Writing About Music

For a proper checklist, when you’re trying to approve your CD project, really, you should consult your local mastering engineer. They are the people who have the info on the complete, definitive word on such issues—engineers such as Berklee’s own Jonathan Wyner of M-Works, in Cambridge, MA, who is one of my gurus.

Me, I’m just a hack survivalist, but lately, I’ve found the need to develop my own little checklist. It’s meant to complement what your mastering engineer is doing, not replace it. Mastering engineers are better at this than I am.

So, here’s my own checklist for CD masters—specifically for CDs that accompany books about music. Many of these items have a horrific war story attached to them. If you are the unfortunate recipient of a CD that I had something to do with that doesn’t work due to one of these issues, or something else, please contact me privately about this at jfeist@berklee.edu.

Anyhow, here’s my current list. Let me know if you have other suggestions.

CD Master Checklist

Starting point: CDs should conform to Red Book standard.

Among the things to confirm:

CD:

74 minutes maximum; less is better
99 tracks maximum
1 second or more space between tracks (unless there’s a really good reason not to)
files are WAV or AIFF and not MP3 (iTunes likes to sneak in MP3s)
Works in audio-only CD player; don’t test it only on a computer
CD is labeled with project name and date of CD, what type of CD it is (audio, data, CD-plus, etc.), and whether it is a master or a draft

Content:

Notes on CD match notation in book
Examples are repeated in accordance with book’s notation
Tracks are in the correct order, matching CD Tracks page in the book
Countoffs/clicks are used consistently
No distortion
No pops
No random talking or other extraneous noise, particularly at beginning and end
No long spaces of silence at beginning or end of tracks
Track names are correctly spelled, and rendered just like CD tracks list, if there is one
Volume levels consistent from track to track

An important check to do is to use the >> button on an audio CD player to begin each track. It is possible for the start points to be out of sync, which you’d only notice by doing this, or otherwise starting each track fresh. (The track would not start at the beginning.)

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The term “available tensions” is sometimes tossed around relatively loosely, in jazz parlance. The concept, though, is greatly clarified and made more useful by contextualizing it in terms of functional harmony.

Joe Mulholland, chair of Berklee’s harmony department, was kind enough to sit down with me to discuss the formal definition of available tensions.

Jonathan Feist: What is an available tension?

Joe Mulholland: An available tension is a diatonic note added to a chord, reinforcing that chord’s function while sounding “good” with it.

JF: So you make a distinction between “tensions” and “available tensions.” Not all diatonic 9, 11, and 13 notes are “available?”

Joe: Right. Like, you don’t normally have an 11 on a V chord. Though it is diatonic, it sounds poorly with that chord and interferes with the chord’s function.

For example, if you put the tonic of the key against the V chord, you will get something that is functionally at war with itself. The function of a dominant chord is to provide harmonic tension that is resolved by the sounding of the tonic chord. The dominant chord has the leading tone of the key as well as the 4th degree (11 of the V chord), both of which are unstable notes in the parent scale by virtue of their half-step relationship to the note below or above. If you mix the tonic of the key with that chord, you’ve got the most stable note of the key mixed into this highly unstable chord, and it sounds like you just don’t know where you’re going with it.

Fig. 1. G7 Chord with C (V7 with 11)

JF: The V stops functioning like a dominant chord.

JM: Yes, that tonic note C interferes with the dominant function of the chord, G7. Adding the C gives the feeling that you’ve peaked too early—that you’ve confused the target with the means of getting there.

There’s also a mechanical/acoustical reason why it’s not considered available. If you play the tonic of the key against the dominant chord, such as C against a G7, that minor 9th (C against B) sounds very dissonant.

This is really most evident in the V chord, as I mentioned. But it’s also an issue with the III chord. You might think that on an E minor chord in C major, the note C would work fine, because the E and C are both tonic chords. But that minor 9th relationship comes into play here as well, between the B and the C. Best-case scenario, instead of sounding like an E minor chord with a tension, it sounds instead like an inverted C major 7 chord. It won’t sound like a III chord any more. And if you’re not careful with how you voice it, that dissonant minor 9th will pop out.

Fig. 2. E–7 Chord with C (III–7 with 13)

JF: So, does the word “available” just mean that you can use it?

Joe: It means you can use it freely, with no constraints. On our G7 chord, the 9 and the 13 will let you thicken the sound of your chord easily and effectively. They will sound great with the other notes, while reinforcing that chord’s harmonic function.

Fig. 3. G7 (V7) with 9 and 13

Now, one can imagine a C played against a G7 chord, but just not on a rhythmically strong beat, not in a sustained manner, not in a repeated way. It could be used as part of a melodic line, or a passing line. But it shouldn’t be used as a harmonic addition to the chord.

