Keep a pad and pencil by your bed, too, in case you wake up inspired and
need to write down something quick.When composing by hand the old-fashioned way, a good mechanical pencil
with a good eraser is a must. A mechanical pencil — one of those with the
clicky thing at the end that pushes the lead through the tip — is perfect
because it ensures that your note stems, heads, and so forth will all be a con-
sistent size. Use a pencil with larger diameter leads, at least 0.5 mm and up to
0.7 mm. You will find it easier to fill in note heads, and the tip won’t break off
quite as often. Have a standalone eraser nearby as well. Usually the areas to
be erased are larger than the areas to be rewritten.You can probably buy staff paper at your local music store by the sheet, note-
book, or even by 500-page ream. If not, order through online bookstores like
Amazon or download printable PDFs from many free music Web sites, includ-
ing http://www.incompetech.comand http://www.blanksheetmusic.net.Using Software ................................................................................................
Printed music these days is made, as mentioned in Chapter 2, with the aid of
computer music scoring/notation/composition programs such as Sibelius,
Finale, and Logic. Even a simple chord chart can quickly and neatly be printed
out with these programs. After years of working with nearly illegible hand-
written charts, almost everyone is happy about this development. Most of
the figures in this book were created in Logic and Finale.In college music courses, learning your way around these computer pro-
grams is often part of the required curriculum. Understanding one of these
programs can aid tremendously in the generation of scores and parts.Within these computer programs, you have the option of playing your music
into the computer with a MIDI controller (and a metronome to keep you in
time) or entering the notes with a mouse or keyboard. The MIDI controller is
usually a keyboard, but you can use guitar, drums, woodwind, and even vibes
MIDI controllers if you are more at home with one of these.The important thing is to get your tune into the machine. You can edit your
music within the program later, if need be. Notes can be moved around,
deleted, copied, pasted, lengthened, shortened, and otherwise ornamented.
You can add or enharmonically change accidentals. Your work can be audi-
tioned within the program using the sound libraries that are included in most
packages, and you can easily transpose into any key. The printout can be for-
matted in various ways and with various styles, including guitar tablature.24 Part I: Basics and Rhythm