Marking Up Sheet Music

[bachapprentice]

Hi,
I have been marking up my sheet music before I learn a new piece of music and especially when I'm playing highlighting the areas that need work. I was wondering if anyone has any tips on what notes and highlights you should put on your sheet music.

[kosulin]

My main rule - put all notes and marks on a photocopy, not on the original sheets.

[perfect_pitch]

My main rule - put all notes and marks on a photocopy, not on the original sheets.

Yep - have to agree with that. I remember rubbing out the pencil marks for my LMusA exam... 60 pages of pencil marks I had to erase before being examined. Took me an hour to rub them out.

[brogers70]

Fingerings, notes on analysis (when they are helpful for memorization), dynamic markings (when the composer does not indicate them, so mostly in Baroque pieces), circling trouble spots. Then at my lesson, I give it to my teacher, who adds her own critiques in the score. By the time I'm finished with it, the piece is pretty marked up. Since I have no judges or examiners to worry about, I mark up the original, but if you need to keep that clean, of course mark up a copy instead.

[bachapprentice]

Fingerings, notes on analysis (when they are helpful for memorization), dynamic markings (when the composer does not indicate them, so mostly in Baroque pieces), circling trouble spots. Then at my lesson, I give it to my teacher, who adds her own critiques in the score. By the time I'm finished with it, the piece is pretty marked up. Since I have no judges or examiners to worry about, I mark up the original, but if you need to keep that clean, of course mark up a copy instead.

I'm not taking exams so I mark up the original also. I've been using colored pencils instead of markers. I find marking up the music really helps and reminds not to forget about the dynamics.

[lostinidlewonder]

You can section up the works into its parts, I usually put A, B, C, Ai, Aii etc in little boxes. Showing shape of the passage in terms of the black and white notes, eg CEbG is a triangle shape, can also show hand positions in this manner too, or larger scale passages. Include memory hooks and patterns found in fingerings, like perhaps certain fingers come together, certain fingers replace the other, or perhaps focus on similar notes in both hands or the subtle differences or how they theoretically connect in terms of chords, scales etc.  Logical statements which help you memorize a passage. Movement groups, when the hand holds a position and when it has to move, can be done with brackets. Chords and scale labels, perhaps the scale starts on a particular note, or stops at a particular note, or turns within a particular part etc. Some students of mine who are learning to read find it challenging to notice when certain things come together or are inbetween so we will put lines connecting the notes to show togetherness and arrows to show inbetweenness. I think lots of color is nice, looking at black and white is so dreary, you can highlight repeated patterns within musical parts in the same color. You can also highlight which instrument the piano is trying to emulate to aid in expression ideas. And so on so on, lots to add on sheets as required.

[lelle]

I don't tend to mark my sheet music too much. I used to write a lot of notes on what I should think about as I was working on technique and trouble spots, but my solutions have converged towards being the same regardless of the problem so there is not much point anymore. I typically write in fingerings when I need them, and mark out sections that need work with little stars, and then practice them separately and in a different order than when you play through the piece. It's a little psychological trick to stop myself from just playing from beginning to end without working over things carefully.

[bachapprentice]

You can section up the works into its parts, I usually put A, B, C, Ai, Aii etc in little boxes. Showing shape of the passage in terms of the black and white notes, eg CEbG is a triangle shape, can also show hand positions in this manner too, or larger scale passages. Include memory hooks and patterns found in fingerings, like perhaps certain fingers come together, certain fingers replace the other, or perhaps focus on similar notes in both hands or the subtle differences or how they theoretically connect in terms of chords, scales etc.  Logical statements which help you memorize a passage. Movement groups, when the hand holds a position and when it has to move, can be done with brackets. Chords and scale labels, perhaps the scale starts on a particular note, or stops at a particular note, or turns within a particular part etc. Some students of mine who are learning to read find it challenging to notice when certain things come together or are inbetween so we will put lines connecting the notes to show togetherness and arrows to show inbetweenness. I think lots of color is nice, looking at black and white is so dreary, you can highlight repeated patterns within musical parts in the same color. You can also highlight which instrument the piano is trying to emulate to aid in expression ideas. And so on so on, lots to add on sheets as required.

That's great. Would you mind PM me or posting me an example sheet?

[bachapprentice]

I don't tend to mark my sheet music too much. I used to write a lot of notes on what I should think about as I was working on technique and trouble spots, but my solutions have converged towards being the same regardless of the problem so there is not much point anymore. I typically write in fingerings when I need them, and mark out sections that need work with little stars, and then practice them separately and in a different order than when you play through the piece. It's a little psychological trick to stop myself from just playing from beginning to end without working over things carefully.

That's helpful. I notice I play from beginning to end more than I should.

[lostinidlewonder]

That's great. Would you mind PM me or posting me an example sheet?

Sure we can pm, I'd rather do an example that is relevant to you. Might be a nice idea to do it on this thread here so you can get different perspectives from others and also help educate those who are just reading.

[quantum]

My main rule - put all notes and marks on a photocopy, not on the original sheets.

Yes, absolutely do this!  Or if you prefer using digital, make a copy of the file and annotate the copy.  If you decide to revisit the piece in the future, you might even want start fresh and make new annotations.  Having the clean original to make another copy at any time it is needed can be very helpful. 

I like to have two different annotated copies, the study/analysis copy, and the performance copy.  The study/analysis copy has all the annotations used for learning the music, and gaining understanding of it.  It's okay if this copy gets a little messy, it's for study.  This is the copy I would bring to lessons. 

