Why a simple pencil could help you become a better musician.
Photograph by Eduardo Casajús Gorostiaga
Admittedly the author Edward Bulwer-Lytton may not have had music in mind when he coined the phrase, “The pen is mightier than the sword” in a play about Cardinal Richelieu in 1839, but I hope he wouldn’t mind me purloining it for educational purposes!
Are you a musician who always keeps a pencil on their music stand? Or are you the sort who thinks, “I’ll remember that!” when the act of going to find a sharp pencil feels like too much hassle? I’m definitely the former. In fact I always have a pencil with me (there’s even one tucked away in my camera bag) on the basis that I never know when I’ll need one, and a pen’s marks have too much permanence. I’ve long been a great believer in using a pencil when I’m practising or rehearsing, because I know only too well how fallible the human memory is.
Let’s take a quick look at the nature of how our memories work first, as it’s relevant to the way we learn music.
Neurologists differentiate between short term and long term memory, but what does that mean in practice? Short term memory is the transient storage of information - for around thirty seconds; perhaps up to a minute. It’s generally thought we can hold up to about seven items of information in our short term memory and beyond that new information quickly displaces the older items.
If we wish to retain information beyond the limits of our short term memory we need to use other strategies to reinforce those memories. Saying the information aloud or mentally repeating it to yourself will often work. When I’m playing or conducting I might notice a mistake I want to come back to. I know I’ll probably have forgotten the detail by the time we reach the end of the movement, so I have to find a way to retain the location in my mind. Speaking aloud mid-flow isn’t an option, so I’ll quickly search for the bar number and this helps me at least remember where the passage was when we reach the end of the piece!
Of course, if we only had short term memory we’d be in trouble. Luckily we have the ability to lay down long term memories - the human equivalent of saving data to a computer hard drive. It’s this mechanism which allows us to remember information and events over long periods. Some of the information we store is vital to our lives (where we live, or our partner’s birthday, for instance) but it also allows us to store all sorts of other detritus. I’ll often hear a song on the radio and I’ll be able to picture where I was when I heard it last - sometimes years ago. That’s of very little practical use, but it’s a knack I seem to have, for better or worse!
Because our short term memory is so brief, that means we’ll sometimes need help remembering musical details - and that’s where your pencil comes in. When practising we repeat phrases to help our brain and fingers transfer this activity to long term memory, but we need to ensure we practise these phrases correctly and lay down accurate memories rather than practising mistakes into our performance. I’ll often use my pencil for exactly this purpose. I work on the basis that if I’ve made a mistake more than once I need to write something in to remind myself and prevent it happening a third time.
There’s no shame in using your pencil
I played in the Phoenix Recorder Orchestra for ten years, during which time Steve Marshall was the ensemble’s music librarian. He would see all the parts handed back after a concert and was fascinated to compare how much or little different players had written in their music. Steve would often comment that my music usually had many more pencil markings than anyone else’s. As the single professional recorder player in the orchestra, he mused that if I, as someone who could probably sight read most of the music largely correctly, needed to write things in everyone else definitely did! Ultimately, there’s absolutely no shame in using your pencil. Writing reminders in your music is not an admission of failure, but it does show you’re serious about not making the same mistakes every time!
The joys and pitfalls of other people’s markings
When you’re handed a piece of music which already contains markings from other musicians, do you rub your hands in glee or are you overcome with a feeling of dread? Undoubtedly, notes from other musicians can be helpful - they give you a head start and warnings about likely pitfalls. Of course, that’s assuming they’re correct. When faced with music which has already been marked up, approach these annotations with an open mind. I often discover parts in my own library which have been incorrectly marked and that can be destructive. If you find an incorrect marking don’t just leave it there - grab a rubber and either remove or correct it - that’ll help you and the players who come after you!
The other charm of pre-marked parts can be the non-musical information they occasionally contain. I’ve seen orchestral music with phone numbers, doodles and even whole sentences of prose written on them. I’ve never yet rung any of the phone numbers, but I often wonder what might happen if I did!
