Lesson video

Hi, my name's Mr. Pate, and welcome to this lesson on score and annotation considerations from the unit composing to a brief extending ideas.

By the end of this lesson, you'll be able to present your composition clearly and accurately, ensuring all markings and annotations are easy to follow and links to your brief.

Some of the key words we'll be using in today's lesson are score, this is a written representation of music including notes, rhythms, dynamics, articulation, and more.

The layout of a score is the way that a notated score is organized and presented, including things like spacing, bar numbers, and instrument labels, and annotations are written explanations of why a musical decision was made.

In this lesson, we'll start by looking at communicating musical ideas clearly, and then we'll spend some time finalizing and evidencing musical decisions.

Let's start by looking at how we can communicate our musical ideas clearly.

Once you've finished your composition, you'll have a recording alongside a score or a commentary.

The recording that you make should accurately represent your finished piece, while the score or commentary should clearly communicate your musical intentions, allowing the listener to follow and understand your decisions.

It's important to remember that when the examiner hears your final composition to market, they won't have been present during the process of discussions and thought processes around why you are gonna compose this piece in this particular way.

So the combination of your recording and your score or commentary should give them a really clear picture of all the musical decisions you've made along the way to create your final piece.

If you're producing a musical score, then it needs to be clear and easy to understand.

You'll need to make sure that you include an engaging title, tempo marking, instrument labels, and bar numbers.

You'll need to put dynamics, articulation, and phrasing marks correctly on the score and consistently throughout.

You'll need to make sure that the layout is clear and the score is really easy to read at a glance and ask yourself as you go through, would a performer unfamiliar with your piece easily be able to pick it up and follow it?

That's a common thing with scores is a musician should be able to pick it up and accurately reproduce what this sounds like or what you feel this piece should sound like.

So have you included enough information for them to play it in the way that you want it to sound.

Here's an example.

Have a look at this score, and I'd like you to think what improvements could be made to make it clearer and easier to understand?

Pause the video now and consider how could you improve this score?

So, now you've spent some time having a look.

How would you improve this score?

Here's some examples.

The title should be engaging and suitable for your brief.

"My song 1" is not a particularly engaging, suitable title.

Something which evokes the mood that you are going for with your piece or perhaps reflects the theme of the brief would be much more appropriate, and it gives the examiner a really good starting point to know what feel are you going for?

What's the vision for this piece of music?

You should add the composer's name.

You're the composer of this piece, so make sure you credit yourself.

You need to ensure that bar numbers and instrument names appear at the start of each line.

We can see on this score that we've got violin and piano-labeled at the top, but then the violin isn't labeled for the rest of the score.

You can see that on the second line, it's labeled bar six, but this bar number's disappeared from the bottom line of music.

So having consistent bar numbers and instrument names makes it look professional and makes it easier to read.

You also need to make sure that dynamics are consistently placed and only used when needed.

Some of these dynamic markings are placed in different places.

Some of them are below the staff, some of them are above it.

Make these consistent and make sure that they look neat on the page and are only used when needed.

If you've got a marking of mf coming quite soon after another marking of mf, you probably didn't need to have that second marking, so only use the markings when something changes.

The note should be spaced carefully, leaving room for the dynamic and articulation markings.

We can see on this score that the second line has two quite widely spaced bars, whereas on the third line, there are six bars packed tightly together.

On your score writing software.

There will be tools for the layout and you can change usually the way that the bars are represented on the page.

So having them really spaced out and then really squashed together isn't the clearest way to show these bars of music.

You can see on the bottom line that some of the dynamic markings have been combined together.

There's a trill and a crescendo overlapping each other, and some of the phrase markings aren't written correctly as well.

Sometimes they're overlapping with the tops of the stems of the notes, and the last one's actually going off the page towards the next bar in the score.

Here's an improved version of this score where everything looks a lot clearer.

You can see we've got nice clear title, "Afternoon in Bloom", which really reflects the theme of the piece, and we've got Izzy, the composer's name.

The instruments are labeled consistently throughout, and the bar numbers are labeled too.

The dynamics are placed consistently with the crescendos always below the stave in this case.

All the bars are spaced much more evenly.

You can see on line two there, and there are four bars per line instead of two on the previous space, which means that everything's spaced much more evenly across the whole piece.

The phrase markings are clearer and unnecessary dynamics have been removed.

Some examples will ask for a commentary, annotated DAW or Digital Audio Workstation screenshots, or both, alongside or instead of a score.

The goal of the commentary or the annotated screenshots is the same as the score.

It's to make your musical intentions clear and your piece really nice and easy to follow.

Your commentary and screenshots should draw attention to key features of the piece that may not be obvious from the audio alone, and explain the reasoning behind your musical decisions in relation to your brief.

