If you are of a certain generation, you will remember your elementary school music teacher trying to teach her students musical notation. She may have written on the board Do Re Mi Fa Sol La Ti Do and tried to get the students to sing the Major Scale and take melodic adventures around the "sol-fege" chart.
You would have also seen her write the various notes and rhythms on the chalkboard. Particularly fun was watching her use a contraption designed to help her write the staff lines with chalk. (More often than not, it didn't work very well for her, and just made her mad.) But somehow, the students progressed and most became proficient at rudimentary sight-singing and writing simple notation.
The students who found the most joy in music went on to sing in chorus or play instruments in band or orchestra. I am very grateful for my intrepid music teachers who provided such good instruction and helped lay the foundation for my musical endeavors.
All the same, I am so glad to live in the time I do, when musical notation is so much easier to negotiate thanks to modern technology. Before computers, I remember saving up money so that I could afford to send away for 12 stave manuscript paper. (This was important because the regular manuscript paper we could get from the music shop only had 8 or 10 staves, and I needed 12 to write choral music.) Then I had to learn to write very neatly in ink to make copies for my singers. (And use a ruler!) I remember staying up very late trying to get the scores just right before I took them to the mimeograph machine to make a few copies. Time consuming and quite expensive!
That all seems like ancient history. Better than how composers worked in the Baroque through Romantic Periods, but not a lot faster.
Now, I take almost for granted the powerful notation software that lets me write, make corrections, change the layouts, make transpositions, use interesting fonts, and test instrumental sounds almost instantly! I can even print out as many professional-looking copies as I need on the spot and make mp3 demonstration files. All from my computer desktop. Amazing!
That all seems like ancient history. Better than how composers worked in the Baroque through Romantic Periods, but not a lot faster.
Now, I take almost for granted the powerful notation software that lets me write, make corrections, change the layouts, make transpositions, use interesting fonts, and test instrumental sounds almost instantly! I can even print out as many professional-looking copies as I need on the spot and make mp3 demonstration files. All from my computer desktop. Amazing!
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