The site is concerned with:
- Music Engraving
- Music Printing
- Early Notation
- Traditional Notation
- Modern Notation
- Computer Notation Software Resources
- Music Fonts
Have a nice reading 
3 Likes
What is the purpose of the site, please?
Those dot-matrix-printer-level images though. I feel like Iâm back in the 80âs.
1 Like
I think the purpose of the site is apparent. Sadly, many of the topics are not available and links to some of the graphics do not work.
This site dates from the earliest days of the internet. It was a project of some music students from Colorado College and one of their faculty advisors. Clearly, itâs an attempt to provide musicians who were using last centuryâs computer software with the basic notation rules used in music engraving. This site enjoyed some popularity 20-25 years ago, but clearly has been replaced by better internet sites and publications.
It would have been better to say this was of possible historical curiosity. I wasted several minutes reading, expecting it to be valuable. I even started to write a comment to complain that no units were given with measurements in a table (but didnât send it).
No. Thatâs where they lost me.
1 Like
It looked to me as if the site was only very partially constructed.
If it is intended to give agreed conventions in musical notation and discuassion of them, surely an internet site is of far more use than having to purchase a book which pushes the personal agenda of the writer.
David
Yes. As I said, many of the topics are not available (links broken). When the site was fully accessible, it was fairly complete and sort of a Readerâs Digest version of the Ted Ross book. The work of college students, but not entirely without merit.
There are a few free reputable resources out there too. The Music Publishers Association (MPA) has a booklet titled Standard Music Notation Practice available as a free PDF. The Major Orchestra Librariansâ Association (MOLA) also has some good info. Their Guidelines for Music Preparation is useful if you want to know what is expected when doing orchestral work, and it has been translated into a bunch of languages. Some of their other resources are also helpful as well.
Most of us are probably aware of the following, but the big 4 books on engraving conventions IMO are Behind Bars by Elaine Gould, The Art of Music Engraving and Processing by Ted Ross, Music Notation by Gardner Read, and Music Notation in the Twentieth Century by Kurt Stone. Gould is probably the current âstate of the artâ but she doesnât address jazz, commercial, or musical theater conventions at all, so just be prepared if thatâs the type of work youâre interested in. The Ted Ross book is out of print but available on CD from NPC Imaging. For jazz and commerical conventions, Clinton Roemerâs The Art of Music Copying is excellent, but long out of print so youâre probably stuck with eBay or used book sellers.
5 Likes
The Art of Music Copying is available here, to view or freely download as a PDF.
https://pdfslide.net/documents/the-art-of-music-copying-clinton-roemer.html
3 Likes
But the trouble with the approach of style manuals when they are used to inform permissible ways of notating in a program like Dorico or the others is that they embalm conventions and make it difficult to notate in any way other than that which they specify, leading to users being encouraged to follow the rules regrdless of their lack of use.
1 Like
That link is almost certainly to an illegal copy though, at least in the US anyway. I have the 2nd edition but it lists the copyright date of the first edition as 1973, which is obviously well after 1926 (the current public domain cut off).
Probably all the books mentioned are available from some download site. I was just trying to keep it legal.
I appreciate your concern. Roerick Music as well as Clinton Roemer do not appear on internet searches of âWhite Pagesâ sites or any general Google search (I tried). I think itâs reasonable to download a copy for oneâs own personal use. It does no good to keep valuable sources of information hidden under a bushel basket. My 2¢.
1 Like
I meant it more from Steinbergâs perspective. Certainly anyone can google âtitle free download pdfâ but if this thread ends up with a bunch of links to pirated material, the mods will probably just delete the thread.