Behind the Editor’s Desk

There are a number of ways to integrate music notation into text. See, you can do this:

Best practice, the text is set in a text-editing program, such as Word or Word Perfect. These programs are optimized for issues related to text, with features such as spell-check, text find/replace, and easy ways to edit the text’s font, style, and so on. For informal final products, such as exercises for students, a good word processing program might be all you need.

For more formal publications (books, ads, coffee mugs, etc.), you might eventually import your text into desktop publishing software, such as InDesign or Quark. These give much more control over placement. For Web use, you might use a Web design program. This blog is created using WordPress. But I always start my writing in Word, just because it’s optimized for editing text.

Then, you have to get the notation in a form where it can be imported into the software that will eventually house all the content. All these programs have ways to import graphic files. In Word, you can choose Insert > Picture > From File. Some programs use other terminology, such as Place or Set (even Browse), accessed from a menu called something like File or Import.

The notation itself has to be a graphical file: EPS, TIFF, PDF, JPG, etc. The different file formats have different strengths and limitations. EPSs provide best quality, but there are often font compatibility issues with them, which is an issue if multiple people are working with the file. TIFFs are very portable and predictable, but they distort if you change their size, and they are much larger files than EPSs. Not all formats are compatible with all software.

Anyhow, notation must somehow be converted into one of those graphical formats. Handwritten notation scan be scanned. Better, though, is to generate notation with dedicated notation software, such as Finale, and then render it as a graphic.

Finale has a Graphics tool that lets you define a notation region (drag a marquee box around what you want your graphic to be) and then “export” it from Finale (Graphics > Export Selection) to your hard drive. Then, that exported file can be imported into Word, InDesign, or whatever.

You could also use a screen capture program to grab your graphic. The Mac OS has a handy shortcut: Command-Shift-4, then drag. This lets you take a screen shot of part of your screen. I do that for this blog, mostly because it is very quick. The print quality isn’t so great (it’s a low res jpg), but it is handy for this relatively informal purpose, particularly because it is intended to be displayed on a computer screen.

Once you can integrate notation and text, you can write books, articles, classroom assignments, and much more. If you are writing for a publisher, discuss with them what the best delivery format will be, and if they have any file organization parameters. I’ll discuss some of the Berklee Press preferences for file organization in a future post.

Enrollment is now open for the next semester of my Finale course, which begins January 7, 2008.

“Music Notation with Finale” is a 12-week course available through Berkleemusic, the continuing ed division of Berklee College. It is required for various certificate programs and also an elective. In twelve weeks, students become extremely proficient at creating professional-quality notation, using Finale. I’m proud to report that some of my former students are now working as professional engravers. In fact, one of them just contacted me yesterday, in a panic! But it’s for everyone, and teachers, performing musicians, church choir directors, composers, songwriters, and many other types of musician have found it extremely useful.

There are some new videos. I just beefed up the drum notation lesson, including adding some unique strategies for entering drum notation without a MIDI keyboard. I’m also covering drum mapping in more depth, these days, now that I’ve given up on the PAS standard taking over the world. Much of this is actually in response to a request from the online arranging department. Happy to oblige; we’re all about real-world relevance, over here! I also discuss how to do cue notation (such as “kicks over time”) in greater depth. I used to think that the Ossia tool was the way to do this, but I’ve recently changed my mind, and now teach a better method.

Here’s some more info about this course.

Here’s a marketing piece we did about it a while ago. (Gosh, it’s five years old! Have we really been teaching music online for five years?!)

The same essential body of knowledge can be taught via books or online courses. At Berklee, the book-publishing arm (Berklee Press) and the online school (Berkleemusic) are organized under the same division, Berklee Media. Until recently, we even shared staff, and even now, there is much overlap between who is writing books and who is developing online courses. My office is right next to that of Debbie Cavalier, the Dean of Continuing Education, and we constantly send potential authors back and forth to each other. Many authors (Dave Kusek, Jimmy Kachulis, Dan Thompson, Eric Beall, and many, many others) have written both books and online courses on the same material, and they use their books as textbooks for their courses. And sometimes, an author will pitch a concept to one of us or the other, and we’ll say, “This would work better as a book,” or “This would be a great online course.”

