Hi all,
I’m trying to understand how to best conform to page numbering standards while still having my piece’s page numbers make sense. I was reading about standards on a few sites and gathered the following:
" Page Numbering
- Odd-numbered pages on the right (recto); Even-numbered pages on the left (verso). There are never any exceptions to this rule.
- In music, we do not count the front matter (pages before the music starts). The first page of music is page 1, and the rest of the book should continue sequentially. The convention is to put page numbers in the top “outside” corners; odd numbers on the right, even numbers on the left.
- If you have a large number of pages in the front matter (e.g., more than 4-6 pp.), they are numbered with lower-case roman numerals, centered at the bottom of the page.
- The first page number is never shown (e.g., page 1 or page i)."
–from: Music Preparation Guidelines for Composers — Mostly Modern Festival
If I have a piece of piano sheet music that starts with a cover page, I currently have it open to page 1 (unlabeled) then page 2 is on the right. This seems to break the rule, but it doesn’t make sense to me that I would change it to page 3 and have the first page labeled as page 2.
How do most people/publishers go about this?