Piece Proofreading - Everything in its place

It's been a while since I posted here. In fact, I believe I MAY have said I would never post here again.

...or something to that effect...

Anyway, I have this idea that I think the community could contribute to and possibly help us all as a whole.

Here it is:

Those of us who have sent pieces to competitions/performers/etc have likely had the forehead slapping reaction at least once of finding mistakes of some kind after we waved bye-bye to our magnum-opus after dropping it in a mailbox.

It's too late to make any changes but you'll at least remember next time to check that your name is spelled correctly on the title page.

I was thinking of creating a checklist for myself to rigorously follow everytime I send a piece off and this got me thinking that this forum would be a perfect dust-storm of input for something like this.

So in a nutshell, what are some goofs (Or gaffs if you're from across the pond) that you've discovered in your music and been either too-late or just in time to correct?

The piece sucked.

:D

One very typical error I have to look out for is forgetting to put an "arco" after a "pizz." passage, a "senza sord." after a "con sord." passage, and any other special techniques that must be followed by an "ordinario" or similar. Checking all page turns in the parts is very essential too (i.e. is there a long enough time to turn the page, etc.). If you work with Finale you also have to be super careful of upbeats when the piece starts, since Finale usually creates a whole bar of rests for them in the parts, instead of just as many rests as the upbeat needs (for example one quarter note).

Then there are all the little things that are impossible to play technically. These are of course major mistakes and really shouldn't happen, but they do. Writing stuff outside the range of an instrument, writing a mute change with no time for it, writing long passages for the winds without time to breathe, writing in wrong transpositions for transposing instruments (particularly be aware of transposing percussion instruments there too).

There are also some things that aren't actual errors, but just bad for readability, such as rhythms that completely conceil the beat, collisions between notation elements, etc.

One more thing to be extremely careful about when working with Finale are multimeasure rests. Those should only be created at the very end, when everything else has been taken care of. Otherwise it might easily happen that a multimeasure rest shows too few or too many measures of rests, which will of course be extremely annoying in the first rehearsal.

Also, I sometimes need to make sure that instruments that have rests for a long time can easily find back into the piece when they play again. This might include cue notes, but at least measure numbers and/or letters.

Personally I make sure to read through every single part as if I was the performer of this instrument before sending it in. I try to imagine playing every note, putting on mutes, removing them, make the arm movements for a virtual bow when looking through string parts (to see if the articulations/bowing/phrasing works), breathe when looking through wind scores, and so on. And I do the same from the conductor's perspective, actually conducting the whole piece with the right tempi, trying the fermatas, giving cues, and so on. That usually shows me rather well whether it will work more or less, or not.

P.S. Oh, one more extremely important thing: To make sure there's either something like "concert pitch" or "transposing score" written on top of it.

P.P.S. Oh, and when you have a multi movement work, make sure to include "Tacet" markings for instruments that rest during a movement.

P.P.P.S. Also check the enharmonic spelling of the notes. Unnecessarily complicated enharmonic notation can be really annoying for performers.

P.P.P.P.S. I have the feeling some more P.P.P.P.P.....S. might follow. We'll see...

P.P.P.P.P.S. Ah yes, here there comes another thing: Never to trust the way your notation program displays stuff on the screen. It's not always the same as it prints out. It's not even just because you see some things easier when it's printed out, it's that most notation programs (including Finale) actually have slightly differing layouts on the screen and on the printouts - which can be really annoying when something looks perfectly normal on the screen, but messed up on paper, and you've got to correct that on the screen "blindly" and print again and again until it's right (hint: printing it into a PDF is good for this purpose).

Something I almost NEVER remember:

Rehearsal marks!

Finale will actually ALLOW you to screw up multi-measure rests? Yeesh.

After giving 6 of my scores for proofreading elsewhere, you can imagine my surprise when I found out more than 100 errors in each one! :O Spelling errors, harpins, tempo, elements crossing each other, etc.

After that, my advice is to always use someone who will be dedicated enough to do a good enough work!

Maybe I should pay one of my buddies a six-pack to proofread this choral piece I have.

Better only give them the sixpack -after- they have proofread it.

:thumbsup: Bolanos.

Alcohol and proofreading definitely go hand in hand...

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...wait, we were talking about proofreading scores while being drunk, weren't we?

Agreed.

Basically what Gardener said. I had a really hard time with mute changes once, because a whole movement for trumpet and trombone was based on mutes and different sounds these instruments can produce but they had absolutely no time to change the mutes and it was quite comical. I had to just put a huge fermata on the rests to leave enough time for the mute changes..

But most mistakes are typoes, or things I said I'd correct later and never did. I am very picky about my scores so if I've got time for something, I'll just look at it again and again and again - but usually I won't spot the mistakes until I have printed out the score and parts.

But yeah, the Gardener method seems the most mistake-proof one :P

And to repeat myself for the millionth time - and this is only viable for solo or small chamber works (eg max 4) - have the players sight-read your final draft.

One way to defray the cost (beer, whisky, money or both) is to form a composer collective just for this purpose.

PS. If anyone is interested in this and has time for it, please pm me.