---
product_id: 9694082
title: "Behind Bars: The Definitive Guide to Music Notation (Faber Edition) Illustrated Edition"
brand: "elaine gould"
price: "€ 10.83"
currency: EUR
in_stock: false
reviews_count: 7
url: https://www.desertcart.nl/products/9694082-behind-bars-the-definitive-guide-to-music-notation-faber-edition
store_origin: NL
region: Netherlands
---

# Behind Bars: The Definitive Guide to Music Notation (Faber Edition) Illustrated Edition

**Brand:** elaine gould
**Price:** € 10.83
**Availability:** ❌ Out of Stock

## Quick Answers

- **What is this?** Behind Bars: The Definitive Guide to Music Notation (Faber Edition) Illustrated Edition by elaine gould
- **How much does it cost?** € 10.83 with free shipping
- **Is it available?** Currently out of stock
- **Where can I buy it?** [www.desertcart.nl](https://www.desertcart.nl/products/9694082-behind-bars-the-definitive-guide-to-music-notation-faber-edition)

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## Customer Reviews

### ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ THE Guide to Music Notation
*by C***S on March 4, 2025*

If you're using modern notation software, most of them try to enforce the standards outlined in this book, but it's still a super engaging read if you care at all about how music notation looks and what all the little rules are behind it.The sections on scoring and page layout are still incredibly useful even if you don't care about all the little spacing details for notes and stems and articulations.

### ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ Read this review!!!
*by R***M on November 28, 2016*

I recommend this book to any one who wants to know anything and just about everything about the rules of music notation. This book is completely thorough on this subject. I bought it since it had a positive review by Sir Simon Rattle who recently stepped down as the conductor of the Berlin Philharmonic. If someone with that type of music knowledge expertise has remarks like that, surely his opinion carries a lot of weight in my book. I am an arranger/composer for a wide variety of styles and I use the Finale software for my publishing. However, like the author in this book states: "I hope that a through understanding of the principles set out in this book will complement - indeed complete - the armoury of skills, short-cuts and techniques that the modern musician sitting at a computer has to hand." (--Introduction page xi). With that being said, I must say that NO music software can replace the human element. I personally am a perfectionist as to how the sheet music comes out of my printer. Matter of fact, I was one of those who used blank music sheets and ink to write down music not so long ago. My music school covered in a general way some of the notational aspects of this book. Some of these aspects needed to be refreshed in my mind; hence the functionality of this book. For instance, what length should the stems in a group of notes or a single note be? What determines the angle of the beams in a group of notes? No matter how much tweaking I constantly do in Finale, I still have to manually correct a big portion of the music within that software. Nowadays, many music schools do not even cover notational aspects like the ones found in this book and people tend to believe that any musical notational software will print out the perfect printed job. Do not get me wrong, using a notational software does aid in helping you publish music (I would not want to go back to using blank sheets of music and ink!) but as the author brilliantly mentions in her book's introduction: your acquired notational knowledge will complement your software skills and make you sheet music look awesome! Written music like any other written form of communication should be clear. Therefore, in the case of printed music, musicians should be able to focus on playing the music presented to them rather than having to do any guess work as to what could possibly be the arranger or composer's intention. With all of this being said, I strongly recommend this book!

### ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ THE book to get if you want to learn how to write sheet music
*by E***C on January 30, 2022*

I have been writing music for a long time, but primarily rock music. When I began writing orchestral music I very quickly learned that there is A LOT that I don't know about sheet music. After some helpful feedback to some of my early attempts at writing sheet music for an orchestra I found this book which contains information on "the correct way" to do almost everything in music engraving. Every thing you could imagine is in here: how to change key signatures, how to make symbols (like slurs, hairpins, accents, staccato marks, and ties) less messy, how to write for harp, how to write for transposing instruments, how to calculate alignment (by multiplying ratio figures or the lowest common multiple), how to angle beams, correct use of accidentals, voice leading between staves, handling different voices in one staff, etc.If you want to become a well-versed copyist, engraver, or even a composer who is not laughed at, you can either spend years studying hundreds of scores yourself, or you could let Elaine Gould do the work for you and read what her extremely well researched book has to say.This book will take you to a higher level as a composer and musician, and, I feel, this book should be in the library of every serious music lover.

## Frequently Bought Together

- Behind Bars: The Definitive Guide to Music Notation (Faber Edition)
- The Study of Orchestration
- Essential Dictionary of Orchestration: The Most Practical and Comprehensive Resource for Composers, Arrangers and Orchestrators (Essential Dictionary Series)

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*Product available on Desertcart Netherlands*
*Store origin: NL*
*Last updated: 2026-02-24*