How to Analyze a Music Score!!

How to Analyze a Music Score!!

My Background: As a few of my other guides have stated, I am a Drum Major. Music is something I have learned to love. It is my way of expressing myself. While being a Drum Major, we must analyze scores of music in order to properly interpret them. We then convey the emotion of the piece with the band during our performance. This guide should help you in analyzing a score from the tempo to the dynamics! I hope you enjoy this guide.

Table of Contents:
I. The Score
II. What are we looking for?
III. Where to begin?
IV. The Final Product!

I. The Score

So what is a score anyway? Well a score is essentially the “master” piece of music. It has ALL the parts for different instruments all placed onto one sheet. A typical score will last for many pages and can range from very simple to very complex. The key here is to dissect it into many parts that will be described in this guide. As for now you will refer to this as our score. Remember that this is only 1 page of a score, it is indeed longer than this!



http://www.marchingpercussion.com/music/free/bird.gif <-- Direct link to picture

Please note that ALL PICTURES in this guide come from the one posted above. They have been edited in MS paint to relate to each subsection.

II. What are we looking for?

Well what we are looking for will be the following.

1. Time Signature- The time signature determines how many beats there are in 1 measure and which note gets the beat.
2. Tempo- The tempo will determine the speed of the music
3. Style- The style of the music can be something like if it is fluid and emotional or fast and fierce.
4. Dynamics- Dynamics determine how loud or soft the music is to be played
5. Dynamic Variations- These include things like crescendos which increase the dynamic of the music and decrescendos which decrease the dynamic of the music.


III. Where to begin?

Well I think it&#8217;s a safe bet to just follow my list above and move down it as we go!

Lets start with #1, Time Signature.

Notice the &#8220;c&#8221; looking thing? This is called common time. Common time means it&#8217;s a 4/4 time signature. You read this as &#8220;The beats per measure&#8221;/ &#8220;Which note gets the beat&#8221;. In this case there are 4 beats in a measure and the quarter note gets the beat!



Now for #2, Tempo.

As you can see in this piece of music, there is NO SET TEMPO. Thus, we will determine a tempo by ourselves. A pretty standard tempo would be 120 beats per minute. (That&#8217;s 2 beats every second).



Next up is #3, Style.

We determine the style of the music by examining the markings on the music. These &#8220;^&#8221; marks above some of the notes means that the note is short and crisp. It is obvious that because this is music for a Percussion section, the style if most likely going to be &#8220;marcato&#8221; which just means that it is fierce. The &#8220;^&#8221; symbols reinforces our assumption that it is marcato. This determines the style of conducting, but for that you should look at my other guide!!



#4, Dynamics.

This is a VERY important part of the music. Without dynamics, there really would be no expression in the music. It would be one long, same sound, rhythmic beat. There really isn&#8217;t any fun in that, so dynamics are there to differentiate in the emotion of the music. This music is labeled with the dynamic &#8220;mp&#8221; which is &#8220;Mezzo-piano&#8221;. This means it is moderately soft but with some fullness in it.



You can also see that there is a marking labeled &#8220;ff&#8221;. This means &#8220;Fortissimo&#8220;, and is basically one of the loudest markings a piece of music can get. (There is sometimes &#8220;fff&#8221;, but it isn&#8217;t too common). But how are we supposed to get from moderately soft to very loud? Jump from one extreme to the other or gradually progress to one? Well in this piece of music we will do both. These are explained in the next section!

The final key to this score is, #5, Dynamic Variations!

This is where crescendos and de decrescendos come into play! In this piece we only have crescendos, however it still helps to know both. A crescendo is represented with a sign like this &#8220;<&#8221;. These can last from 1 beat to 4 or 5 measures and beyond. In this case they each last 1 measure. As you recall earlier I said that there were 4 beats to each measure (Refers to #1). So lets mark these into the music. While conducting crescendos and decrescendos, you have a specific &#8220;cueing&#8221; technique. That won&#8217;t be discussed in this guide, but the general idea is that the &#8220;mp&#8221; crescendos into the &#8220;ff&#8221; dynamic!



IV. The final product

Well now that we&#8217;ve done all of that marking we have one really dissected piece of music. In this final picture ALL of the markings will be made into a single picture.



Just some tips when doing this on your own.

- Don&#8217;t be afraid to mark up a piece of music, it&#8217;s not like a bible or anything.
- Always use pencil when you first mark up your music! It is nice to be able to erase something if you make a mistake!
- When you have everything drafted out in pencil to mark up your score, I like to use Highlighters of different colors to mark up my score! That way when I look down everything is big and easy to see and follow!
- Always ask your band director for advice regarding analyzing scores if you are unsure about something! They are almost always right because they read scores for a living!
- Remember to have fun with it. The point in dissecting it was so you could really convey the emotion of the piece of music!!

 

nice!
Great quide.

 

Thanks.

 

nice guide!

 

Nice guide, but try putting the pictures on the forum so that they show up fully, and we don't have to click on them.
Other than that, great guide. <3

 

Thanks, I know a lot of people don't completely understand how scores work so I decided this might be something cool to look at. Yes it makes it easier if you can read music, but this guide was for the breakdown of a score so I felt it did its job. Thanks though.

Ok thanks, any more guides I make I'll be sure to put on the forum setting. I wasn't sure which one to use and when I made my other guides no one seemed to care so I figured I used the right one =\, but thanks for the input.

 

Wow, by following your guide step by step, I can be a world-acclaimed composer. Lol kidding, but does this works for any beats? Even for hip-hop? I really wanna know, as your guide shows it is like a classical music score.

 

Typically this applies to music scores, which are generally in the classical music area. I suppose if you had a score for hip-hop, though, it would be the same. Music is universal, shouldn't be to distinct of a difference if it is still a score.

 

What about Rock?

 

As I said above, if it's a score, then it should still be applicable. Music is universal, it doesn't apply to some and not to others. It is used a lot in classical/symphonic movements and in marching band as well. I use is in both.