notes a bit smaller showing the various layers of musical importance and adding details without clouding the bigger picture. A good score not only write the notes but also "explains" the music and as such read as a masterclass in interpretation although it can never replace actual knowledge in how to play that specific kind of music.

One good thing of my father's transcriptions is that you can see how rhe notes relate to the beat instandly. So when a note starts on the second half of a beat and continues in the next beat he will write that note twice connected with a binding so you can see instandly it is a cyncopated note. Way to many people would annotate it as just 1 individual note with the matching length. If a whole series of cyncopated notes is written like that (as individual notes only showing the relative length but not where to drop it into the beat) you might have to go back many lines to find out they are supposed to be played in between the beats rather then on the beat. The software I bought did not even support splitting a note in order to devide it over various beats but would automatically "correct" me by calculating the total length of my connected notes and make it an individual note with that total length corrupting compass clearaty in the process. I see that in many publications.

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REPORT THIS POST AS INAPPROPRIATE | Date Aug. 4 2019 22:09:51

Paul Magnussen

Posts: 1805
Joined: Nov. 8 2010
From: London (living in the Bay Area)

RE: Manuscript paper (in reply to Escribano)

quote:

No, you didn't

Implicit in “free tab PDFs”, surely?

REPORT THIS POST AS INAPPROPRIATE | Date Aug. 4 2019 22:29:20

Erik van Goch

Posts: 1787
Joined: Jul. 17 2012
From: Netherlands

RE: Manuscript paper (in reply to Paul Magnussen)

quote:

ORIGINAL: Paul Magnussen
Implicit in “free tab PDFs”, surely?

As a child my autodidact father actually invented the tab system himself using standard 5 line music sheets (by writing the tabs inbetween the lines he got himself 6 rows for 6 string).Later in life he discovered he wasn't the first one to invent the tab system and when he specialized in early music he encountered and mastered a wide variaty of tab systems used in Europe over time to annotate the early music written for the guitars 4 and 5 string predecessors. If I'm not mistaken some of those old tab systems used to write the tabs in between the lines as well :-).

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REPORT THIS POST AS INAPPROPRIATE | Date Aug. 5 2019 8:47:03

El Burdo

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Joined: Sep. 8 2011

[Deleted]

Post has been moved to the Recycle Bin at Dec. 22 2022 15:48:56

REPORT THIS POST AS INAPPROPRIATE | Date Aug. 6 2019 15:07:09

mark indigo

Posts: 3625
Joined: Dec. 5 2007

RE: Manuscript paper (in reply to Paul Magnussen)

quote:

Does anyone use manuscript paper to write down Flamenco any more

When I started reading to this point I thought "of course not, obsolete technology, just use audio recordings...." This is something I've thought about before, that written notation was invented to store music over time and communicate it over distances before audio recordings were invented. If musicians had had audio recording back then, maybe no-one would have bothered inventing notation....

I used to use tabs, and tried to learn notation, mainly because I didn't think my ears were any good, and because I couldn't work out the notes from recordings at speed. By working on my ears over time, and with software to slow down and loop recordings I don't use tabs anymore. It is no quicker to memorise a transcription than it is to memorise a recording, but memorising the recording creates much stronger memories, and with all the nuances of the recorded sound that are very difficult or impossible to notate.

I'm not aware of any flamenco guitarist writing or publishing their compositions, and all transcriptions of their recordings are therefore interpretations (my understanding of western classical music is that the opposite is the case - the composer writes their intention in the score and the musician interprets it in performance).

By coincidence I have just finished a book about jazz called "the imperfect art" and the following quote struck me:

"...all art from an aural/oral tradition reveals its rigours in ways different from notated/written arts. The absence of a permanent document, whether musical score or printed word, does not indicate that the mental processes involved in the creative act are any less evident in improvised art than in composed art. Improvisation merely changed the time frame of what takes place: it is spontaneous composition. The identity of composer and performer allows this act to take place without the mediation of systems of notation. In fact, such settings call into question Western culture's veneration of the written document, when the creative act itsefl seems to be more central to our appreciation of art. As jazz pianist Erroll Garner once put it: "No one can hear you read music.""

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REPORT THIS POST AS INAPPROPRIATE | Date Aug. 8 2019 16:19:02

joselito_fletan

Posts: 187
Joined: Jan. 24 2017

RE: Manuscript paper (in reply to Paul Magnussen)

A gent on youtube who is a professional composer makes some great videos about sheet music software. Found it quite insightful. His videos might be a bit long but he does go into detail. Had a good laugh with his take on Sibelius. Link is below

I struggle with most software, have been mucking around with different tools, for my purpose, code based libraries (ie. lillypond) is where I see that something actually get's done. That being said I only write out basic stuff for now.

REPORT THIS POST AS INAPPROPRIATE | Date Aug. 8 2019 18:19:54