first of all great, that you do something like that.
To be honest, I haven’t read every line of every reply and don’t know exactly what wasn’t said yet but, there are still a few.
First of all, as some already mentioned for some specific instruments, all B flat transposing instruments transpose by -2 or -14 semitones. (and not -1 or -13)
The clef for the Oboe is missing, I think the treble clef is used more often for the French Horn and the two dots of the bass clef in the written range of the Bassoon are somehow not aligned.
The flat accidental on the bass clef of the written horn range is on the wrong line, it should be on the second from the bottom and the sounding range of the horn is transposed in the wrong direction.
You should write tenor saxophone and not just saxophone and I think the alto sax is even more common than the tenor. The flat accidental on the Bb of the written range of the tenor sax could be confused with a double flat accidental.
Multiple instruments have “Bass Clarinet, Contrabass Clarinet” as alternatives which definitely do not have them as alternatives. As alternative for the French Horn you could write the Bb Horn.
The trombone (and bass trombone) is not transposing (the Bb only means that it is based on the Bb nature-tone scale)
The notation for the Tuba is not normed but in the UK were you’re based and Germany where I live it is typically not transposing (as is shown in the written/sounding range only the highest notes should also match).
And while it is also not normed for the Euphonium, it is more common, that the Euphonium is not transposing or that it is transposing -14 semitones.
Many things others already said, for example that I would recommend to not put everything on one poster, but separate the different sections. I also agree, that things like transposition amount should be consistent (0 and -0). I think pedal notes on brass instruments should be noted as well as the possibility to go higher for skilled players.
I don’t really know what I think about the “otherwise known as:” things. (it’s sometimes a little funny, but I think it should be more factual/educational)
There are some other miner tweaks, that are almost not worth mentioning like missing commas and probably loads of other things I forgot writing about or missed.
If I find something major I’ll give an update, but now I would probably need an updated version, to proofread. If you have that I would be happy to check it again.
Good list you’ve got there. Just wanted to help fill in the blanks for musescore.
Cor anglais: amateur range E3 - A5, pro range E3 - B5, plays down 7 semitones from notation
contrabassoon: amateur range A#0 - A3, pro range A#0 - C4, plays down 1 octave from notation
bass trombone: amateur range G#1 - F4, pro range A0 - F5, unison
euphonium: amateur range E2 - A#4, pro range E2 - D5, unison
cimbasso: amateur range E1 - D4, pro range C1 - C5, unison
it might also be said, that the musesounds have a bit different ranges that said ranges. The contrabassoon for example has a muse sound range of A0 - C#4 while the bass trombone only goes up to D#5.
I was scrolling to see if anybody had commented on this, and was glad to find your remarks. I am a clarinettist first and an alto sax player 2nd.
I would like to add the reality check regarding the high range in the clarinet.
For my degree final I had to hit that top C, once, and approach by leap. It is not a common note to play, and should be handled with care.
Top G is common, top G sharp and top A also in wide use. These can be found in pieces of a UK grade 8 standard.
Top B, B flat and C are infrequent.
If dancing around in those truly high notes is required it is generally given to the (piccolo) E flat clarinet. eg as in Berlioz Symphonie Fantastique.
Couple of (hopefully!) useful bits of info for the brass:
The Trombone is the loudest instrument in the orchestra, and can put out over 115dB
The Trumpet and Trombone have a cylindrical bore, which means they tend to have a clearer, brighter tone - whereas the cornet, tuba, etc have a conical bore which means they are softer and warmer.
Not sure if you are colleting suggestions still but i just watched the first pink panther movie and thought oh there is a saxophone in one of the most iconic movie franchises themes
First thanks so so so so much for your contributions above. Getting close to finishing this one and putting it out there!
OK…
NEXT UP!!! MICROPHONES!
Someone asked us if we’d do a blagsheet for mics and we said YES! This has been an utter labour of love for me and I have learned so much from it. Not least that a microphone that appears on camera often in films set in the 30s-50s didn’t actually appear until 1971! This one is close to being done but as you know data is only as good as the data its made from and as a lot of this is garnered from the internet we can safely say the data isn’t that reliable.
I noticed this when the internet suggested the RE20 was only 5" long!
All pictures hand drawn (in Figma) by yours truly and the prose is all written by myself which means it will be not only littered with innacuracies but also typos and grammar errors… Any major contributions get a poster and a credit on it so thanks in advance for your scrutiny! C x
As someone who came late to DAWs having used all the notation apps I have found the types of group tracks and the different labelling, in different DAWs confusing. Is there a possibility that a blagsheet explaining say Group/VCA/FX Groups and how they are similar or differ. Pre Inserts and Post and typical. If by extension some of the recording jargon regarding routing of tracks that one could see at a glance. I may be asking the impossible but if not, I, for one, would benefit from this.
Many thanks,
Hey Thanks for the updated version of the Blagsheet, but there are still a few things wrong.