So it's important to think, when I listen to the final recording of my piece, are there any musical decisions I've made that aren't completely clear just from the audio alone?

Is there some features within the DAW that I've used that I want to highlight, or particular parts of the piece that I want to make sure the examiner spots that they may not notice from just the audio alone.

A commentary then might include a description of the structure of the piece, might include lyrics and chord symbols.

It might include an explanation of key musical features of the piece, like the key signature, what chord progressions are used, other musical devices such as use of a sequence or a pedal note, particularly if these are things that are mentioned within the brief itself.

It might include explanation of expressive decisions such as why certain dynamic markings were chosen, and if you're using a DAW, it might include details of specific decisions that you made within that software, like use of effects.

I used a reverb on this track, use of automation.

The volume increases here using automation or varied velocities.

I changed the velocities of the notes of this section to make them accented.

Finally, you might include an explanation of how your piece suits the brief.

These are all things that the examiner might not spot straight away just from listening to your piece, so it's worth including this extra information to make sure they fully understand the musical decisions that you've made.

Aisha has written a song for voice and piano.

It was recorded live and doesn't have a score.

She's going to write a commentary.

Which of these should she not include in her commentary?

A, lyrics and chords.

B, an explanation of how the themes of the compositions suit the chosen brief.

C, DAW screenshots or D, a breakdown of the structure of the song.

The answer is C.

She doesn't need to include DAW screenshots if she hasn't used it for this project, but the other things would be really useful information for the examiner to name.

Jun is producing some annotated DAW screenshots for his film music composition about undersea explorers.

Are there any improvements that you can suggest to the first screenshot of his project?

What other information would it be useful to include with his screenshots?

Here's the first screenshot of Jun's project.

Pause this video now and consider how could this screenshot be improved and what other information should he include to make sure that everything about his project is really clear for the examiner to understand.

So now you've spent some time considering how to improve this screenshot.

What did you think?

Izzy says, "Jun should consider how his DAW session is labeled and organized.

Instead of the first track being called "track one", he could label it "synthesizer melody" for clarity.

Lucas says, "Jun's commentary should contain screenshots of DAW specific features that may not be obvious from the audio, like use of effects or automation.

You can't see those features from the previous screenshots, so additional screenshots may be needed there.

Andeep says, "Jun's commentary should contain a description of what would be happening in the film clip about underwater explorers and how this links to the structure of his composition.

" It's important for a piece that is referencing a film to describe what would be happening in that film clip as this really influences the musical decisions that you've made.

Now let's look at finalizing and evidencing musical decisions.

When you've completed your composition, you will need to produce a recording, score, and or commentary for your piece.

Make sure that you check the exam board's requirements for this because each exam board will have slightly different requirements.

Your score or commentary should make your composition easy to follow.

It should highlight key musical features and explain your musical decisions in relation to your chosen brief.

Which of the following do you think should always be included at the start of a score?

A, a list of all the notes used in the piece.

B, a title, tempo marking and instrument labels, or C, a written description of the brief.

The answer is B.

You should always include an engaging title, tempo marking, and instrument labels at the start of a score.

Which of the following best describes the purpose of a composition commentary?

A, to explain what the piece is called and how long it is.

B, to rewrite that score in written form or C, to explain the musical decisions and link them to the brief.

The answer is C.

The purpose of a composition commentary is to explain the musical decisions you've made and link them to the brief.

Now it's over to you.

Spend the rest of this lesson producing a recording and final score and or commentary depending on your exam board requirements for your composition.

Make sure that it's clear and easy to understand and that it explains your musical intentions effectively.

Consider how you can make your score or commentary easy to follow for someone listening for the first time, and it's great to try and put yourself in that mindset.

Imagine I'm hearing my piece for the first time.

What information would I need on my score or commentary to be able to follow it really clearly?

Pause the video now and spend some time producing your final recording, your score and or commentary.

Now you've spent some time finalizing your recording and score or commentary.

How effective do you think your final score or commentary is?

Sam says, "I explained in detail how my composition meets the brief.

My score is clearly spaced and uncluttered, and I've included expressive markings throughout to communicate the character of the piece.

" Laura says, "I included screenshots highlighting the structure of my piece in the DAW.

I also added separate screenshots showing my use of automation and effects.

I gave my composition an expressive title.

" These are all great features of a good score or commentary.

In today's lesson, we've learned that the layouts and markings on a score should be consistent and easy to follow.

Annotation should explain why musical decisions were made and be linked to your brief.

Named tracks, varied velocities, and visible automation communicate your musical intentions clearly if you're using DAW screenshots, and a finished composition should make your musical intentions easy for someone else to follow.

Well-done for your hard work producing your final recording and score or commentary for your brief composition.

It's been a pleasure working through this project with you on this unit, and I will see you again in a future unit.