Pick the right tool
Hopefully I’m on the way to convincing you why you should always have a pencil (never a pen!) to hand, be it in rehearsals, lessons or just practising at home. But what sort of pencil should you use?
There are many options but the most important things is to choose one with a soft lead. A 2H pencil is no use to any musician and, in my opinion, should be banned from all musical instrument cases! A hard pencil will likely leave indentations in the paper and the writing will be difficult to erase. A soft pencil (2B is a good choice) will allow you to write quickly and lightly, as well as giving you the option to come back and change your mind later.
If you’re someone who never remembers to sharpen their pencils, a propelling pencil can be handy. This was my choice for many years, paired with thickish 2B leads - usually 0.7mm. I’d keep a tube of spare leads in my pencil case and never faced the frustration of a blunt pencil - just click the end and you’ve got a fresh supply of lead.
More recently I’ve returned to traditional pencils and my favourites are currently Blackwings. They’re not especially cheap, but they have lovely soft lead, sharpen beautifully and their erasers actually remove markings effectively. One of my bugbears with many pencils is the way the rubber on the end just smears the graphite around, leaving an unsightly and permanent smudge.
As I’ve just implied, the other vital tool in your armoury is a good eraser - after all every musician is entitled to change their mind. If your favourite pencil has a rubber which doesn’t actually do its job, make a point of finding an eraser which works effectively - you won’t regret it. The rubbers on Blackwing pencils can be extended as they wear down, and you can even buy replacement ones which slot into the ferrule on the end if you use up the eraser before the pencil becomes too short to write with - a feature I’d never come across before.
What should you write in your music?
This is one of those questions with an infinite number of answers, but here are some of the things I mark in my own music. My conducting scores contain lots of additional scribblings, but let’s focus on playing today. There are the obvious things, such as breath marks, accidentals, dynamics, alternative fingerings and ornaments. But there are many other things you can mark in too.
An 18th century custos at the end of each line in a Sammartini Sonata. Click to see enlarged.
I’ll sometimes use my pencil to mark in a custos at the end of the line - that’s a little squiggle which shows the pitch of the first note on the next line. These often appear in old publications and can be handy if the music doesn’t go where you’re expecting it to. In a similar vein, I’ll sometimes highlight a moment where a musical sequence changes with a circle. If you’ve had a regular pattern of notes for a bar or two, a subtle change can be easy to miss.
Pencil markings can also be handy as reminders about the progress you’ve made in your practising. I’ll often write a small box around note groups which need further attention. This reminds me the next time I practise, but also gives me a heads up to concentrate harder at that point in rehearsals and concerts. Once I’ve nailed the passage reliably I’ll rub the box out and remove the distraction. If there’s a longer passage (may be two or three lines) which need closer attention I‘ll sometimes write a line in the margin at the side instead, so I don’t end up smothering my music in pencil!
Here I chose to add a line in the left margin to remind me this passage needed practice to tidy up my fingering
If I’m gradually working something up to a faster speed using my metronome, I’ll often note the maximum tempo I’ve achieved at the end of a practice session. Then, when I return to it I’ll know where I’d got to. Often I’ll need to backtrack a notch or two, but it’s a handy way to track my progress.
Another time I’ll use my pencil is when I’m trying to decide on alternative fingerings or ornamentation. There’s one piece of Vivaldi we play with The Parnassian Ensemble with a passage where there are many places I could use an alternative fingering, but the benefit isn’t always immediately obvious. Having too much choice can be paralysing, and as we learnt it initially I found my indecision about where to employ an alternative tripped me up. My solution was to make a decision and write it in my music - simple! Yes, I then changed my mind about a couple of notes, but it was easy to amend those markings, and the result was a much more fluent line.
Create your own language, but be clear!
Over time you’ll probably create your own language of symbols for the things you write in your music most often. There are of course universally understood symbols such as sharps, flats and naturals which all musicians use - or so I thought… Many years ago I took in the orchestra music after the students’ concert at the Recorder Summer School. To my astonishment one of the treble players had carefully written the word ‘natural’ in longhand over every place where an F sharp wasn’t needed. Maybe that’s what he or she needed for the message to sink in, but there’s definitely a more concise way of notating a natural note!
