This paper*1 contains an explanation of a newly-developed method for introducing general students to music notation within the context of a liberal arts college. The centerpiece of the method is a set of "audible scores"–scores that appear on the computer screen with colorized notes illuminated in synchrony with a recording. These audible scores have been employed in a course titled "Music 111: Knowing the Score," first offered at the University of the South (Sewanee, Tenn.) in the Advent Semester, 1999. The audible scores were distributed free of charge on a set of two CD-ROM discs; only those students enrolled in the course received the discs.*2

Before describing the techniques used to prepare these audible scores and assessing potential problems involved in their use, I should address the more general question of why a course oriented towards notation may now be valuable in the liberal arts environment. The place of notation in music courses for the general college student seems caught on the horns of a dilemma today. On the one hand, for a significant majority of students who have little familiarity with classical music, the topic of notation seems little more than a distraction from the more important goals of getting them to listen openly and attentively and to recognize the importance of cultural and historical context. On the other hand, for the relatively few students who do come with a strong background in classical music–usually the result of having played an instrument in elementary and secondary schools–the ability to read notation has long before become second nature.*3 These classically-trained students can then readily deal with notation in whatever form they encounter it. To the extent they can read a sonata or etude, they can also handle notated examples in a music-appreciation text and make the pitch and rhythm identifications necessary for elementary music theory. Notational literacy for these long-time student musicians usually requires no special attention on the part of a music department. Teaching notation thus seems to have little place within the curriculum of the liberal arts college music department.

In my teaching, however, I have become aware of another category of students for whom some kind of notation course may be indicated. These are students without any background in notation who are nonetheless looking for more detailed, in-depth music analysis than that offered by a standard music-appreciation class, but who are by no means committed enough to the classical tradition to fight their way through a standard beginning theory course–where the notational system and its tonal constructs can seem significantly removed from "real" performed music. They might love to know, for example, just what combination of intervals it is that creates the dominant-seventh/tonic effect, but realistically they do not have the patience needed to sit down and by rote learn pitches and the rest of the notational system that some of their peers acquired by the age of ten or twelve.

In music-appreciation classes for general students it is common to find disparity among students’ listening abilities–and this disparity often fails to correlate with a student’s "normal" academic performance. Some otherwise bright students find it very difficult to distinguish instrumental timbres, major/minor, and duple or triple meters, whereas some academic "slackers"–who may resist memorizing the most basic facts of music history–can nonetheless understand such stylistic concepts quickly and apply them with assurance.

In virtually all of the cases I’m thinking about, the student in question has a background in some kind of popular music, e.g., jazz, rock, bluegrass. This is to be expected: this kind of student possesses a strong musical aptitude, but has not been involved with any traditional classical training. It is almost inevitable that during junior high or high school these students will take up guitar, drums, or other popular instruments and find their musical expression in this idiom. Thanks to their experience with mimicking recordings, some of these adolescent musicians develop exceptional listening skills.

My sense is that in previous decades it was rare for such a college student to show any interest in the activities or classes of a traditional music dept. There was just too much "baggage" associated with classical music culture. If John Lennon could claim in the late ‘60s that the Beatles were "more popular than Jesus Christ," what chance had classical works like Bach’s Well-Tempered Clavier or Beethoven’s piano sonatas … works that bear such monikers as the "Old and New Testaments" of keyboard composition? By the time MTV burst on the scene and capitalists everywhere understood that rock was an economic juggernaut, the musical tastes of most mainstream adolescents began to be channeled to allow for little choice outside the pop-rock axis. Youth media in the ‘70s and ‘80s caricatured the music world as a dichotomy between the progressive forces of rock and the antiquated irrelevance of classical music. Pop star personas, music videos, and a variety of commercials capitalized on this dichotomy.

