Recording Music: Writing Charts

Video Transcript

"Now I'll talk about writing charts. We just spoke about arranging, which meant figuring out what instruments are going to be played on each track of your album, each song. Now assuming you have a larger scale song which incorporates orchestral instruments, and maybe horns or percussion of some kind, you're going to need to notate all of these parts unless of course you can play all of these instruments on your own. So for example, if you had a string quartet, you're going to need to know how to write this music out for these instruments. For example, if you're writing for viola, they're going to read a C clef, which is a clef different than the traditional G clef, or the bass clef which you would see on piano. Now essentially that clef just moves the lines of the staff, making the lines and spaces different letter names, the same way that G clef and bass clef do. However, you'll also need to know range. What's the lowest note and the highest note that each of these instruments can play. All of these things are going to be major factors when you write the music out for the musicians, because if during the recording session you need to make changes, that can be very costly. Especially if you're paying the performer by the hour."