The most important thing is for your symbols to mean something to you and to be clear. Don’t write something terribly cryptic in your music, only to realise you have no idea what it meant when you come back to the same piece the following week! In my own music, I’ll write the word ‘BIG’ over a tick if I need to take a deep breath - it’s clear and unsubtle enough to make me do what it says. Passages where I want to take some extra time will be decorated with a wiggly line, and if I need to be more aware of another player or a conductor I’ll draw a small pair of glasses. Nothing ground breaking there, but I know what they all mean and that’s the key reason for writing on the music in the first place.
A glimpse of my annotational world…
While researching this blog I had a good old rummage through my music library in search of examples I could share with you. In the examples below you get a sneak peak at what goes on in my own music, but please understand some of it isn’t pretty!
This example shows my unsubtle ‘big breath’ marking, along with an indication of the length I wish to play the appoggiatura. With a dotted note like this, the appoggiatura could be performed as a quaver or a crotchet, so this pencil note tells me I’ve decided to play it as a quaver. I can of course change my mind and amend the markings later if I wish to. Incidentally, I always mark breaths with a tick. Some musicians use commas, but I personally find those too easy to ignore, especially without my reading glasses!
In this snippet I’ve added a simple curved line. A passage like this is at risk of being played non-legato because of the flats and the leap up to a high D - the line reminds me I really must play it smoothly. Some musicians will instinctively play a slur when faced with a curved line like this, but I know what I intend as it’s a marking I often use. If I wanted a real slur I would place the line more precisely rather than using a quick sweep of the pencil.
Below we have my way of marking in alternative fingerings. Some players use ‘II’ instead, but ‘alt’ works just fine for me.
The letters over the music here are from when I loaned my music to a pupil, but I’ve been known to use this indication myself too. The T is simply a reminder to tongue the note - something easily forgotten amid a flurry of trills and demisemiquavers.
Here we have a couple of markings to indicate rubato - being flexible with the time and rhythm. The wiggly line tells me to stretch the notes out a little - in this case a small ritenuto leading up to the pause. The word ‘time’ over the breath mark, however, is a reminder not to rush on after the pause. How much time I take before continuing may depend on the acoustic in which I’m performing. In a dry room, with little echo, I might move on fairly swiftly, while a resonant church acoustic may require a big, dramatic silence for the impact of the pause to sink in.
These markings date back to my student days and were written in by my teacher, Philip Thorby, but I’ve continued to use these symbols as they work for me. The straight lines (sometimes horizontal, sometimes diagonal, like an acute accent) indicate notes which need weight. The U-shaped symbols are similar to those used in poetry when analysing the flow of the text, and tell me to keep them lighter and stress-free. These marks may not be obvious to other musicians, but after 35 years of writing them in my music I know exactly what I intend.
Sometimes I see people writing small essays in their music and I wonder how on earth they’ll read it all in the heat of the moment. My approach is to find a single word which encompasses the character or mood I’m aiming for, so I can take it in with the swiftest of glances - as I’ve done in this example.
How much is too much?
Judging exactly how much to write in your music is a bit of a balancing act. Leave things out for fear of cluttering the page and you may omit critical information. But if you cover the page in annotations it can be difficult to see the wood for the trees!
The example below is one of my more prolific annotations. There are the usual articulation marks and dynamics, but also some character related words, such as ‘more butch’(!), ‘very calm and still’ and ‘naive’. On the Grave you’ll notice I’ve made some decisions about how I wish to ornament the music, along with an indication below the stave as to which chords are being played in the continuo part. These harmonic markings are a combination of pitches and figured bass which works for me as I’m used to playing from figured bass, but may not help non-keyboard players!
This is about as extreme as my own pencil markings ever get - any more than this and I know I’ll begin to ignore some of the symbols because my brain can’t process it all quickly enough. Not all musicians are the same though, and in this example of a Bach Violin Sonata, annotated by Yehudi Menhuin, there’s barely a scrap of paper left untouched!