First of, I can personally attest, that a piccolo flute is most definitely not twice as heavy as a clarinet and Timpanis are also definitely not the same weight as a piccolo flute.
Next, are the Bass clarinet and Contrabass clarinet really variants of the French horn and Harp?
Then you should maybe add in the guide if the range (E2 - C6 for example) is the written or sounding range. At the moment it is even inconsistent.
Next the sounding range of the French Horn and trumpet are transposed in the wrong direction (French horn also by the wrong amount).
The Trombone has wrongly a checkmark for transposing, while it is not, and the Tuba has the same issue the other way.
The written notes of the Bass Trombone are missing a flat.
A ledger line should be added for the range of the 32" Timpani.
The range for the Glockenspiel is currently written as C4 - C4.
The written pitches of the trombone should use the bass clef.
Lastly it would be nice if the ranges (e.g. E2 - C6) the written ranges and the sounding ranges within each instrument would match.
There are a few more things I would change but I think those were more important and there will probably also always be things that I miss.
Thanks so much for this input. Changes fixed, made addressed:
** First of, I can personally attest, that a piccolo flute is most definitely not twice as heavy as a clarinet and Timpanis are also definitely not the same weight as a piccolo flute - FIXED*
** Next, are the Bass clarinet and Contrabass clarinet really variants of the French horn and Harp? - FIXED*
** Then you should maybe add in the guide if the range (E2 - C6 for example) is the written or sounding range. At the moment it is even inconsistent. - ADDRESSED*
** Next the sounding range of the French Horn and trumpet are transposed in the wrong direction (French horn also by the wrong amount). - FIXED*
** The Trombone has wrongly a checkmark for transposing, while it is not, and the Tuba has the same issue the other way. - FIXED*
** The written notes of the Bass Trombone are missing a flat. - FIXED*
** A ledger line should be added for the range of the 32" Timpani - FIXED*
** The range for the Glockenspiel is currently written as C4 - C4. - FIXED*
** The written pitches of the trombone should use the bass clef. - FIXED*
** Lastly it would be nice if the ranges (e.g. E2 - C6) the written ranges and the sounding ranges within each instrument would match. - ADDRESSED, new ranges taken from Henry Mancini “Sounds & Scores” and cross referenced with Walter Piston “Orchestration”.*
para 2 heading “HISTORY” - spacing above/below should be consistent?
para 2 sentence 1 - comma should be a conjunction “…legitimise their operations and to increase…”
para 2 sentence 4 needs a subject “…of music. MIDI is something”
para 3 sentence 2 is a sub-clause of the first - use a semi-colon or dash “…Korg and Kawai; that an…”
para 4 sentence 4 - unnecessary comma in the expansion of the MMA acronym, plus capitalisation of MIDI “…MMA (MIDI Manufacturers Association)…”
para 5 sentence 1 - I think “8bit” is more conventionally written with a hyphen “8-bit”; but this is a personal preference
para 5 sentence 2 - I’m not sure that the transmitter and receiver are inevitably sound/music related. See Other applications on the MIDI Wikipedia page
para 5 sentences 3, 4, & 5 - The explanation of/comparison to piano rolls is a bit garbled. Alternative version: “It contains no sonic information, but instead encodes a stream of events - such as note-on and note-off - which the receiving device must interpret. A MIDI stream has similarities to sheet music (where a musician interprets written notation) and to a paper piano-roll, which a mechanical player-piano interprets to recreate a musician’s performance.”
IN, OUT & THRU
para 1 sentence 1 - capitalisation - “MIDI…”
para 1 sentence 2. It might be clearer to split the discussion of details of the communication protocol (channels) from the description of the physical cabling/ports. Maybe rewrite as "MIDI allows several devices to be connected together and controlled by one another; each connection is made over a uni-directional cable. Different ports are…
para 2 - maybe spell out the flow of data as related to the MIDI ports? "In this example, a performance is converted into MIDI by the synthesiser; the MIDI data representing the performance is transmitted from the synthesiser’s MIDI OUT port to the sequencer’s MIDI IN port. Later, the sequencer transmits the MIDI data from its MIDI OUT port back to the synthesiser’s MIDI IN port to replay the performance. The synthesiser outputs…
para 3 - maybe add something at the start of this para about a single MIDI stream not being limited to controlling a single device, to give a context for channels?
para 3 sentence 3 - typo - “its” not “it’s”, capitalisation “MIDI OUT.”
para 3 sentence 4/5 - typo - “its” not “it’s”. Maybe clearer to word as "The second (upper pictured) synthesiser plays the instructions contained in the MIDI stream on its own channel, ignoring any instructions for other channels; it passes on all the MIDI data it receives via its MIDI THRU port.
WHY IS MIDI SO “QUIRKY”.