From the author’s perspective, the processes of writing each are very similar. They both entail looking at the subject, organizing what topics get presented in what order, and crafting how best to articulate concepts.

But there are differences that anyone developing either one (or both) should keep in mind. By playing to the strengths of each medium, the final products can be optimized for the best user experience.

1. Online courses at Berkleemusic are highly interactive. Students post assignments for review by the instructor and other students. Students ask questions. This is perhaps the richest dimension of the online experience, and high quality courses are designed to facilitate meaningful communication. Interactivity and communication are chief benefits of online courses over books, and they exponentially magnify the learning experience.

2. Integration between media types in online courses can be deeper, more prevalent, and more seamless than in books. Many books have accompanying CDs or even DVDs, but it is relatively cumbersome to switch between reading a book and listening to a CD. Online, it is natural to read a paragraph, take a Flash quiz, and watch a video, all on the same page. The multimedia experience is the other chief educational advantage of online courses.

3. Books can vary in depth and breadth more than the standard 12-week online course format can, and different books have different types of purposes and grandiosity of ambition. A course must always be a deep, substantial hunk of education that significantly raises students’ capabilities and understanding. Books, though, can be more focused, such as Gilson Schachnik’s new Beginning Ear Training (the one with the elephant), which is essentially a set of ear training practice exercises with minimal pedagogical rumination. Or, books can be deep and comprehensive, such as Dan Thompson’s Understanding Audio, which shows how an intimate understanding of the physics of sound can transform your disappointing, lackluster plink-plank-plunk of a guitar sound into a banshee-screaming fire engine of a groove machine. As is Dan’s wont.

Courses conform to schedules, and for that reason, they must have tighter parameters regarding the amount of content they present. Books, though, can have chapters or appendixes that might potentially be relatively advanced or esoteric to some readers. A big chart with tons of detail might work nicely in a book but be awkward in a course. It’s not such a big deal for a reader to skip a chapter in a book, compared to skipping a week of a course.

Beyond the schedule, courses have to conform to other standards, particularly if they are associated with academic institutions such as Berklee. The ones here at Berkleemusic are NEASC accredited, college level courses. This means a number of things, in terms of academic rigor, substantial homework assignments, student assessments, credentials of authors and instructors, and so on. And if they are Berkleemusic courses, it goes without saying that the content must be aligned with that of Berklee College’s standards and scope. A course that’s part of a curriculum has different requirements and parameters than do most books, though certainly textbooks need to similarly be reflective and supportive of exterior factors.

4. Books are portable. You don’t need electricity, and you can read them in bed, on the beach, while seated at your piano, etc. Sure, you might do the same with your laptop, but it’s not as easy. You can give a book to someone else.

5. Reading a computer screen is more taxing than reading a book, and so varying media types are ideally interspersed, in writing online courses. Rather than just screens and screens of endless text, like an online book (which is what lesser online courses do than those we have at Berkleemusic), we enliven the readers’ experience by changing teaching/learning approach often. Good classroom teachers do this too. They lecture for a bit, then write something on the board, then ask a question. So online, text is interspersed with graphics, movies, audio clips, discussions, animations, and so on. This is how we keep students awake. It requires more collaboration between the author and courseware developers, graphics designer, and so on, than books.

In a book, it is fine to have just text or just music notation, though of course, graphics and accompanying recordings are often helpful. It’s generally subtler, though, more along the lines of presenting a concept, then exemplifying it, then perhaps practicing it, and so on, as a means of varying the reader’s perception mechanism. It might all happen in text.

6. The experience of reading and holding a book is more organic than the experience of viewing a computer screen. Readers can read a book at their own paces, without worrying about deadlines and project due dates. They can skip a chapter, read chapters out of order, or practice the same exercises every day for twenty years.