Fig. 4. Modal use of 11 (C) on V (G7)

The term “available tension” primarily refers to harmonic, vertical processes. If you’re doing something melodic, or horizontal, like passing tones between one chord and the next, as long you don’t accent, sustain, or repeat that note, it will be just subsumed into the flow of the line; but if you add it to the chord as an extension, it will sound very wrong. So, they are not harmonically available.

JF: What would you call a tension that isn’t available?

Joe: It might be an “altered tension.” Or, it might make more sense to analyze it as a melodic note: a passing tone, or a neighbor, or an approach tone, depending on where it exists in the line and what its rhythmic nature is.

JF: So, to be “available” implies a simple diatonic context. If you’re the key of C major, on a C7 chord, b9 wouldn’t be an “available tension.”

Joe: Correct, because Db is not in the key. You might call it an “optional” or “creative” tension, but not “available.” As soon as you do something chromatic like that, other implications occur.

The underlying assumption in the diatonic world is that you’re working within a closed system. That’s the baseline—the default position. Now, of course, a lot of music is not that simple, but that’s the baseline that we come from and return to, when discussing harmony in technical terms.

When you introduce chromaticism, you introduce the possibility that other, non-diatonic outcomes might occur. So, if you put b9 on the V7 of IV chord, the implication to the listener is that a IV minor chord is coming instead. It’s because that tension, the b9 on the dominant chord, mimics the sound of V7(b9) in the minor key.

JF: Exactly what does the word “available” refer to? What makes a note “available?”

Joe: The key signature; these notes that are in the key. Your chromatic alteration to my V chord is not coming from the key. You’ve brought another sonic realm into play. The available notes are those available in the key signature’s parent scale. While you might be able to use a chromatic alteration effectively, it’s not called “available,” even if it sounds good. Again, the note has to be contained in the key signature’s parent scale.

JF: Isn’t it subjective to say that a note sounds “good?”

Joe: Not really, not to Western ears. I mean, you can play the melody in figure 4, but that’s really a modal phrase. In that kind of harmonic context, the G chord isn’t really functioning as a dominant. That style is not about functional harmony, it’s about the sound of the G Mixolydian mode. So, in that melody, the note works because it reinforces the sound of the mode.

But if we take as our framework that we’re in a traditional harmonic context, where V7 creates a strong expectation to resolve to I, then a C in a G7 chord would be working contrary to the chord’s dominant sound. If you violate the rules of available tensions, you will be interfering with the rules of functional harmony. We’re talking about functional, diatonic harmony.

Once you make a creative choice to go outside that system, then you have a lot more wiggle room. At that point, reasonable people can disagree about what sounds good and what doesn’t. But within a functional harmonic context, while violating the rules like that might not make you run screaming, most people would agree that it sounds kind of odd. There’s just something kind of whacky about it. The note is just not congruent with what we’re used to hearing.

JF: So, to try to narrow your definition, an available tension can’t be a semi-tone away from a chord tone?

Joe: That’s a good starting point. Be careful to say minor 9th, rather than semi-tone. If you play just a semi-tone above, it’s not as terrible sounding. It’s not as dissonant to the ear. If it’s a minor 9 away, the dissonance is much more evident, because it doesn’t sound like a cluster. Once it sounds like a cluster, pretty much anything sounds okay. GBCD is a cluster and has its own character. But take that C an octave up, and it really jumps out as being much more dissonant, and more like a wrong note.

Fig. 5. Cluster vs. Open Voicing

The exception to the rule you’re suggesting is that some minor 9ths actually sound okay: on dominant chords, for example. It’s safe to say that on a diatonic major chord (I, IV or V), the minor 9 above the third of the chord doesn’t sound good; C against B in a G7 chord sounds terrible in context. But on a dominant chord, if you go chromatic—go outside the key and add a b9 or b13 to a dominant chord—that will sound okay. Just remember that those notes are not called “available” because they are not in the key. The key doesn’t give you those chords. The tensions are chromatic alterations, not available tensions.

Fig. 6. G7 with b9 and b13

JF: Are people surprised by this definition of available tensions?

Joe: Many people haven’t thought about available tensions in this systematically defined way, but when they do, it seems to help clarify things; they have a better framework for defining the musical situation and making informed choices about what to change or accept.

JF: Without this approach, how do people typically learn what would or would not be an available tension?

Joe: Many people learn this intuitively. And in trying to make their chords sound richer, they might commonly reach for altered tensions right away, and then call those “available tensions” because they sound good. But again, I would call them “altered tensions” instead, to acknowledge that they are taken from outside the diatonic system. And someone narrowly trained might think, that’s not fair! They’re not playing by “the rules,” and yet it sounds so cool, and so fresh. They might go, “Oh man, I didn’t know I was allowed to paint outside the lines! Or jump across the fence for a minute!”

