Monday, August 25, 2008

Sheet Music for the Broken Consort

I noticed when I looked at the stats for this blog, that a lot of people seem to be searching for sheet music or lyrics. I can't help much with the lyrics part, but I thought I'd tell you about the sheet music we use.

99% of it is created in Noteworthy Composer by Master Stephen or myself. Sometimes we have a facsimile image to work from, sometimes another version on paper, sometimes a MIDI file which can be imported into NWC. Always we end up arranging or rearranging to fit our group of instruments, so what we end up with is "our version". We then print whatever parts we need from NWC. Some we print all parts on one sheet, some in single parts: I like to have a mix so that we all get used to dealing with either situation. I print a score for myself and sometimes play off it so I can fill in whatever part is needed if people are missing. Before we had bass instruments in the group, I used to transpose the bass part into the bottom register of the violin and play that!

I highly recommend Noteworthy Composer for arranging or composing at a very reasonable price. If you use it and you'd like the NWC file of one of the pieces we play (for non-commercial use), I can probably send it to you if you ask.