Learning a piece composed by friend. Are these types of notation big no-nos?

[lynxerious]

1. The Db followed by C# two measures later. Should you avoid using the same note but different notation?


2. G# and A# instead of A and B. Isn't it better to use the note of the main key?


3. The piece seem to have sharp, flat and natural all over the place. It's giving me aneurysm reading it. Shouldn't you need to keep accidentals to a minimum and keep it one direction preferbly the same as the main key (in this case keeps mostly flat)? I would rather the score make it easier to read first, any type of music theory or mode change should be outside the score and analysed later.

[lelle]

Your questions are interesting, because while in principle all the things you are asking about are allowed,  in this piece they look like errors because the composer doesn't understand/care how to spell the chords he is using, making it confusing for the reader.

1. The Db followed by C# two measures later. Should you avoid using the same note but different notation?

So to reiterate what I said, it's not wrong to follow up a Db with a C# if that's what the theory dictates to spell the harmony you are using correctly. In this case I would use a Db instead of the C# because it fits better with the harmony I perceive is going on in those bars.

2. G# and A# instead of A and B. Isn't it better to use the note of the main key?

Not necessarily, for example, if you have modulated to B major (which it is what it looks like they have done) it makes sense to spell things in B major. Unfortunately, the spelling of the right hand gave me a fatal disease, it could just be spelled in B major and related keys too and the whole passage would make more sense.

3. The piece seem to have sharp, flat and natural all over the place. It's giving me aneurysm reading it. Shouldn't you need to keep accidentals to a minimum and keep it one direction preferbly the same as the main key (in this case keeps mostly flat)? I would rather the score make it easier to read first, any type of music theory or mode change should be outside the score and analysed later.

Accidentals following music theory would make this easier to read. The reason it's so messy is because a lot of accidentals have been arbitrarily chosen rather than based on theory, at least to my eye. For example, if you are used to reading in B major, if everything in example 2 was spelled in B major it would help you read it because you'd recognize the key. Now that they are mixing sharps and flats and naturals unnecessarily it becomes confusing to read.

[lynxerious]

thank you 

I'm not a good reader, I'm barely over one year. So I have not played in all scales yet, I know the notes in B major but I wouldn't know why it modulates to B or why G# and A# means modulated to B and not other keys.

I have only learnt the basic theory, so I want to know if my difficulty reading was because of my own shortcoming or the way my friend  notates the piece. I want to give some feedback after learning it, he wrote it many years ago in highschool anyway so he might not even have these types of errors anymore.

[lelle]

thank you 

I'm not a good reader, I'm barely over one year. So I have not played in all scales yet, I know the notes in B major but I wouldn't know why it modulates to B or why G# and A# means modulated to B and not other keys.

I have only learnt the basic theory, so I want to know if my difficulty reading was because of my own shortcoming or the way my friend  notates the piece. I want to give some feedback after learning it, he wrote it many years ago in highschool anyway so he might not even have these types of errors anymore.

The harmony in the piece is fairly standard/traditional, so the problem is how they notated it. It seems like they weren't very familiar with some of the more distant keys they are using. Bars 16-19 could be notated just using flats and it might make more sense to do so actually. (Then you'd get some C flat major chords instead of B major )

As you practise and get more familiar with the different scales, and learn the different basic chords that are used in each key (tonic, subdominant, dominant and so on), you'll start recognizing these patterns in the music you play. Makes it easier to read because a sequence of 6 notes will suddenly be recognized as "oh he is just moving around the first couple of notes of this particular scale, I know those notes". Music that follows classical harmony, such as this piece, reuse the same chord sequences and scale patterns a great deal as basic building blocks. That's how I recognize the different chords that are hidden in the mess of notation that your friend made