The difficulty with this sort of thing is that it is overly simplistic, and ultimately limiting. If the only thing you know how to do is add a 9th to everything, you’ll get pleasant enough results, but you will never discover the creative challenges you face when having to work around “difficult” notes. Sort of like the pearl in the oyster, right? It’s the irritant that results in the beauty! Within a seven-chord major key system, everyone agrees that if you put an 11 on a V chord, or a b9 on a III chord, it just sounds like it doesn’t work, as well as being acoustically unpleasing. The question is, how will you find a way to circumvent those issues and still make music that has a natural flow.

Thinking about available tensions in this way—that they are diatonic notes that reinforce the functional harmony and sound good—makes them easier to use, and helps us to make more effective and deliberate note choices.

Page turns are so annoying. This goes for books as well as scores and lead sheets. Especially in concert, scores should be structured to minimize the need to turn pages as best we can.

If you’re notating music, you need to plan where page turns will be, and make them as unobtrusive as possible. An ill-conceived page turn can cause notes to be missed or a blip in the tempo: both unforgivable and horrible, in a concert setting. It can kill the music.

Here are some thoughts about facilitating page breaks (one page ends and another begins) and page turns (when you have to physically turn pages).

The ubiquitous black, industrial/school grade music stands are about 20 inches wide. You can squeeze three pages on it, if they are taped together and hanging a bit off the sides. Some piano desks are wider—good for, say, four pages. But a huge ribbon of pages can’t be turned with one hand, if you’re playing. Generally in concert, if pages are to be turned, you’ll likely just have just two pages open at once. Ideally, they should be attached (taped) together so that nothing gets misplaced or rearranged, and be sure to always number pages.

(If you look at my profile picture, you can see my own piano desk, which is obnoxiously tiny. It’s good for only two pages. Actually, it’s not good even for one page! I hope yours has a better design!)

For lead sheets, one page is ideal, two is okay, and three is the maximum you’ll usually see. It’s often helpful to have a full set of lyrics at the end. This can also be a way to make the notation take up less space. Do you really need six verses written into the staff, particularly for a chart used by an instrumentalist? It might be enough to just have the first verse, keep the systems relatively close, and then have the full lyrics at the end.

In a book, if you have music that spans two pages, begin it on a left-hand page, so that you can avoid a page turn. This would seem obvious, but in book design generally, layout artists are used to beginning chapters on right-hand pages, so there is an open door to some confusion here. It’s more important to avoid a page turn during music, so consider adding some text before it (technical insights, composer biography, historical notes, or whatever) or a photo to make this look intentional.

Manipulating measure/system layout is an important part of facilitating page turns. While you should try to keep the number of notes and rests per system about even, forget the rule about having four bars per system. Real life just doesn’t make that possible all the time. It’s more important that notes of the same duration be roughly the space throughout the piece, and that the page count and thus page turns be minimized. An eighth note on one system shouldn’t have a quarter inch of space on one system and an inch of space on another. It’s most intuitive to read if it’s consistent.

It is sometimes possible to arrange measures and pages so that sections (chorus, new movement, coda) begin in conspicuous places, easy to spot. That’s much easier to read than beginning a new section in the middle of a system.

Break pages at points where it’s easiest for the player to be distracted, or forced to put down their instrument and fuss with the paper. Opportunity points for page breaks include ending pages at:

• Empty measures
• Rests on the last beat
• Sustained notes
• One hand free (piano)
• End of a phrase
• Otherwise simple measures that the musician can glance at, without actually having to read

Note that it’s best to end a page at a point of simplicity, rather than begin a new page simply, as in the previous page, the musician has some advance notice that there is a a chance to relax. Otherwise, they’d do a mad scramble only to learn after the page turn that there was actually nothing to worry about.

More pages mean more page breaks, so generally, look for opportunities to reduce the number of pages. One page is easiest to manage; there’s less danger of losing something. Two pages is okay. Three pages is okay, and the maximum that will fit on most music stands. Four pages or more requires deliberate strategy in facilitating page turns.

So, try to keep the number of pages low. You wouldn’t believe how many scores I receive that are two pages long, and page 2 has a single measure of a whole note and a fermata, stretched across the whole page. That’s software talking, not a thinking musician. A single system (called an “orphan”) should be omitted by rearranging the measure layout.

Figure that a standard 8.5 x 11 page can fit up to twelve staves. That’s six systems of piano music, or four systems of piano/vocal score, three systems of SATB choir, or two systems of choir with keyboard. An ensemble score with seven or eight systems might be best oriented sideways (landscape) on the page, rather than the usual vertical orientation (portrait). When you hit nine staves, it’s probably better to keep things vertical.