The performance copy has annotations related to performance, such as fingering, cues, cuts and edits, music road map, and performance reminders.  I like to keep annotations in the performance copy neatly legible, and the absolute minimum information.  The goal is to have essential information easy to process during performance.  We want to avoid information overload in the performance copy.  Sometimes I might use coloured sticky notes, as these are easy to move around the score, no need to erase and rewrite. 


Here's one of my tips, bring pencils to your lessons - they are for your teacher to use.  I had a teacher that had a habit of grabbing the nearest pencil-shaped object and writing with it, many times it was a coloured pen.  A lot of my scores have hideous looking pen marks all over, from a teacher wanting to scribble some random thing.  Same idea if you do ensemble work.  There was an occasion where an ensemble member grabbed a the nearest thing - a highlighter - and scribbled in the score, realized the annotation was incorrect, so scratched out the highlighter annotation with the same highlighter, then proceeded to write the correct annotation with... the same highlighter.  The score looked like a colouring book.

[bachapprentice]

Sure we can pm, I'd rather do an example that is relevant to you. Might be a nice idea to do it on this thread here so you can get different perspectives from others and also help educate those who are just reading.

Ok like something I'm currently working or my next piece of music.

[lostinidlewonder]

Yep either would be fine, if it's a copyright work you could probably only send a small portion of it though.

[zebra555]

I think it’s a shame this thread hasn’t progressed - I was looking forward to seeing an example of ideas of how to mark up pieces from LIIW. It was a really helpful offer and he’s right that it would help others as well as the OP. I’ve noticed a difference between face to face lessons where it’s either done for you or there’s direct help with it, and online lessons where there isn’t.

[lostinidlewonder]

I think it’s a shame this thread hasn’t progressed - I was looking forward to seeing an example of ideas of how to mark up pieces from LIIW. It was a really helpful offer and he’s right that it would help others as well as the OP. I’ve noticed a difference between face to face lessons where it’s either done for you or there’s direct help with it, and online lessons where there isn’t.

Feel free to post an example to look at.

[zebra555]

Thank you. I’ve attached a few lines of a piece I’m working on at the moment. It’s the last 3 lines of Burgmuller Op 100, No 24 Swallow. The markings I have are an ‘x’ above bars 23 and 28, where the right hand notes change more often than in the other bars. For some reason I find this type of music difficult to follow - and can’t help hoping there’s a way to make the transitions from chord to chord easier to ‘see’.
Any suggestions would be great.

[lostinidlewonder]

I added some markings which focus on the broken chord observation. I offered some vertical chord groupings show what you feel in the hand, straight lines are no movement, arrows are movement, if there is no line the position of that note is found by a finger change. That could be written in words instead. The fingering pattern observation focused on how the middle notes dont change finger and how the outer fingers behave around it. bar24 i offered the feeling the right hand experiences when moving to this chord, measuring what you were controlling in the previous chord to what you move into in bar 24.

[zebra555]

Thanks so much for this - it’s really good to see a way to indicate what’s happening with the chords. Using the colours does make it seem much easier as well as the arrows etc. I’ve been through what you’ve done and I’m applying the ideas to the rest of the piece. The time you’ve taken on my example is much appreciated.

[bachapprentice]

I added some markings which focus on the broken chord observation. I offered some vertical chord groupings show what you feel in the hand, straight lines are no movement, arrows are movement, if there is no line the position of that note is found by a finger change. That could be written in words instead. The fingering pattern observation focused on how the middle notes dont change finger and how the outer fingers behave around it. bar24 i offered the feeling the right hand experiences when moving to this chord, measuring what you were controlling in the previous chord to what you move into in bar 24.

Nice work!

[lostinidlewonder]

Thanks so much for this - it’s really good to see a way to indicate what’s happening with the chords. Using the colours does make it seem much easier as well as the arrows etc. I’ve been through what you’ve done and I’m applying the ideas to the rest of the piece. The time you’ve taken on my example is much appreciated.

No problems at all! Hope it has offered you some ideas how you can make your own markings that are meaningful and help visualise/understand the music with more ease.

Nice work!

If you have an example feel free to share it too.

[bachapprentice]

Feel free to post an example to look at.

Please see Bach D minor BWV 132 section I just started working on.

[lostinidlewonder]

So here I show movement groups (when the hand moves position, note at the most basic level movement groups are where fingers dont leave their notes at all, in this example we notice how a movement group can have fingers change position within the group but we should attach some ideas how that exactly moves) and some ideas about pattern recognition in terms of what things feel like based on the pattern between the notes and fingers.

This is more information than most would normally need so only certain patterns which help something that is failing would be highlighted. If I am teaching pattern observation to my students then all the markings and even more would be fine.

[bachapprentice]

So here I show movement groups (when the hand moves position, note at the most basic level movement groups are where fingers dont leave their notes at all, in this example we notice how a movement group can have fingers change position within the group but we should attach some ideas how that exactly moves) and some ideas about pattern recognition in terms of what things feel like based on the pattern between the notes and fingers.

This is more information than most would normally need so only certain patterns which help something that is failing would be highlighted. If I am teaching pattern observation to my students then all the markings and even more would be fine.

Thank you for taking the time for putting this together. I was really having a hard time with the fingering on this piece. I will review and give it a try.

[zebra555]

No problems at all! Hope it has offered you some ideas how you can make your own markings that are meaningful and help visualise/understand the music with more ease.

It’s a great help. I’ve marked up my score using some of the suggestions you made. I had somehow completely missed the fact that D is played in the RH in almost every chord - so highlighting that to me has made this whole piece seem simpler. Again, thanks.