In recent years the musical landscape has altered considerably and classical music has begun to make something of a comeback, though significantly changed from what it had been. The antagonism and disdain between popular and classical musics seems to have subsided in large measure. The forces involved here are far too numerous to usefully identify–we would have to name many educators, researchers (e.g., the "Mozart Effect"), and even some politicians (e.g., William J. Bennett). Among the musicians involved in bridging the gap, Wynton Marsalis is too obvious to mention; perhaps no less important is a figure like "Chick" Corea who, through the years, has been a major influence on jazz and fusion and who, in mid-career, became entranced by Mozart and began writing his own classical works, including a piano concerto (see his Corea.concerto on the Sony label).

This confluence of musical and broader societal developments has had an important result for the students now seen among the general college population and, more importantly, on those musically-inclined students who lack classical training. These talented students are now less likely to turn a jaundiced eye upon the entire classical repertory. They may still be unwilling to fully embrace the culture of classical music, undertaking private lessons and committing themselves to hours a day in the practice room. But they are much more likely than their counterparts twenty, ten, or even five years ago to listen to classical music with reasonably open ears. At the very least, they are receptive to the idea that art music may possess elements useful to them in their own performance and composition–and that, indeed, it may even move them. It is primarily this group of students then that gives notation such relevance in today’s college music department.

Of course, there have been other points in music history when large numbers of musical amateurs had reason to want or to need to learn to read music. One might think as far back as monastic choirs in medieval times or more recently the singing schools in the American colonies during the eighteenth century. In such cases, innovators have come along to develop easier ways of handling notation. The two cases just cited, for instance, manifest such notational innovations. Back in the eleventh century Guido invented his "ut re mi" system, the foundation of the hexachord system and the forerunner of our solmization practice. The shape-note systems made famous by Sacred Harp or Southern Harmony came out of the milieu of the American singing schools. The audible score probably does not represent this kind of profound change in notational history, but the confluence today of broadening musical tastes and technological possibilities may well create a niche for new notational developments of some kind.

As the central component of Music 111, the audible scores constitute a kind of "graded" approach to learning notation. The "Works" page from the class web site lists the entire set of audible scores in approximately the order that the students would encounter them (see Figure 1).*4 The most notationally simple music is assigned first … chant examples that avoid the complications of rhythmic notation. As a result, students can concentrate on the diastematic motion of the melodic line. Special attention is paid to different aspects of melodic motion–ascents and descents, steps & skips, and movements away from and towards tonic (or the "final" in this modal music).*5 The two ensuing examples of melodic notation, a pair of Schubert songs, add rhythmic notation but allow students to focus primarily on the vocal line instead of dividing their attention among different staves. The last three selections within the "Melody" unit require additional reading skills: Eine kleine Nachtmusik colorizes by the half-measure, Chopin’s nocturne by phrase, and Haydn’s quartet by system. Most of the other audible scores listed on the Works page omit any coloration and involve synchronization by system with the recording. However, the Palestrina Gloria is also worth mentioning, since it exemplifies differences in types of musical texture, with homorhythmic passages in one color and polyphonic phrases in a contrasting color. This succession of pieces supports students’ gradual acquisition of the abilities necessary to follow basic features of notation.

The audible scores by themselves, however, are but part of the Music 111 method. For students to make the notational system work for them in a score-reading situation, it is also necessary that they work to develop practical music-making skills. Keyboard and sightsinging exercises are useful, as are commercially available computer-based ear training programs. They should be writing out melodies and rhythms both manually and by means of notation software. To amplify certain stylistic points in the audible scores, the context page includes illustrations of particular concepts (see for instance the set of links concerning "chromaticism" in conjunction with the Chopin nocturne; figs. 2-4).*6

A tremendous advantage of the audible scores is that students can exchange ideas about the music by making reference to specific spots in the piece. Clearly, in most introductory music classes one does not reasonably hope that students will consider the musical text closely enough that references to particular measure numbers would be useful, but this becomes possible with the audible scores. For Music 111, a web-based forum provides a valuable locus for student discussion. The advantages of the audible scores should not be exaggerated–this method will not create classical musicians out of thin air–but it does offer a plausible way for college students oriented towards popular music to begin to relate to music graphically.