If you are using notation software, some of the elements you can control to fit more staves and systems on the page include:

• Overall notation size (Resize or Page Layout tools in Finale). You can set this to 85% or so, and it should still be easily readable. But consider the eyesight of your reader.

• Margins around systems, and space between systems. These can each be set independently in Finale. Generally, three staff’s distance is about right between systems. So, if your staff is a quarter inch high, figure 1.5 inches between systems.

• Space between staffs. Two staff’s distance between staffs is about right. If your staff is a quarter inch high, try for half an inch between staves. This may vary depending on your notation; chord symbols, guitar chord diagrams, and lyrics will make your music require more space.

Here’s a quote from perhaps the most startling book proposal cover letter I’ve ever received:

“Dear Managing Editor,

Music is a creative process, so why can’t a book on learning music be as creative. [sic] The books currently out there have no imagination, no passion, so serious, so boring….”

Well, thanks a lot, pal. I’ll try not to take it personally!

He has a point, though. And modesty aside, I think that this applies to other publishers more than it does Berklee Press. So many authors learned their craft from older music theory textbooks that were more formal and teaching in a more didactic style than much of what we’re seeing now, and there is still a sense among some that this is the way textbooks “should” read.

Personally, I think it’s a preference that hinders learning. Something I love about Berklee is that its trappings of academia are generally relatively loose and real, so that we can get down the real business of learning to create music. First groove, than dictionary. Rock ’n’ roll! I hope that spirit is evident in our books.

One of the best courses I ever took was a comparison of counterpoint and harmony textbooks, at New England Conservatory. We gathered up a half dozen or so leading books on each to topic, and compared them, side by side, in terms of how they presented the exact same material.

The differences between them were vast—to the point of being comical. Some authors used convoluted sentences and words a zillion syllables long to present the concepts. Others used much simpler language. Some wrote endless paragraphs, others kept the language short and showed practical examples.

Some were clear and useful, and therefore inspiring. Others were so intimidating that they made one want to give up music entirely. It was easy to like some more than others.

I’ve found, as an editor, that such clarity often comes through revision, and the ability to revise and accept edits comes from a place of humility, security, and a genuine desire to write something useful, rather than to create what is essentially a vanity piece. It’s often counter-intuitive, but even big concepts are generally best expressed with small sentences and common words. This isn’t often how things come out, in first drafts, but it should be the aspiration of all writers, and especially all technical writers. Leave the more arcane words to fiction writers and poets, whose job is to paint pictures, rather than to those of us who are trying to explain the difference between, say, a mode and a scale.

Striving towards clarity doesn’t mean that you have to abandon your authentic voice. In fact, clarity helps to reveal it. It can be helpful to consider the differences between the characteristics you actually want to preserve and those that are really a distraction. If I’m a New Yorker writing about, say, upper-structure triads, it would be pretty silly for me to think that it would be critically important to my style that I use the colorful swear words that come so naturally to me in my harmony text. Better than I aspire towards revealing my subject as clearly as possible, and just have faith that the essence of my soul creeps in somehow, through the lines. It will. It’s more difficult to conceal it than to reveal it.

Humor in writing can be tricky. Some people are naturally funny and entertaining, but when they try to tell a structured joke, it falls flat. Some people are naturally quiet, but then when they write, their inner Robin Williams becomes mysteriously unleashed. And some funny people sit down to write and the opposite happens: they clam up and become dry. I’ve found good luck interviewing such people, and then transcribing their natural way of communicating into the written word. Often, they’ll say, “Now don’t put this in the book, but….” I seldom listen to such advice, and what they say next (often edited!) may give a book its distinctive voice.

Some writers can pull off humor better than others. A number of Berklee Press writers are really funny: Jon Damian (The Guitarist’s Guide to Composing and Improvising, The Chord Factory), Mr. Bonzai (Music Smarts), Michael Farquharson (Writer, Producer, Engineer), and others. Their entertaining-yet-informative books are held dear by many. That said, there seems not to be much evidence that sales are any different for such books compared to other books of similar pedagogical quality in the same genres that are more straight ahead.

Humor can also break things up, in any circumstance, drawing people away from the depth of the material so that they can then return to it refreshed. That said, most of our best-selling books won’t make you giggle even once. What they have going for them, though, is clarity and depth and a genuine desire to present material in a way that’s easy for the reader to absorb.

Often, this means showing rather than telling, as I’m sure your high school writing teacher told you. Or, as Frank Zappa said, “Shut Up ’n Play Yer Guitar.” Even better than a joke, an example similarly serves to give your reader’s brains a rest from one form of communication and shift to another. This aids reading comprehension and learning generally.

