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Modern musical symbols

Modern musical symbols

Modern musical symbols are the marks and symbols that are widely used in musical scores of all styles and instruments today. This is intended to be a comprehensive guide to the various symbols encountered in modern musical notation.

Lines

Durations shorter than the 128th are not unknown. 256th notes occur in works of Vivaldi and even Beethoven. An extreme case is the Toccata Grande Cromatica by early-19th-century American composer Anthony Phillip Heinrich, which uses note values as short as 2,048ths; however, the context shows clearly that these notes have one beam more than intended, so they should really be 1,024th notes.The name of these notes can be found with this formula:
Name = 2^{(number of flags on note + 2)}th note.

Breaks

Time signatures

Time signatures define the meter of the music. Music is "marked off" in uniform sections called measures, and time signatures establish the number of beats in each. This is not necessarily intended to indicate which beats are emphasized, however. A time signature which conveys information about the way the piece actually sounds is thus chosen. Time signatures tend to suggest, but only "suggest", prevailing groupings of beats or pulses.

Articulation marks

Articulations (or accents) specify how individual notes are to be performed within a phrase or passage. They can be fine-tuned by combining more than one such symbol over or under a note. They may also appear in conjunction with phrasing marks listed above.

Repetition and codas

Other Piano Notation

ee also

*Graphic notation
*Music theory
*Musical terminology

References

* [http://www.music-notation.info/en/compmus/musicfonts.html Comprehensive list of music symbols fonts]
* [http://www.dolmetsch.com/ Dolmetsch Online:]
*: [http://www.dolmetsch.com/theoryintro.htm Music theory & history]
*: [http://www.dolmetsch.com/musicalsymbols.htm Dictionary of musical symbols]

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