The Score page. Paragraphs in this page are: Introduction Western score New notation methods Introduction Living in the modern age, it seems difficult to imagine how it would be to lack the technical achievements that are part of our everyday life. Nevertheless, music creating and hearing before 1900 was quite different than today. Two major achievements were introduced that extend a music piece, mainly in two ways. Range - Duration Natural music playing is limited to the room, hall or stage if played indoors, or a logical distance if played outdoors. When it stops, it ceises to exist and it has to be played again. The Radio cancelled the range limit. Now, the range can be instantaneously worldwide, even when using the old Long Waves method. The Recording cancelled the duration limit. Now, music can be "frozen" and a single performance can be heard many times after the actual playing. Of course, both innovations compromised quality for many years, but today's technology minimizes this issue almost to zero. While we take these luxuries for granted, they didn't exist for the majority of human history. The pre-20th century person that wanted to hear music, had either to play it in a musical instrument at home or get out and reach the place that music is actually played. Music could survive time only when written down. Instead of music to travel far, written music did. That's what we call Score: The Score is Music written in a specific symbolic method widely known. The score has to symbolise time, tones and instruments, and optionally lyrics or chords if needed. Western Score We are going to see how Western Music is written. First of all, Time is based on the parameters that we know from The Time page: Time measurement tempo note duration. The measures are distinguished as bars and the barlines separate these bars. In-time sound absence is marked as a rest that follows the same rules as the note duration. Second, tones and instruments are represented as notes inside a staff and are relevant to a clef. The staff is a 5-line grid. The greek word is "pentagrammo". The notes can be placed on or between the staff lines. The clef marks the acoustic range that is most practical for the instrument type. The F clef is for the bass range, the G clef is for the tremble range and for practical as well as tradition reasons there are plenty of C clefs, useful for voices and certain instruments. Even symbolic, the Western Score represents tones-instruments vertically and time horizontally. The "C" symbol next to the G clef means measurement of 4/4. The triplets mean literally: "three taking the time that two would take". So, a half triplet equals two halfs, a quarter triplet equals two quarters, therefore a half. While it takes 4 quarters per whole, it takes 6 of them, all triplets. This way, we can succesfully dicide to three instead of only to two, all of our durations. A duration dotted means extended to the half of it. Double dotted means extended to the half and to the half of the half. Bars 1 and 2 are the same. Same for 3-4 and 5-6 Notice how the "dotted" version is more "compact" therefore quicker to read. Bars 7 and 8 present a tie that goes "over the bar". The middle C in various clefs is a perfect example to see the various clef practical ranges. Middle C in the G clef is "low", so the G clef is practical for higher notes. Middle C in the F clef is "high", so the F clef is practical for lower notes. When exceeding the lines of the staff, the notes have to be written on, below or above auxiliary lines. The first 3 bars show only articulations. The next bars show expressions as well as articulations. The slur defines phraze connection as well as the method for instruments to achieve it: in violins this would be a single bow direction, in woodwind and brass it would indicate continuous breath. Notice the dynamics expressions. The semicircle with a dot is the well known "fermata". It instructs to "stop" time for a while. The diagonal line means "portamento": an "analog" method for moving the melody to another pitch. New notation methods will be online in time.