![]() One thing I do find useful for big band charts are fonts that don’t have a large first letter when capitalised. Again, I stress the importance for a professional, readable end result to make sure your music is taken seriously. Most of these music fonts have corresponding text fonts that come with them. Unfortunately, there’s really no other option that works in Dorico without some messing around yet, but some great SMuFL-compatible ‘Real Book’-style fonts are very soon to be available at NorFonts (and they’re already compatible with Finale and Sibelius).įor more Finale and Sibelius fonts (and Dorico in the future), you can buy/download/compare all these music fonts, and search for more at Elbsound. Dorico comes bundled with the Petluma jazz font designed by Anthony Hughes. That means we can’t easily swap out music fonts like we can in Finale and Sibelius as we do with text fonts. In Dorico, as of writing, fonts need to be SMuFL compatible. The clefs look a bit like someone slipped while drawing with their non-dominant hand (that’s something Inkpen2 at least got right), but you can always swap those out. It’s also a good mix of handwritten and typeset, so is pretty easy to read. It’s slim, the accidentals work nicely, and the accompanying text font is nice. Here are a few examples of front pages from some scores, old and new:Ī good font that doesn’t come packaged with any notation software I’d recommend looking into Broadway Copyist. If you want to know more about other expanded big band setups, like with strings and voices, and the instrument order to use, you can see my article about that here (coming soon), or for smaller ensembles read my article on writing for 3 or 4 horns in a band setting. ![]() When a 5th trumpet or seperate flugelhorn is needed, it goes below the trumpet section. When percussion is needed, it goes at the very bottom, below the drums. Sometimes, a tuba is called for, and it sits just below the bass trombone. If you’ve read all the previous articles until now, I’ve been introducing instruments in their score order, so this shouldn’t be too unfamiliar: Like an orchestral score, the order of instruments on a score is generally a fixed thing. Ring binding is fine, apart from studio use where it would make too much noise, then use tape. Rehearsal marks should either be letters that are never repeated, (no AA or BB rehearsal marks please!) regardless of form, or as bar numbers in a box above the stave. This is kind of old-school now but it keeps the scores clean and marcatos end up there anyway so might as well apply it to all articulations. The sax, trumpet and trombone sections are grouped with a bracket each and bar lines connect them throughout. Scores in C tend to leave the saxes hanging too low on the stave. Transposed scores are most common, even in the studio. Unlike film scores, key signatures are usually used if the music needs it. I’ll talk about this in worrying amounts of detail below. This is because most forms and phrases in big band charts are found in 8 bar phrases, but allowance should be made for phrases that are uneven too.įonts (both text and music) are usually in the handwritten style and a little more informal/stylised than orchestral scores. ‘Casting-off’ (the amount of bars/measures per system) is usually locked at 8 bars. Time signatures are often big, like film scores, but also found as regular, smaller ones in each staff too. If the pianist/bandleader wants to play off of a full score, landscape A4 (Letter) is usually fine. Most of the time, unless the pianist is also the bandleader, nobody will be using the full score for performance. The main difference between orchestral and big band scores is that big band scores are landscape.Īs for paper size, A3 (Tabloid) is the most legible with a staff size no smaller than 4.5mm. Here are a couple quick tips about layout that should get you up and running quickly for big band charts: It’s not a comprehensive list of music prep do’s and don’ts but should get you started from transitioning from orchestral music to big band chart. Assuming you have your own methods, templates and workflow for orchestral score preparation, I’ll be breaking down score and part layout with regards to creating big band charts. If you’ve come this far, I can assume that you’re just as geeky as I am about score layout and part prep. ![]() Compared with orchestral music, big band music, and jazz in general, looks remarkably different than traditional music when written down.
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