17 Facts About Sheet music

Sheet music is a handwritten or printed form of musical notation that uses musical symbols to indicate the pitches, rhythms, or chords of a song or instrumental musical piece.

Sheet music is the basic form in which Western classical music is notated so that it can be learned and performed by solo singers or instrumentalists or musical ensembles.

Many forms of traditional and popular Western music are commonly learned by singers and musicians "by ear", rather than by using sheet music.

Singers in many popular music styles learn a song using only a lyrics sheet, learning the melody and rhythm "by ear" from the recording.

Sheet music can be used as a record of, a guide to, or a means to perform, a song or piece of music.

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Music students use sheet music to learn about different styles and genres of music.

Comprehending sheet music requires a special form of literacy: the ability to read music notation.

In jazz, which is mostly improvised, sheet music is used to give basic indications of melodies, chord changes, and arrangements.

Sheet music can be issued as individual pieces or works, in collections, as pieces performed by a given artist, etc.

The best-known examples of Middle Ages Sheet music notation are medieval manuscripts of monophonic chant.

The greatest difficulty in using movable type to print Sheet music is that all the elements must line up – the note head must be properly aligned with the staff.

The first machine-printed Sheet music appeared around 1473, approximately 20 years after Gutenberg introduced the printing press.

Petrucci's printing method produced clean, readable, elegant Sheet music, but it was a long, difficult process that required three separate passes through the printing press.

Scores for multi-part Sheet music were rarely printed in the Renaissance, although the use of score format as a means to compose parts simultaneously is credited to Josquin des Prez.

Effect of printed Sheet music was similar to the effect of the printed word, in that information spread faster, more efficiently, at a lower cost, and to more people than it could through laboriously hand-copied manuscripts.

Plate engraving was the methodology of choice for Sheet music printing until the late nineteenth century, at which point its decline was hastened by the development of photographic technology.

The biggest Sheet music houses established themselves in New York City, but small local publishers – often connected with commercial printers or Sheet music stores – continued to flourish throughout the country.