THE NOTATION DICTIONARY (or, what the things I made up mean, and how to perform them successfully).
- FT – Free Time (as a time signature): to be played without an implied pulse, beat, or tempo. As a performer, try your best to obscure the pulse. This may be achieved by purposely rushing/dragging, constantly drastically changing tempo (example: 60BPM to 175BPM to 12BPM), but it is important you are paying attention to the band to purposely clash with them. If you are in Free Time, bars are benchmarks that indicate that the changing of sections.
- x(infinity) – open repeats (above a repeated section): continue to play the repeated section until the cue to stop the section is signalled.
- the artsy wiggly graphics – Implied Music Lines (IML) \ im-əl \ : The main unknown feature of the scores are the IMLs, lines with a consistent width and a uniform colour across a piece. As the name suggests, IMLs imply the existence of musical notation without presenting it, inviting the performers to interpret and improvise upon the IML as needed.
- There are two categories of IMLs: True IMLs (TIMLs) and Helpful IMLs (HIMLs). Helpful IMLs are lines that are presented alongside additional information, such as rhythm, style, chord symbols, etc. In this case, the job of the performer is to interpret what’s left, which is often the melody and/or rhythm. True IMLs lack context unlike HIMLS, and implore the performer to abstractly interpret the IML in not only tone and rhythm, but also in genre, harmony, dynamics, timbre, etc.
- Though they are vague, there are two rules with IMLS: 1: Do not neglect the colour of the line. Colours are full of emotion and context, but often that emotion and context is different from person to person. As the composer, I’m inviting the performer to put a little bit of themselves in the piece. 2: If the lines are connected all the way through, you must play all the way through. If there are gaps, you MUST take space and pause within the phrase.
- Q – cue \ kyü \: an alternative/shorthand way of writing cue. HUH WHAT is about one’s personal destruction of language as an exercise, and I personally hate the word cue is spelt, it just rubs me the wrong way.
- Q4END – cue for end \ kyü-fər’-end \: a signpost so the performers know when to end.
- Q2S – cue to start \ kyü-tu-sta:t \: the verbal/physical signpost that the song has started.
- the w shapes – dublyus \ də-blyü \: I made up a name for them because they, unlike IMLs, imply a specific way of playing, instead of a prompt for improvisation. Dublyus indicate to the performer UP DOWN UP DOWN UP. This may be interpreted in ways such as dynamics, pitch, timbre, or the physical in which the performer takes up.