From a user perspective, the online experience is both more intense and more directed than the book-reading experience. The element of timing in a course adds structure to learning, which can inspire a greater flurry of effort from the student/reader. Then, the course ends, and the student and teacher say their good-byes.

Books are forever. A book can sit on your shelf and serve as a reference indefinitely. You might have a question long after you read a book, and so look something up in the index, spending two minutes per year with a book every year for the rest of your life.

7. Online courses are relatively easy to update. A teacher can post “Late breaking news” at any time, during an online course, and therefore add content on the fly, that’s not part of the traditional authoring process. If you are teaching a software program and there’s a new release, you can change your content quickly and easily. A book might become obsolete and appropriately go out of print in the same circumstance.

It’s helpful to have taught material before writing a book about it. This could be in an online course, a live course, a seminar, a private studio, or whatever. Students and other sounding boards help us to refine our ideas and align our pet priorities with real needs. Their questions and challenges are gifts that help us to maintain relevance. But there’s nothing like writing a book to deepen how well we really understand our subject. Writing, and dare I say being edited, gives us the space to articulate our ideas clearly, reworking a sentence or an explanation over and over until it’s rendered clearly. And when we uncover a gap in our understanding, we can go research it. We can read three other books about it, and then write the best explanation ever about how it really should be.

To a great extent, courses are defined by the students participating. For example, in my Finale course, some sections might have more music teachers, others more film composers, others more church choir directors. Everyone asks unique questions to address their personal work (which is the basis for their assignments), and this makes each course a unique journey, with a unique persona.

Courses are optimized to be journeys, rather than persistent references. They are little communities that last for a finite period where participants can potentially change each other’s lives. They are about human interaction as the means of transferring knowledge.

In a book, the author is an expert who takes the stage and rhapsodizes, uninterrupted. In an online course, the instructor says his bit, and then opens the floor to discussion. In courses, the transfer of knowledge is more customized to the reader, and less predictable. In books, subjects can be more deeply articulated.

While the author’s effort is similar in producing either one, the reader’s experience is quite different. Both have their places in the learning process. And writing either one with an eye towards optimizing the user’s experience will always yield the most useful and even transformative results.

A “pickup measure” is a running start to bar 1. Pickup measures contain fewer beats than a complete measure—often just one quarter or eighth note. Essentially, it is “measure 0.”

Measure numbers start after the pickup measure so that there is an intuitive relationship between bar numbers and musical phrases. If you’ve got a 12-bar blues, the first phrase is most intuitively referenced as measures 1 to 4, not 2 to 5. Or, in a 16-bar form, your chorus should start at bar 9, not bar 10. Most popular music is constructed in 4-bar phrases, and it is usually clearer for the measure numbers to support the song form.

In Finale, set a pickup measure via Document > Pickup Measure, and then choose the duration of the pickup measure. This will set the measure numbers correctly so that you don’t have to control it via Measure > Measure Numbers > Edit Regions.

Set a double barline between the pickup measure and bar 1, just to signal to the reader that the first physical bar is actually a pickup measure.

If your pickup note begins off the beat, perhaps on the eighth note at 4+ (subdividing sixteenths 4e+a), it’s helpful to your readers if you also give them an eighth rest, just to clarify that the pickup is off the beat. (Note that the measure number for bar 1 is generally omitted; I’m including it for illustration purposes only.)

Another issue at “measure 0” is whether to have an opening repeat symbol if the whole form repeats. Though you’ll find many examples in the field where this is omitted, best notation practice is to include it. This way, the reader has an immediate indication that the form is going to repeat.

Don’t leave it out, as below. Though you’ll see this done even by smart, caring writers, it’s not as clear as the above example.

In recent Finale versions, the contextual menu for the Repeat tool has made adding repeat symbols so easy. Just Control-click a measure or highlighted measure region, with the Repeat tool active, and choose the symbol you want.

