Twentieth-century music has significantly advanced the role of rhythm. The many variants of rhythmic notation, standard and experimental alike, encountered in contemporary music frequently demand explanation and interpretation. This book catalogs and clarifies the numerous ways of notating syncopation and alternative standard rhythmic figures, new time signatures, irrational rhythmic groupings within regular and irregular meters, experimental metrical concepts and techniques, analogs, and, finally, polymeters. Read compares traditional and present-day methods of delineating the same musical expressions, from fairly simple combinations to extremely complicated patterns.

This book is designed to serve as a practical guide to music handwriting and music-writing procedures.

A detailed critical and historical investigation of the development of musical notation as a powerful system of symbolic communication.

In this comprehensive and definitive survey of current notation procedures, Kurt Stone has brought order to a field traditionally fraught with confusion and idiosyncrasy. He not only describes and recommends new methods for notating modern music, thereby establishing standard procedures for the present and future, but integrates them with traditional practices still in use. The result is a guide to all forms of notation used in serious music today.

This pocket-sized dictionary presents current and correct notation practices in an easy-to-use format. Generously illustrated and concise, this book is essential to any musician looking for a handy reference for the correct notation of music. A most welcome and beneficial source for every musician, whether using a pencil or a computer.

Behind Bars is the indispensable reference book for composers, arrangers, teachers and students of composition, editors, and music processors. In the most thorough and painstakingly researched book to be published since the 1980s, specialist music editor Elaine Gould provides a comprehensive grounding in notational principles. This full eBook version is in fixed-layout format to ensure layout and image quality is consistent with the original hardback edition. Behind Bars covers everything from basic rules, conventions and themes to complex instrumental techniques, empowering the reader to prepare music with total clarity and precision. With the advent of computer technology, it has never been more important for musicians to have ready access to principles of best practice in this dynamic field, and this book will support the endeavours of software users and devotees of hand-copying alike. The author's understanding of, and passion for, her subject has resulted in a book that is not only practical but also compellingly readable. This seminal and all-encompassing guide encourages new standards of excellence and accuracy and, at 704 pages, it is supported by 1,500 music examples of published scores from Bach to Xenakis. This is the full eBook version of the original hardback edition.

An accessible history of how musicians learned to record music discusses the work of five centuries of religious scholars while demonstrating how people developed methods for measuring rhythm, melody and precise pitch, leading to the technological systems of notation in today's world.