After this brief orientation to Music 111 and its audible scores, we move on to a description of the procedure for creating the scores. At times, the attention that student interns and myself paid to the preparation of these scores evolved into immense frustration as the creation process proved quite laborious. The procedure we eventually settled upon involved three stages … a sequence we could describe as "music-color-action."

Documenting all of the factors involved at each stage of this process would result in a very lengthy document. Here I will mention but a few of the solutions we found. In the notation program, it is useful to arrange the measures within systems to preserve the phrase structure of the piece.

When importing the .eps file into a graphics program, aliasing should be selected to preserve the fine contours of the .eps image. Switching the mode to RGB will allow for ease of coloring. The coloring itself is simplified by means of creating colored "templates" for each notational element,*7 selecting that element, and then moving it into the window containing the system.*8

In the movie editor, the preferences for still-image importing should be set to the proper time interval to simplify placement of the successive graphics files. This time interval will vary depending on the tempo of the composition and whether the coloration is proceeding by note, measure, or phrase. Finally, the sequence should be saved in the movie editor’s standard movie format and thereafter converted to a QuickTime movie.*9 The procedure for generating audible scores may appear simple enough, but the time and details involved in the effort render it quite challenging.

There may be ways of streamlining the process, but conclusive improvements have eluded us to this point. The most cumbersome aspect was probably coloring notes, rests, articulations, and so forth in Photoshop. We have considered using Finale to print display colors to be an .eps file but the results have not achieved the clarity and precision available in exporting the standard grayscale .eps images.

Another potential time-saving shortcut would have been to bypass the notation program altogether and simply use a scanner to obtain digital images of the desired scores. This was highly unsatisfactory, however, as the scanned notes lacked the uniformity necessary to match any standardized colorized templates we could create in Photoshop.

On the one hand, with regard to time efficiency, it would have been marvelous to scan in published scores. On the other hand, it would have made even more acute a serious challenge to this entire project … potential copyright infringement. The author has no background in property law and has had no legal counsel regarding the issue, so at this point offers but provisional findings that can be summarized as follows:*10

The different components of the CD-ROM have different copyright categories. Clearly free and clear are digital recordings prepared to demonstrate analytical features (like the illustration of chromaticism referred to above). The scores prepared in Finale are themselves, I believe, exempt from copyright as they represent in effect new editions.*11 With beginning readers of the sort represented among the students for "Knowing the score," there are many decisions about how much detail to incorporate in the score, and the result of these decisions is the creation of a modest, but new, edition (which is presumably free of copyright). Furthermore, it is not infrequent that such a score has to be edited to reflect the notational choices made by the performers.

It is, to be sure, the question of copyright on the recordings that I have been so eager to avoid. Even in the context of these recordings, however, it seems likely that this kind of CD-ROM product stays within the traditional fair-use guidelines as courts have interpreted the Copyright Act of 1976. If we take the landmark case against Kinko’s from a few years ago, we see that in each instance where the court ruled against the coursepack copier that the CD-ROM for Music 111 stays on the lawful side of the judicial finding. To look at just three examples:

Hence, my conclusion at the moment is that the CD-ROM–in its current form, purpose, and mode of distribution–is not in violation of copyright on the recordings.

There are other problems with the method that could be addressed, e.g., the matter of file size. For example, before we determined effective compression protocols, some of the scores reached the impossibly large size of 10 gigabytes and more. However, rather than end this paper with a list of such problems, perhaps a few closing observations assessing the potential of this course and its method would better serve the reader.

In the new century, classical music is at a juncture of tremendous possibilities. The listenership may be poised to increase significantly. More important, our youth may be on the brink of a deeper sensitivity towards and understanding of an important part of their musical and cultural heritage. This method of "knowing the score" abets, I believe, this goal of cultivating young, culturally aware audiences.