In that spirit, here’s an example from my former life as a software interface consultant (mercifully, a brief digression). In 1996, while consulting to a U.S. government agency, I found a window in a software product with this text as its title:

“Create a dump of searchable criteria for purposes of isolating geographical regions that contain specific elements within their core samples.”

It was followed by a list of chemicals. My suggested edit to replace the above sentence? One word:

“Find.”

The project manager, also the writer of the original sentence, was annoyed at me for taking what he perceived as the character out of his writing, and claimed that the scientists who used the database were used to thinking in a certain way—that their culture as intellectuals was such that they really preferred more detailed descriptions of things. I countered that they probably just wanted to find their @!!$& Magnesium.

We field-tested it, though, and he found the results alarming. There were scientists who had been using his database for more than ten years who actually never knew that the page’s functionality existed—didn’t know that such searches were possible, because the language on the screen was so confusing. Tens of thousands of dollars had been spent creating the initial version of that aspect of the tool, but it went unused because of bad writing. Most alarming: the project manger ultimately decided not to change it, because he still wanted the look and feel to be culturally compatible with his user base, and he thought that this was priority. Our tax dollars hard at work….

The sentiment is common, though, among some writers. They are experts in their fields. They want to be formal and exacting in their presentation, and the result is the kind of book our would-be author is complaining about: books that people keep on their shelves in order to feel smug, or buy because they make them safe around an obviously superior intellect, or assign to their students in order to be intimidating, but such books tend to remain only reluctantly read, and unloved, and aren’t really well understood. On the flip side, it’s why The Elements of Style is so beloved, despite some of its wacky preferences: the book is a delightful read, which especially at the time it was published, was rare in a book about grammar.

Personality in writing is generally a subtle thing. It generally has more to do with big-picture ideas and very subtle use of language, more than mechanical issues such as length of sentences or chapter structure. A good editor can help alleviate some of the distractions from writing while preserving the writer’s distinct voice.

Forcing personality into writing can become clumsy and distracting pretty fast, and I recommend that it not be a conscious priority. It’s the topic that really matters most. When writers try to be genuine and clear, their personalities generally shine through—or at least, the aspects of their personalities that our readers find most helpful.

What should you do if your project stinks?

Say to it, “Thank you,” chuck it, and then try again.

It’s okay. Probably, objectively speaking, your first few projects in any genre are going to stink. Maybe, they will have an appealing naïve energy, and maybe your newcomer’s exuberance will give it that certain something. But really, master works are created by people with experience. People with experience have generally created a lot of mediocre work in the process of evolving.

So, expect that your first draft of your first book is almost certainly going to stink. It’s hard to write a book. It’s even hard to write a mediocre book. You learn to improve at writing books by doing it and then getting high quality feedback. It would be perfectly natural to work hard for months or even years on a first draft, and then totally scrap it—even reimagining it afterward, chucking out dozens or even hundreds of hours of work, and then creating something totally different instead.

Hooray for you, if your trash can is full! It means you care more about the end result than about hanging onto every precious word or note that you write. You care more about communication than about profit per minute. We arrive at better drafts by taking hard looks at our worse drafts, and then cheerfully moving forward and rewriting.

The first few songs you write will probably really, really suck. Really, they will, even if you like them. Even if your friends say they are awesome. You probably need to write a whole bunch of sucky songs before a good one will show up. So, get them out of the way now, if you haven’t already. Hurry up and write. Maybe, keep your first few songs or poems or book chapters or paintings secret. Acknowledge that they are in service of the better work you’re going to do in the future.

Improvement is a matter of getting your craft together and making technical decisions that will make your works better, rather than holding onto flawed ideas for personal and sentimental reasons. It’s the difference between articulating universal truth, which captivates everyone, and anecdotal truth, which might be what really happened, but which nobody really cares about. You, dear reader, don’t care that, say, my specific pet kitten died. You only care about how I talk about death and loss generally, so that you can relate it to your own life. In art, it is often better to change “kitten” to “goose,” if the technical requirements (e.g., rhyme scheme) of song or poem or story or blog post demand it, rather than to insist on calling it a kitten, just because it was one. The old gray goose just might have to be dead.

(By the way, an “old” goose is technically one that is older than twelve weeks. Before that age, it is called a “green” goose, even if it is gray. But, I digress.)

The first time you write a song, the inspiration for writing might have come from the loss of your kitten, so you’ll want to keep it in. After song number 20 or so, you’ll be more inclined to call it a goose, to suit the melody. Then, you’ll be getting somewhere. So, if you’re still writing your kitten song, acknowledge that it’s part of the learning curve. Only show it to people whose feedback can help you grow. That might not be the random drunks in your neighborhood bar.

