Why do we need music notation?
Music is sound and sound is ephemeral! In the Middle Ages, a minstrel or troubadour played a ballad, and it was beautiful but when he was done, it was gone. The earliest form of music notation was found in what is now Iraq on a cuneiform dating to about 2000 BC, so musicians have been struggling with this for a long time! The modern system of staff notation did not arise until the 14th Century. The standard system of music notation is based on a five line staff with notes that indicate, at a minimum, the pitch and duration of each note. By the time of Bach (1685 - 1750), notation on sheet music was essentially as it is today. A person who can read sheet music can recreate the composer's music without having to know what it is supposed to sound like, and can play in concert pitch with other musicians. With a few obscure exceptions such as Chinese numeric notation and lute tablature, other systems, such as ocarina tabs or ocarina instructional methods based on numeric notation, cannot convey all the information that sheet music does, so it is well worth the effort for every musician to learn to read sheet music. Traditionally sheet music was written by hand on staff paper, but composers now usually choose computer software including many commercial (and expensive!) programs such as Finale, or the free open source program MuseScore, to create sheet music. Sheet music can then be distributed in print or as PDF files. The shortcoming of sheet music in this form is that it cannot be easily manipulated without the computer file from which it was created.
Music is sound and sound is ephemeral! In the Middle Ages, a minstrel or troubadour played a ballad, and it was beautiful but when he was done, it was gone. The earliest form of music notation was found in what is now Iraq on a cuneiform dating to about 2000 BC, so musicians have been struggling with this for a long time! The modern system of staff notation did not arise until the 14th Century. The standard system of music notation is based on a five line staff with notes that indicate, at a minimum, the pitch and duration of each note. By the time of Bach (1685 - 1750), notation on sheet music was essentially as it is today. A person who can read sheet music can recreate the composer's music without having to know what it is supposed to sound like, and can play in concert pitch with other musicians. With a few obscure exceptions such as Chinese numeric notation and lute tablature, other systems, such as ocarina tabs or ocarina instructional methods based on numeric notation, cannot convey all the information that sheet music does, so it is well worth the effort for every musician to learn to read sheet music. Traditionally sheet music was written by hand on staff paper, but composers now usually choose computer software including many commercial (and expensive!) programs such as Finale, or the free open source program MuseScore, to create sheet music. Sheet music can then be distributed in print or as PDF files. The shortcoming of sheet music in this form is that it cannot be easily manipulated without the computer file from which it was created.