Another example by an internationally acclaimed performer which surprised me was the edition of Bach’s Goldberg Variations which pianist Glenn Gould used for his 1981 recording of the work. The music was discovered and auctioned off by Bonhams in 2018 (you can read more about it here) and it gives a fascinating glimpse into his thought processes. You can click on the images below (and any of the others in this post) to see them in more detail. Personally, writing on music in pen like this makes me shudder, but Gould was an eccentric character and this approach evidently worked for him.
Are you indecisive?
If you’re still working out how much annotation is right for you there are other ways you can experiment.
The obvious one is to make a few photocopies of the piece you’re learning. You can do this legally for study purposes, providing you own the original. With these you can try different markings and see what works best for you, before transferring your final annotations into the published edition.
Maybe you’re someone who responds well to colour coded markings? I’m not a fan of writing on music with coloured pencils or pen as the marks can’t be erased or changed later. One solution is to insert your music (or a copy of it) into a clear plastic sleeve. You can then write on the sleeve with coloured dry erase markers in the knowledge that you can rub off anything which doesn’t help.
There are even options available for musicians who would prefer to store their music on an electronic device rather than carrying around weighty paper tomes. I’m still relatively new to this approach, but I do use the forScore app on my iPad sometimes. The app allows you to store vast quantities of music on your device and you can annotate it with a stylus, saving different versions if you wish to. I use this mostly for proof reading scores I’ve typeset while I’m on the road, but I know several musicians who use an electronic tablet to rehearse and perform from.
Eight quick annotation tips
Don’t be afraid to change your mind. Music making should be a fluid affair - your interpretation can and should evolve over the years. Do write helpful markings in your music, but don’t be afraid to erase and update them as your taste changes.
If you have lessons with a teacher, don’t rely on them to write things in for you. They may well do so, but if you think of something which will help you play better, grab the pencil and do it yourself!
Be ready to adapt your decisions. Playing in a different acoustic or working on an ensemble piece with new people may mean you need to change your markings - be flexible and willing to change if need be.
If you take music grade exams you don’t need to rub all your markings out before the exam. The examiner almost certainly won’t even look at your music and if your annotations help you to play better why make life harder by erasing them?
If you mark a passage as a reminder that it needs more practice, don’t be afraid to rub out the annotations when you’ve overcome your stumbling blocks. You may find them helpful still, but on the other hand you may find them an offputting reminder of your earlier failings!
Don’t be precious about writing in your music. Doing so isn’t an admission of failure, but will help you avoid mistakes in future. Music is a tool rather than a priceless work of art.
Be a thief! Analyse the markings you see in other people’s music. If you spot a symbol which makes perfect sense to you and might be useful, don’t be afraid to ‘borrow’ it!
If you’ve made a mistake more than once, strongly consider writing something in your music. This is a rule I follow myself. Missing an accidental when sight reading is unfortunate, but human. Forgetting it the second time round means I might well miss it again in future so I know I should pencil it in before I play the music a third time. This way simple mistakes don’t turn into bad habits, which are much harder to eradicate.
Musical annotations as a snapshot in musical history
While researching this subject I came across a short video from the British Library about the importance of annotations in historic music editions. Now I’m not suggesting your copy of Telemann’s recorder sonatas will necessarily be of critical importance to musicologists in a century’s time, but clearly there are things we can learn from old scores and the trail of pencil breadcrumbs their owners have left for us!
Have I convinced you yet?
I often tell the groups I conduct that the clink of a pencil returning to the desk of a music stand is one of my favourite sounds. This sounds crazy, but as a teacher I know that if a student has written something in their music they’re more likely correct their errors next time round and that’s got to be a good thing!
If you’re someone who always has to borrow a pencil from a neighbour in rehearsals, perhaps my words may be enough to inspire you to pop one in your instrument case, so you’re prepared next time you need one. I’d love to know your thoughts on this. Are you an enthusiastic scribe, or does your music tend to remain as untouched as a fresh fall of snow? Please do drop a comment below!