Even though it might have involved a lot of work and money, your first album will stink, too. Maybe your third album or book or exhibition will be your first good one. Maybe your eighth. Almost certainly, not your first. For your sake, I hope that your first one is the worst one you ever do. I hope that your current project is worse than all your future projects. If not, you’re probably doing something wrong in your creative journey. Or, maybe you’re just temporarily derailed. Sometimes when you’re learning something new or exploring a new direction, you’ve got to regress and create some stinkers, even if you’ve done good work in the past. It’s the same thing though, in service to your better work to come.

I hope you find this encouraging, not discouraging. I’m currently working on my first CD of songs, and am trying so hard not to make it stink. But I have to assume that it’s going to be the work of a beginning album-maker, and give myself a break. The fear of it stinking has probably kept me from working on it for a few years. That’s bad. I’m now a few years older, but still have the same number of CDs to my credit (i.e., zero). But one of the revelations I’ve had recently is that it’s much more likely that my third album will be my first good one, so I have to get the first two awful ones out of the way first. C’est la guerre.

So, perhaps a good New Year’s resolution would be to get some stinky work out of the way, so that we can get over the hump and get closer to the better work that’s in our futures. If you’re working on a project that stinks and it is almost certainly a lost cause, try to wrap it up and call it done, so that you can start the better one. Maybe you’ve got ten songs recorded and three of them really stink. Just chuck the worst ones, and release the CD with just the seven best songs. Or, maybe the current draft of your book just isn’t right and you can’t put your finger on why. Try throwing away the current draft and redoing it from scratch. Yes, ouch, but do it. It will almost certainly be better in the future. Maybe the stinky draft helped you get your head in the right place to write the version that will actually be useful to someone. Only publish the good one.

Remember, you are not your work. You’re just a person—an evolving human spirit. Your work is something separate, on a hard drive, or in a file cabinet, or in a pile somewhere. It is your footprints, not your feet. Most drafts stink and should never be made public. But stinky drafts are necessary to the process of creating good work, even if the fabulous final product doesn’t much resemble the horrendous early drafts.

Hopefully, after a point, you’ll arrive at something that the rest of us will find a positive addition to the world. We’ll thank you, when you do. On behalf of your audience, let me say what a pleasure it is to read/hear/see something that’s had all the stinkiness removed from it, so that we can enjoy it. We’ve got enough crap to wade through, so as much as you can save us from having to get through more of it, we thank you.

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When writing about music, it’s natural to include examples, showing what we’re talking about. Copyright law, though, is on the side of whoever created the music, and authors are often surprised at the limitations regarding what they can and cannot publish.

I’m not a lawyer, and this advice shouldn’t be considered official legal advice. Insert your most liberal disclaimer here; this post should be considered practical advice from a reasonably knowledgeable source, but not a lawyer. Got it?

Anyhow, here’s my operating approach.

Chord progressions are not copyrightable. So, you can use the chord changes to any tune, and not worry about infringement.

Otherwise, though, you need permission from the copyright holder to use pretty much anything.

This includes (but is not limited to):

• Melodies
• Lyrics
• Improvised solos
• Recognizable licks, riffs, and bass lines

The length of an excerpt has no bearing; that’s a frequent myth. It can be shorter than four seconds or four measures but still be under copyright.

You need to get permissions before using any of this stuff. Even if you found it for free on the Internet, to publish it legally, you need to find out who holds the copyright (often different than the creative artist), get appropriate permissions, and figure out how to pay them.

This greatly complicates writing books about music. It’s a reason why most songbooks have minimal text. Once the copyrights are paid, there’s no room for author royalties, so whoever transcribed the solos or wrote the charts usually get paid on a “work for hire” basis. Helpful text in songbooks might very well have been provided out of under-compensated altruism, on an author’s part.

It’s also why pedagogical books feature old folk tunes as examples. “Lightly Row” and “Mary Had a Little Lamb” are public domain, so we can use them. Watch out for “Happy Birthday,” though. The lyrics are under copyright.

Not to decline into advertising, but one of the good things about Berklee authors is that they can often generate their own music to use for examples. They sometimes will write music “in the style of” something well known, to illustrate a point. It’s a benefit of having a writer be a well-rounded musician. It’s why in so many of my own blog posts here, I use my “Be Like a Bee” song as an example.

I’m glad that we composers, songwriters, improvisers, and such are legally protected. But it would be nice if there was an easy mechanism for us pedagogical publishers to be able to use hit-song excerpts for educational products. Wouldn’t that be a nice business for someone to start? Figuring out how to get permission for publishers such as, say, Berklee Press to excerpt hit songs in our books while still turning enough of a profit to stay afloat, and continue to fund Berklee College scholarships?

