Adam,
I hate to say "why would you want to do that" but.... I mean, the kind
of think you are talking about is an excellent exercise, and I've
attempted to do it before (to a limited extent) with Sinatra's vocals,
but I also think it's important to understand that the western system
of musical notation is not really up to the task of capturing this
kind of individualistic vocal and rhythmic nuance in a meaningful way.
Which isn't to say it can't be done -- it's just that the resulting
notation usually appears completely opaque and unrelated to the way
the performer was actually feeling the rhythms. In practice, a
simplified, somewhat abstracted notation, to be consulted along with a
recording, is almost always going to be much more helpful.
To give a non-vocal example: check out this video of the late New
Orleans drummer Earl Palmer playing a simple drum pattern:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Sb9E2O5SiGU
As Ethan Iverson of The Bad Plus observed on his blog: "The four limbs
are in different places in the beat: this is the academy of rhythm
par excellence."
How would you even attempt to notate this drum pattern? You have a
choice between a very simple, straight-laced notation that basically
forces everything onto the same rhythmic grid and doesn't even attempt
to reflect the rhythmic sophistication what Palmer is doing. Or you
could write a hugely complex mess of sixty-fourth note displacements
and nested tuplets and all kinds of weird figures that are technically
more accurate, but actually obfuscate a lot more than they clarify.
There's a reason why swing eighth notes are written as regular eighth
notes. A transcription of a Sonny Rollins solo that attempted to
objectively reflect the real duration he gives to each note would be
unreadable. Or imagine what a Chopin nocturne would look like on the
page if someone attempted to transcribe a specific pianist's rubato
and capture it in the notation.
Notation has limits. Sometimes, you've just got to hear it.
Cheers,
- Darcy
-----
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
Brooklyn, NY
On Oct 7, 2008, at 4:08 AM, Adam Golding wrote:
I've always been dismayed by how poorly most attempts at notation
capture a
lot of vocal performances (even the "Beatles Scores" is woefully
straight-jacketed in its notation of the vocal parts, of of many
rhythmic
aspects in general.) Are there any treatises on notation or
examples of
well done scores that might show me how to notate a lot of the subtle
inflections of vocal performances? I need to notate all the little
scoops/turns/slides, not to mention as much of the vibrato as
possible.. let
me know any of your thoughts! :-)
_______________________________________________
Finale mailing list
Finale@shsu.edu
http://lists.shsu.edu/mailman/listinfo/finale
_______________________________________________
Finale mailing list
Finale@shsu.edu
http://lists.shsu.edu/mailman/listinfo/finale
