Customer Reviews

Music Notation (Crescendo Book)

5 star:		(11)
4 star:		(4)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(2)
1 star:		(3)

 

 

I had two courses with Prof. Read in the mid-1960's, and of course his notation book was required for both.

He was everything the negative reviewers say: pretentious, overbearing, and condescending. He was also a fantastic teacher, meticulous and extremely demanding.

In those days, remember, there were no desktop computers and software to write and print music. Everything, even printed scores, was hand-written and -engraved. Part of the music school experience was learning to write manuscript correctly, legibly and uniformly. In this Prof. Read and his book were indispensable.

Interestingly, in this age when textbook prices are rising faster than the price of gasoline, this edition of Prof. Read's book is *half* the price of the original trade paperback that i bought almost forty years ago.

Are there better books now? Probably. And in this computer age, there's a question whether books like this are even necessary. But this is a classic of its kind, and should be on every music student's, composer's, arranger's and copyist's (if ther are any left) desk.
efg

This book covers everything you need to know about traditional music notation. It will serve as an excellent reference. Though the book might take some time to get through, it is definitely worth reading in its entirety at least once if you plan to write or arrange music of any kind.

A number of reviewers have recomended the "Norton Manual of Music Notation" instead of this book. I would suggest it in addition to this book as they cover different topics. This book is about the meaning and history of notation. The Norton Manual is a practical guide to writing out music by hand.

My main composition professor at university was (and still is) a stickler for good, precise, consistent, and clear notation. He should know; besides his own scores (beautifully done, even though filled with many difficult and novel notations), he's also worked on the side for the last thirty years making clean beautiful copies of scores and parts for others. This book was what he insisted we all learn from, and is still considered as his own primary reference today. There aren't many questions of standard usage it doesn't cover (both current and historical), and it distills many of the more unusual indications that began to be used in contemporary music. Each composer will find their own usage and innovation, but thorough study of this book will ensure that a real, solid foundation of the fundamentals of notational clarity will be at their command for whatever they want to do.

This amazingly thorough book covers every problem, concern or question that can ever come up in a musician's mind. Whether you are a performer, composer, arranger, or just interested in music notation, this book is perfect for reference.

After a brief history of music notation's development through the Middle Ages, Mr. Read systematically examines every part of notation, giving plenty of examples and also providing new innovations in that area. Every chapter is well organized, and the reference tables are a particularly helpful resource.

Being a young composer, I found this book extremely valuable for providing me with the knowledge that, although essential to all musical fields, is rarely taught in any manner. A must buy for all musicians.

I have had this book on my reference shelf for over twenty years. While it hasn't answered every question I've ever had about music notation, it has always at least pointed me in the right direction. Anyone interested in putting music on paper should own this book--and read it.

(I also think that this book will most certainly outlast--"Pentatonic Scales for the Jazz-Rock Keyboardist" by Jeff Burns. At least Mr. Read has something to be pretentious about.)

As others have said, this book is extremely extensive. It covers just about every notational circumstance (available up to the mid sixties that is) in great detail. This is my number one reccommendation for a notation book.

However, the section on Jazz is absolutely horrible, and offensive. Not only does it contain numerous flaws, it is missing a ton of stuff that the Jazz composer needs to notate. Also, it is offensive in that he refers to most Jazz music as "not serious." The book would be almost perfect if they would just leave the Jazz section out altogether. He apparently did not take very much time researching Jazz compositions (I don't think he every looked at one!) and did not put an importance on that chapter.

I realize that music is a far broader field than one person can encompass. But I also realize that there are plenty of people who are well-versed in all fields of music who would be glad to help a person who is writing a book on the subject. Read obviously did not consult anybody.

Read could not have thought very much of recorder consort music. Otherwise, he would have given the subject more than the cursory glance on pages 339-340. He also could not have played in a recorder consort. Otherwise, he would know that the tenor sounds as written and the bass sounds an octave higher than written, contrary to the misinformation which he gave us.

The discussion on string instruments isn't razor sharp either. The greatest blooper is on page 387, where we see a sample of fingered harmonics at the fifth. This would require an unrealistically wide stretch, so nothing like this would appear even in solo music. Any violinist consulted by Read would have caught this mistake in a jiffy.

Now I see that Joel Fass and Joe Lewis have similar comments on the chapter on jazz. Do mistakes of this sort run through the entire book?

I don't know very much about woodwinds and brasses. If Read misrepresented the recorder family, the string family, and jazz instruments so badly, can I rely on what Read told us about woodwinds and brasses?

Most orchestration books begin with a list of musicians of different specialties whom the author had consulted. Why doesn't this book? efgoldman tells us that Dr. Read was "pretentious, overbearing, and condescending." That could be the reason.

Not for the newbie. Not because it's hard to read--it's not. But when you have the basics of music notation well in hand, there are a host of detail questions about getting those little nits right. For example, if you have a phrase where the last two notes are tied, and you want to slur the phrase, does the right end of the slur go over the FIRST tied note or over the SECOND? And if you have 13 notes to a quarter note, do you notate those as 16ths or 32nds? Questions like these are far from academic--in a commercial performance situation (e.g. studio) ease-of-reading because your score is consistent with standard notation practice translates directly into fewer reading errors = save $$$. At any rate, I keep just a handful of reference books in ready reach by my music workstation, and Read is one of them.

As a free-standing piece of work to someone unfamiliar with the technical mastery it takes just to notate creative music, this text may seem ineffective. However, to the serious, grounded composer looking to martial the skills of not just any given solo instrument but also the extended techniques of all the major instrument families, it is an absolute gem.

This is one of the most informative and INTERESTING books I've ever read concerning the subject of musical notation. It goes into the history of notation and shows the evolution of how it began to where it is now, and where it is going including newer experimental notational methods. I won't go into detail as previous reviewers have done a great job of that, but even if you never write a single note of music, there is much to be gained by reading this book. What I like most is the critical detail of EXACT procedure when notating music by hand. Computerized music notation programs do all the notating details for you and the composer who relies solely on these programs for musical notation is not understanding what it is that they are doing. This book clearly explains, using plain English, how to go about the task of hand-writing music with many, many examples and even tests to see if you understand what you are learning. I have a degree in Music and I have learned more from this book about music notation than I ever did in music school.

I can't say enough good things about this book and it is my favorite music notation book so far. I have several others.