Anyhow, if you write about music, be careful what music you include. Creators (i.e., rights holders) have a legal right to fair compensation, whenever their work is used, and excerpts in books are indeed considered borrowing the work of someone else.

A former student who took my Finale class a few years ago (now working as a professional engraver) recently e-mailed me a question. He wanted to change clefs, time signatures, and key signatures in the middle of a system, but wanted them all to appear to the right of a final barline, as shown, rather than to the left, which is the default. Even tech support claimed it was impossible to put the clef on the right of the barline, but my graphic below suggests otherwise. Any ideas how it was done? Note that all elements shown were created with the appropriate tool (i.e., no cheating by creating clefs and such as expressions). If you’ve taken the first two weeks of my class, you have enough information to do it, though it also requires a sneaky nature.

And just to be all inclusive, if you use Sibelius and would like to chime in, feel free.

Notation isn’t music. It’s a way of writing about music. What’s good about writing out our music, using notation, is that it gets our ideas out of our heads, which makes them both easier to edit and possible to share with others. What’s bad, though, is that it a step between the creative spirit and a usable expression object. Notation is cumbersome. Part of the craft of becoming a musician, of whatever stripe, is to become comfortable enough with notation so that it’s less of a barrier between us and our music. In my experience, this is a lifelong quest.

Analogous struggles exist in other forms of expression. Writers struggle with words, not to mention typing. Photographers struggle with lighting, aperture settings, shutter speed, and so on. I’m going to give you some examples of exercises borrowed and adapted from various genres of art, in hopes that it will help the process become easier, whatever you do.

By the way, this post comes in response to a reflection by my friend Menina, who is a sculptor living in Italy. She was invited on short notice to participate in an exhibition of her work, and in considering what additional work should be created for it, was pondering the question of quality vs. quantity. Of course, it’s the high quality work that cuts through, and is the reason why we’re doing what we do. But sometimes, how much we focus on something or how hard we try doesn’t have much bearing on the quality of the end result. Sometimes in our work, it makes sense to obsess endlessly over details. But other times, it makes more sense to shoot out a lot of stuff quickly, and then stand back to see what sticks.

The exercises I discuss below will likely lead to a lot of mediocre results. That’s good; the point is developing your process, not creating a masterwork.

Try these.

1. Take a sheet of music manuscript paper and a pen. Take ten minutes, and as fast as you can, fill the page with notation. Don’t think about what it sounds like. Just write. Don’t pause, don’t cross out or erase. Just write. Fill it up. Get crazy. Bored of eighth notes? Write a septuplet. Change time signatures. Change key signatures. Or clef. It’s gibberish. Just fill the page. When you’re done, feel free to just throw it out. Or, wait a day or a week or a year, and then try to play it. This exercise was given to me by my mentor William Thomas McKinley on a day that he felt I was going around in circles, and also that my rhythms were too predictable. He told me to do it while riding the T home, rather than my usual quiet room without distractions. I brought him the results the next week, and being the brilliant pianist he is, he sightread it perfectly, even though to me, it was awfully complex. It was actually the best writing I had done to date—much more rhythmically free. I tried to argue that it didn’t count, as I was writing random stuff without thinking about it, but he asked me, who wrote it, then, if I didn’t? It felt random, but subconsciously, I was still making decisions, if by eye rather than by ear. It was really one of the best teaching moments I ever experienced.

2. Take just two hours and write and record a song, from beginning to end. After it’s done, stop, and do something else. Weed your garden, maybe, or bake cookies. Don’t listen to it for a while. If you don’t have a complete recording in two hours, you cheated. Do it again the next day, but don’t reuse the material from the first day. This will force you to organize your time. If you’re an hour in and you’re still writing lyrics, you need to change directions and simplify. If you’re just starting recording with twenty minutes left, you probably don’t have time to program in a full band accompaniment into your DAW. Stepping away from this exercise, we have to do similar kinds of time organization all the time, on a larger scale, and it’s good to get a quick snapshot of the process.

3. Here’s one for songwriting. Write and record one verse. Then write and record five different choruses to go with that verse, using the standard forms. Cut and paste so that you have audio versions of all possible pairings. Wait a day or so and then listen. Which is best? It’s like speed dating. Spend two minutes talking to someone, then switch chairs and try someone new. At the end, who did you like best? Doing this with creative projects is helpful because it teaches non-attachment to our work, which gives us the necessary objectivity to make tough decisions about it. If you’ve written only one song, it’s tough to admit that it stinks and you should chuck it. If you’ve written twenty, that becomes easier. Try to have written twenty songs, if you haven’t already.

