Musical Practice and Performance Stack Exchange
Musical Practice and Performance Stack Exchange

Questions tagged [sheet-music]

Musical notation in written or printed form. Questions asking people to find or transcribe (make) sheet music for a particular song are off-topic.

Sheet music, also known as a score, is a printed or sometimes handwritten document representing a piece of music using musical symbols. Typical sheet music consists of a staff (pl. staves) containing musical notes, and a clef establishing the pitch represented by the position of those notes, along with other musical symbols. Often, sheet music also contains information about the composer of the piece, and the piece itself.

The process of reproducing sheet music is called engraving, a historically manual and mechanical process which is now often done with computer software (using a graphical interface, or another notation scheme such as LilyPond).

Please note that questions about transcribing or finding sheet music for a particular song are off-topic since they are rarely useful to future readers.

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What is good software for learning how to sight-read?

I'd like to learn how to sight-read on my own, but practicing the same song over and over again just causes me to memorize it, and filling out worksheets is boring. Is there any good software for learning how to sight-read? I'm envisioning…
BlueRaja - Danny Pflughoeft
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Quickly flip a page of sheet music while playing

This seems like such a silly question, but! When playing the piano, I sometimes struggle to turn the pages of my music without noticeably sacrificing the sound of the piece or making the book / sheets fall. For a complicated piece where there…
Rebecca Chernoff
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How do you draw a quarter rest with a pen/pencil?

It seems to me that the quarter rest we see everywhere was drawn with a calligraphy pen. I don't have one of those - I have a sharpened/mechanical pencil or a ball-point pen. So usually when I try to imitate the shape of a quarter rest, it looks a…
Ricket
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What does a small x-like symbol before a note mean?

I've been playing piano by ear for a long time and now I am trying to learn the first movement of the Moonlight Sonata. I am a little confused about the meaning of a little cross placed right before a note. It seems to cancel a sharp or something,…
Patrick Da Silva
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As a guitarist, how can I learn to sight-read music?

I'm learning guitar right now, mostly from Justin Sandercoe's free online lessons, starting from the beginner's course. He has a lot of good tips for how to practice and drill chords, and scales, but he doesn't have much information on how to learn…
Brian Campbell
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How to interpret half notes combined with thirty-second stems?

I want to play Also Sprach Zarathustra (IMSLP PDF), but there is something I don't understand there. In the first few bars there are 4 half notes beamed in pairs as thirty-second notes. Because the time signature is common time I deduce each of…
iddober
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What do 'vent holes' do on a music stand?

I was looking at music stands and a number of them do not have solid backs, rather, they have holes through them, like shown. Are these just for aesthetic purposes, or do they have a practical purpose?
tarun
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Why do people sometimes write notes as E♯ or C♭?

Instead of writing F or B, sometimes people use E♯ or C♭ to write these notes. Are there any advantages to this notation?
Tung D. Nguyen
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What does this note - B# - mean?

I'm confused as to how I should play the second note below, B#. Does it mean it's C? It is possible? In which case, why is it written like this, and not just C? Sonata quasi una Fantasia, First movement (Moonlight Sonata, Beethoven, OP.27 No 2) --…
laurent
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Rest above a note in a piano piece

I am playing a piece and wondering, what the heck is the rest doing there above the note? The piece is in 3/4 so I see no purpose of the 1/4 rest. I've been googling around but did not find any proper explanation. Most answer says that the piece…
Samuel
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What does it mean when two notes are stuck together?

I mean something like this: I'm guessing it means they're played together but I'm not sure. Also, does the sharp apply to both pitches or just the G?
MaTHStudent
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When to use a dot or a tie in music notation?

Let's say I have the following piece in 4/4, Should it be notated as: or Are there any specific rules? From my previous experience, I believe the second one is the correct notation since it shows all the beats in 4/4, am I correct?
rexcfnghk
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Unknown notation - thick horizontal bars between notes

I haven't the faintest idea of what these bars could mean. They're thick and mostly horizontal with a slight tilt. Some sort of run perhaps? How do you effect the dynamics/notes these bars are referring to? EDIT: For reference, this specific…
Tanaki
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What do the letters D and E above the staff represent here?

A mystery from a musician friend of mine: In the Alpine Symphony by Strauss, the oboe, Eflat clarinet, and bass clarinet/C clarinet have these D's and E's scattered throughout the back half of the piece in the parts and scores. He doesn't think it's…
GotDibbs
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What are the limitations of the ABC notation format?

This question came up in a discussion on Meta, and I thought it might be a good question to ask on the general site. ABC notation is a relatively simple text-based format for writing music scores and sharing them online. It was originally written…
Caleb Hines
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