Chord symbols used to indicate “minor” vary. C minor 7 might have three different renderings: Cmin7, Cm7, C–7.

The third of these is best rendered as an “en-dash.”

The possible dashes are:

- [hyphen], used for compound adjectives such as blue-green algae
- [minus sign on numeric keypad] minus symbol, as in -6 (in some fonts, this looks identical to either a hyphen or an N-dash)
– [en-dash], used for symbols (minor chord symbol, sometimes the negative sign), as well as ranges, e.g., A–Z or 315–19
— [em-dash], used to interrupt sentences—like this.

Making a hyphen is easy enough. Just type the hyphen key.

A minus symbol is also easy. Type the dash on the numeric keypad. Whether this looks different than the hyphen and/or en-dash will depend on your font.

To make an en-dash, on Macintosh, type Option-[hyphen]. On a Windows machine, it’s trickier. You need to use ASCII codes. To do this, type Alt, then 0150. You could also cheat and use the Character Map utility, which lets you copy it to the clipboard and then paste it where you will. In Microsoft Word only, you can use CTRL-[minus sign on numeric keypad]. You can also type [space] [hyphen] [space], but then delete the spaces.

To make an em-dash, on Mac, type Option-Shift-[hyphen]. On PC, use Alt-0151. A low tech alternative is to use two hyphens, which is how it’s done on typewriters. Word will convert two hyphens into an em-dash automatically. Or, again, only in Word, type CTRL-Alt-[minus sign on numeric keypad].

Here’s how to set Finale up to accept an en-dash in minor chord symbols.

1. Choose the Chord tool, and select Chords > Manual Input.

2. Click the note you want to add your minor chord, say C–7, and then in the Chord Definition window, type C–7 in the Chord field. You can type the dash as a hyphen or as an en-dash; hyphen is actually easier, as we will set it to automatically replace the hyphen with a proper en-dash.

3. It will ask you if you want to add it to the library. Say “OK.”

4. Click the Edit button next to “Suffix” to open the Suffix Editor.

5. In the field showing the dash, replace the displaying hyphen with an N-dash, by hook or by crook. Even click “Select” to hunt for it.

Now, when you enter C-7 for a chord, it will automatically display as C–7. My Finale course goes into some more depth on this, but at least now you can do it.

I recommend using the en-dash, as the dash of choice, because the hyphen is too easily lost (particularly with A-7) and the em-dash is too big and dorky (C—7).

If you are using the JazzText font for your chord symbols, though, just use the hyphen, as that (problematic) font doesn’t include an en-dash.

By the way, using the dash for minor is purported to have its origins at Berklee. The story goes that people were getting messier and messier with their lowercase m’s until it was just a line. I will confess to hating it at first, feeling that it was a sort of institutionalized laziness, like having class times officially start at ten minutes past the hour. But it’s grown on me over time.

These days, I prefer it to the lowercase m. The reason is that in Finale, if someone uses the JazzText font for chord symbols, the lowercase letters are actually smallcaps—in other words, just little versions of capital letters.

The problem is that another common convention is to use M for major and m for minor. But if lowercase is just a teeny tiny uppercase letter, and particularly if all chords in the chart are minor, it’s impossible for readers to know whether you intend major or minor.

My own personal preference? I like CMaj7 and Cmin7. It’s easy to tell what’s what, and they are of parallel construction. Berklee Press house style, though, is CMaj7 and C–7. They are certainly easy to tell apart. My only concerns with it are that first, the meaning of the dash is not immediately evident to all musicians (i.e., beyond Berklee), and second, so many people don’t know how to make proper en-dashes, and so use hyphens instead, which again, are difficult to read. And it’s like mixing up two different approaches: an abbreviated word and a symbol.

But if you are “in the know,” as you likely are, now that you have finished reading all this, the dash will serve you well.

Consistency, though, is important. For example, don’t have C–7 and Gmin9 in the same piece. Stick with the same symbol throughout the chart.