4. Steal something, but disguise it so well nobody will ever notice. Take a favorite song, change its mode, tempo, even its time signature. Change details of the story, like making love hate or he a she, or make it about a penguin instead of a waitress. Change the chord progression and harmonic rhythm. Change the rhyme scheme of the lyrics. Instead of a different second line of the chorus, repeat the first one. Change the title. Make it unrecognizable. Its relationship to the original is your little secret. You just used it as a scaffold to create something new.

5. I went through a brief period, about fifteen years ago, when I got fed up with music and decided to be a photographer instead. I did a six-month intensive degree in photography. This digression only lasted a couple years, but I found many of the skills transferable, and the best lesson I had was a workshop in studio lighting. It started with a lecture on how to use the various types of studio lighting gear. Getting the relationship right between the power of the various lights (main, fill, hair, background) was a little confusing. We then broke into groups of three, to practice. My compatriots and I devised a really great way to spend an hour. We took turns changing three roles: photographer, timekeeper/assistant, and model. Every two minutes we’d switch, no matter where we were in the process. After a few rounds, we were thinking much less about math and much more about how to make the model look good. It became automatic. I realized, this was like practicing scales. What’s the rock band equivalent? Making the technical become automatic is a really important aspect of creating art, whatever the form.

The big question is, what’s hard for you? Isolate it as best you can, and then create some kind of exercise to make the solution to it automatic. It’s as much a part of writing, or any art, as it is for instrumental technique.

Certain roadmap directions, as well as other types of directional text (e.g., instrument specific directions such as the trombonist’s favorite, “Plunger”) are sometimes put inside a bracket, particularly in handwriting fonts such as JazzText. These brackets should be set on the opposite side of the staff, as if cuddling the text close to the staff, and thus clarifying exactly which system it affects.

Often, in the field, we see these brackets set on the wrong side. Why? It turns out that it is bizarrely difficult to flip these. In Finale, the default shape is to have them on the bottom. But many publishers standardize on having all roadmaps above the staff, not below. This yield ugliness such as this:

The way these lines are currently implemented in Finale is a little tricky to figure out. Here’s how to edit them.

The basic idea is that the lines are set using special characters on the sides of and between the letters. The trick is that the letters you type to create these shapes have no resemblance whatsoever to the shapes themselves. You can’t figure it out. You need to look at a chart to see what to do.

These codes are entered by creating a new repeat shape, via the Repeat Designer (Repeat tool, double click where you want the shape, duplicate a similar shape, and click Edit). Here’s the designer window for the default DC al Fine with the bracket, which I duplicated to create my bracket above the shape:

In the data entry field, you can see the letters “DC al Fine” but with some weird characters between the letters. These are the codes for the brackets. The screen font for this system window displays different resulting characters than it would were it in JazzText.

The chart showing these special character combinations necessary to create these shapes is available via HELP > Jazz Character Sets, then click Jazz Text Font Character Set. Here, you’ll see the chart showing how to create all the shapes in the JazzText font. Here’s an excerpt, showing the characters we need for our bracket above the text.

So, to build a bracket above the text DS al Fine, you look up the appropriate characters and then replace the flipped ones. The keyboard shortcuts for these characters is different for Mac and PC. For Mac, you can see here that the top-left corner is created by typing Option-U followed by Shift-O. Replace that character in the shape designer with the special character made by this keyboard sequence, and you’ll have your bracket. Similarly, the line above the text is created by typing Option-U then Shift-U.

The characters needed for the proper bracket, then, would be this:

Repeat endings are complex shapes that can add a lot of clutter to your notation. Here are a few tips to make them behave.

Here’s a basic first and second ending, right out of the box from Finale. It starts off pretty good.

Certain details of the shape will vary between publishers. The numeral fonts might be different, for example. You might see some of the vertical lines extend all the way down to the bar line. The brackets might be shorter or longer, higher or lower. Some publishers will extend a hook coming down from the right corner of the second ending, so that the brackets look identical. I prefer the way shown, though, so that you can see your escape route.

The default is pretty close to what you generally see among music publishers. One change I’d make, though, is to add a little separation between the vertical lines between the two shapes. Out of the box, they are touching each other:

A little space gives more of sense of separation, like each ending is its own place:

The numerals should be the same distance from the top and the left edge. Sometimes, this gets out of whack, during the course of editing, particularly if things are being adjusted to accommodate notes and chord symbols.

In such cases, move the whole bracket up. Keep chord symbols inside of brackets, not above them. The general rule is to keep more intimate notation elements closer to the notes than the more distantly related ones. Chord symbols are more intimately connected to notes than brackets are, so keep them closer. To make room here, I moved the center lines a teeny tiny bit to the left.

If you have multiple staves, there’s no need to display the ending brackets on every staff of the score (though of course, every part needs them), and doing so adds a lot of clutter.

See how much cleaner the score looks with the brackets only on the top line? And their presence is noticed just fine, like this.