Is your music hard to read?

My mom always told me that people would judge me by the way I dressed.  So if I wanted to be taken seriously in the work place, I better dress the part.  Little did she (or I) know that my work place would be in front of a keyboard, computer, and large cup of coffee in my own apartment, comfy in sweats, PJ's, or whatever I feet like wearing but that advice was not lost on me when it came to written music.  There is no quicker way to be instantly judged for the worse than by handing musicians messy, hard to read or confusing to follow sheet music.  I don't care how great your original music is, how inventive, how clever, or how beautiful, if the musicians playing that music can't read it, it's going to sound bad.  Not only will you lose the respect of the musicians, but you'll most likely have a frustrating rehearsal with question after question and clarification after clarification.  Time will be wasted, cross words will be had, and the overall experience will be demoralizing. 

With the advent of notation programs such as Sibelius and Finale, there is the potential for every composer of any level to make their music look professional.   All that is needed is a LOT of time.  Much more time than one might think.  I know I ALWAYS underestimate the amount of time it will take to clean parts! But that step is just as important, if not more important than taking the time to debate whether the trumpets should be forte or mezzo forte at letter E.  Unfortunately, musicians don't always have that extra time and when utilizing a computer program that they haven't been able to take the time to learn, music can still come out looking messy:

Why does this happen?  Time, or lack thereof, is the usual suspect.   After that, it's usually attention to detail.  There are so many things to think of when it comes to preparing music: page turns, font size, consistency in text directions (above or below the staff? italicized or bold?).  One of the most frequent question I get from my copy-work clients is in regards to road map.  Is it better to have music through-read or does that create to many pages for the musicians to keep track of? If repeats are put in, they have to be easily understood upon the first reading.    Then there's the previously mentioned matter of consistency.  The notation programs help with this to a degree with their fields for tempo markings, expressions, etc.  But there is still more to think of.  I've recopied computer notated music that used different fonts for dynamics, expressions (such as "soothingly") are sometimes above the staff, sometimes below, and chord symbols varied between "maj" and triangles to denote major chords.  Another area of inconsistencies is in the drum parts.  This is partially because there is no universal notation for how to notated drum parts, though there is a common practice.  When talking to drummers about this issue, their response is the same: consistency.  Whether you write hits in the staff or above, keep it the same throughout the chart!

Here is an example of the original sloppily handwritten tune above redone to professional standards:

With time, attention to detail, consistency, and a lot of forethought, your music can turn out looking uber professional.  Your band members will be impressed and will recognize how serious you are about your music.  Your rehearsals will run more smoothly and more efficiently yielding a better performance come gig time.  And if you don't have the time to do this yourself, hire someone! Your music is worth it!