General - there’s nothing in this section about SysEx messages. Maybe add a footnote? Something like “The MIDI standard also allows manufactures to define SysEx (system exclusive) messages that are device-specific, and which are not constrained to 3 bytes per message; using extended messages, many different kinds of custom hardware and software can be controlled by MIDI. This makes MIDI almost infinitely extensible, and is part of the reason for its longevity.”
para 2 sentence 1 - capitalisation “MIDI”
para 2 sentence 1 - might be worth including “asynchronous serial” in there somewhere - suggest “MIDI is a stream of asynchronous serial data…”
para 2 sentence 2 - nested brackets are a bit clunky - replace the outer set with a semi-colon?
para 2 sentence 2 - suggest “…was agreed by the MMA.”
para 3 sentence 1 - suggest "To communicate meaningful data, the individual bits are evaluated in a groups of 8, known as bytes.
para 3 sentence 2 - suggest “In the MIDI protocol, data units are 1 byte (8 bits) wide - so MIDI is as an 8-bit system”
para 3 sentence 3/4 - comma not full stop "…made up of 3 bytes, with byte 1…
para 3 sentence 4 - suggest “…two data values.”
para 4 and beyond - this description skips any mention of the two “framing” bits (0 for start, 1 for end) that delimit the bytes in a MIDI message. Because of the framing bits, each byte of a MIDI message is encoded as 10 bits (start bit, data byte, end bit) - this reduces the theoretical data rate from 31.25 kbit/s to 25 kbits/s. Perhaps too technical a detail?
para 5 - possibly another too-technical detail, but the position of the MSB is determined by the “endian”-ness of the protocol - MIDI is a big-endian protocol, meaning that the highest valued bit is on the left of the byte. Other protocols/file formats (including WAV audio) are little-endian, where the highest-valued bit is on the right of the byte
para 9 (starting "With the 8 possible…) sentence 1 - suggest hyphenating “channel-dependent”
para 11 (starting “SO, we can…”) sentence 1 - capitalisation of “So”
para 11 sentence 3 - “channel-dependent”
para 11 sentence 3 - abbreviation of number seems to have misfired - use the “numero” character?
para 12 (starting “SO, with”) sentence 1 - capitalisation of “So”, “bytes”, “data” (first instance)
para 12 sentence 1 - suggest “…each of which have 8 bits…”
MIDI message diagram:
what’s labelled as “LSB” on each data byte should be labelled “MSB” - unhelpfully, MSB and LSB can mean most/least significant byte or bit; in the protocol message definition it’s about bits.
the underscores sort-of represent the framing bits, but it would be more correct to have one underscore at the beginning and end of the three-byte sequence and two underscores between each byte. Again maybe splitting hairs.
para 14 (starting “We hope”) sentence 1/2- suggest “…less arbitrary and more pragmatic, being based on the 8-bit technology available at the time, balanced with the desire to make…”
para 14 sentence 3/4 - suggest “…these days - electing instead for far-superior USB connections - don’t be fooled into thinking that this is no longer MIDI.”
para 14 sentence 5 - remove “packages or”
para 15 (starting “If there is one quirk…”) - this is a bit disjointed. I think you are trying to say something along the lines of “Isn’t it surprising how well-supported aftertouch is by the MIDI protocol, given that it is so little used; perhaps this is down to Yamaha’s ambitions for the CS80.”
para 15, sentence 5/6 - move this to the GM section?
THE 5 PIN DIN CONNECTOR
Title - hyphenate “5-PIN”
para 1 sentence 1/2 - join these with a comma, capitalisation "…“separates systems", the DIN…”
para 1 sentence 2 - hyphenate “mid-20th century”
para 1 sentence 3/4 - join these with a comma, hyphenation “…starting as a 3-pin connector for mono sources, the 5-pin connector”
para 2 sentence 1 - typo “Its” not “It’s”
para 3 sentence 1,2 - join with a comma “…or MIDI as it became known), it…”
para 4 sentence 1 - hypens, capitals, commas, typos “…these now-defunct cables it was suggested that the 5-pin DIN connector could be adopted; its shielding…”
GENERAL MIDI (GM)
Footnote - a point implicit here is that MIDI encompasses both a communication standard and a file format - this is something that should perhaps go into the intro section at the top of the poster.
MIDI NOTE NAMES VS NUMBERS
footnote sentence 4 - typo “its” not “it’s” - “as its keyboard”
footnote sentence 5/6 - join with a semi-colon, “protocols” feels like the wrong word in this context - suggest “…from these two conflicting definitions of middle C; Roland’s…”"
Edit Whoops I see above that some of these fixes were already made. So it seems that the currently live blagsheet is not the most updated one. Maybe a mixup when refreshing the website?
Pardon the off-topic un-timely comment, but just wanted to let you know that the trombones on the instrument blagsheet are wrong:
Tenor trombone
Does not transpose
Never written in treble clef (primarily bass chef, but tenor and alto clefs possible). The Written and Sounds section should be identical
A more reasonable highest note would be C5 or D5, F5 is extreme soloist range
Bass Trombone
Also does not transpose
Written/Sounds should be identical
Range is wrong, Bb0 is not reasonably achievable. Eb (5th space below the bass clef) is the lowest reasonable pedal tone.