Another factor is also involved here: the centrality of notation to music of Western culture. While such an observation may seem little more than a platitude, its implications are profound. Sounding music in the Western classical tradition has long existed in a reflexive relationship with its written exemplars. From medieval times forward, the written form of music has had immense importance. Notre Dame organum exemplifies this since the chant cantus firmus visually preserves a connection with the written Gregorian repertory, but the aural connection with that chant has been distorted beyond recognition. Carl Dahlhaus, the brilliant, broad-ranging German musicologist, has argued this point about the status of notation in Western music in a chapter of his book Analysis and Value Judgment. He asserts that the "criterion of audibility"–the notion that music should be evaluated solely on the basis of the way it sounds–is "thoroughly questionable."*12 He suggests, rather, the mutual dependence of hearing and reading:

Reading a text in musical notation is always accompanied by acoustical imagination, which sometimes indeed remains shadowy. Conversely, musical hearing is permeated by elements that had been transmitted through writing. (55)

He concludes, "The separation of hearing and reading is abstract in a bad sense" (55). Musically talented students will have a richer musical experience if they have the opportunity to make concrete this connection between hearing and reading.

The final word on this subject need not rest with a musicologist, however. Studies in music education convey similar ideas. Laurence Scripp, the author of a recent doctoral dissertation in music education, shows how important integrated reading and sightsinging skills are.*13 These abilities are not merely discrete challenges for students but rather result in "a new form of musical intelligence." The use of audible scores may well give our musically talented students oriented towards popular music a way of developing and experiencing this type of "musical intelligence." New musical skills and enhanced musical appreciation can occur in the interstice between listening to a performance and reading a score.

*1 This project is the result of a collaboration between myself and the Instructional Technology Workshop at the University of the South; I would like to thank in particular the director, Vicki Sells-Lewellan, and several student interns, Beth Downey, Cole Cottrell, and Vasser Howorth. Also, a Mellon Technology grant administered by the Associated Colleges of the South was instrumental in the realization of this project. The attempt to create "audible scores" is by no means new. In recent decades there have been various efforts to synchronize a score with a recording, though I am not aware of any that have made use of a computer-based product to try to develop musical literacy. The use of color itself to enhance the acquisition of notational skills makes obvious pedagogical sense, and the beneficial use of color in reading rhythmic notation has been empirically proven among children; see George L. Rogers, "Effect of Colored Rhythmic Notation on Music-Reading Skills of Elementary Students," Journal of Research in Music Education, 44 (1996), 15-25.

*2 To sample these audible scores and view their presentation format, please consult the web site "http://itw.sewanee.edu/Music111". Beyond a web browser, the only software necessary is the QuickTime movie player.

*3 There are, of course, many different levels of notational literacy. Indeed, music students who have played an instrument through elementary and secondary schools typically have only a rudimentary reading ability. They may have poor sightplaying skills, for instance, and virtually no sightsinging capability. For one case study and an introduction to useful terminology for such assessments, see Lawrence Scripp, "The Development of Skill in Reading Music" (Ed.D. diss., Harvard, 1995), 1-13.

*4 http://itw.sewanee.edu/Music111/Works/works.html

*5 A future refinement for this material may incorporate varying coloration for different scale degrees. This would have the effect of further distinguishing the line and space positions of pitches and of reinforcing the functions of the various scale degrees.

*6 See also http://itw.sewanee.edu/Music111/Works/Chopin/chopin.html

*7 With the exception of beams or ties that are more easily colored by use of a "line" or "pencil" tool

*8 Upon request the author will be happy to send the notation templates we have prepared in Photoshop for use with the Finale-generated .eps files.

*9 With FinalCut at least this yielded the best combination of appearance and compression ratio

*10 Other papers in these Proceedings also deal with copyright issues; please see the web links these other authors have suggested, especially those in Michael Murray’s "Old Music/New Technology." [Editor’s Note: The copyright laws are constantly changing as case law in this area continues. Those who plan to utilize copyrighted material in any medium are advised to seek legal counsel. Also, see the presentation by Harper & Bruenger in the 2001 TDML Proceedings.]

*11 The accuracy & reliability of this statement will be determined by the length of time since the piece was composed, the composer’s lifespan, and other factors.

*12 Analysis and Value Judgment, trans. Siegmund Levarie, Monographs in Musicology Series, 1 (New York: Pendragon Press, 1983), 54.
*13 Scripp, "The Development of Skill in Reading Music."