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Looks like an interesting piece. Is there a recording of it somewhere?

To the notation: I like the overall look and neatness of the score. I don't care for the redundancy of the artificial harmonics notation. Some of the technique text could be a little closer to the stave without crowding it. And maybe it's an artifact of how it displays on the screen, but the ties and slurs look a bit thick. Does it include a performance note clarifying how the simultaneous meters, tempos, bars, etc., are to be managed?

 

At the conservatory I self studied hand written musical notation – when everyone was already using Sibelius or Finale and pen and paper was 'so not happening anymore'.

Recently found these pages:

 

Doug Gibson: Thanks.

 

Good work. I still think handwritten notation should be taught to some extent since it makes you more aware of a lot of things you're gonna not even think about when you do it on a computer. Looks like you may have used a calligraphy pen. I had trouble writing scores in ink because I am left-handed. As you move rightward, your hand touches the still-drying ink, and then "reprints' a ghost of it when you move rightward again. Pure joy. So I couldn't copy out my own parts, but I could still do scores in pencil, using a Staedtler drafting pencil, 0.7 and 0.9, and some homemade score paper.

But handwritten scores were the good old days in some ways, and not so much in others. It feels more organic and direct. I developed a bump on my middle finger where the pencil would rest. Took several years to go away after I switched to Sibelius. And sometimes I'd have to stop and soak my writing hand in warm water when up against a deadline. I think I had grip issues. But I like having the facility of computer notation now, although I feel a bit separated from it since it involves parts of the brain that don't involve composition.
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EDIT: I looked at it again at a higher resolution and see that you may have used a regular pen after all, and went to the extra trouble of multiple swipes to make thicker beams. Lots of work. Good attention to detail.

 

Actually I was using three different thicknesses of drafting pencils. An then going over a couple of times and angling in certain places.

 

That was my method before making the switch to Sibelius.

The first scan is from when I was doing a reduction of the second build of Also Sprach... I went a little thin on the beams because Strauss is a tough task master and I was getting worn out. The colored lines were my code for whether a figure, line for chord is doubled one or two octaves lower in the orchestration, or not at all.

The second scan is part of a page from a piece of mine where I did better on the beams and flags.

 

Sweet baby jesus, I wish I had half your penmanship @Paul Poole! Those look incredibly tidy!

I have more of a chicken scratch (I believe that's what it is called) style myself, so I am only slightly jealous.

Only slightly.

Slightly.

...

 

Wow those look absolutely amazing!

 

I found this one from a piece of mine about 5 years before switching to computer notation:

Oh, my handwritten sketches have always been proper chicken scratch, and lots of shortcuts I had come up with. Looks nothing like these excerpts. (Can't mix up the left and right hemispheres when you're sketching.) But when I would do a transcription (which was always intended for archival) or a presentation score, I notated with more of an "engraving" mindset. Eventually I came to simplify the engraving standards by using pretty much just a slash in place of a black notehead. It's easier and faster, and you don't need anything more than that for archival. My main concern was applying the spacing rules I'd memorized from the Ted Ross book. It helps me make better sense of the music and makes for a better presentation. I'm not a copyist, but I was initially taught it by a "New York" copyist named Bill Brinkley. Calligraphy pen, angle, draftsman's table, etc. (As it turns out, the New York copyists scoff at the work produced by the "LA copyists," as the latter could be a bit sloppy. Haha. Computer notation changed all that, of course.). I never used a calligraphy pen after studying with him, because I didn't do it for the calligraphy part, and I'm a lefty anyway, which makes ink-writing impossible for me. Before Sibelius, I got to where I could hardly write any music down without a draftsman's triangle (pictured below) in my free hand. You use isometric ellipsis templates for slurs and ties by the way (also pictured). And having a draftsman's table really saves your back from hunching over like Quasi Modo.

 

Ha, that's certainly not my regular, native handwriting. See my reply to Matthias Calis below.

 

Thanks.

 

To your first question: Yeah, that’s Bill.

To your second: Oh, okay. Ha, no, I have no internet presence. No website, FB, Twitter, or anything else. I strenuously avoid social media. I guess I can be mildly eccentric in certain ways—according to friends—but I don’t mow the front yard in the nude or anything fancy like that. I prefer word of mouth and personal relationships. I wouldn’t be against having a website someday, at most, if I could figure out how to come up with a non-burdensome system to make it informative for composers and musicians—a sort of interface between the two, maybe. My concern there would be in being able to keep up with it. I wouldn’t want to eventually abandon the thing because I lost interest, like with that Christmas toy your Aunt Jimmy gives you that says it’s for “Ages 8 to 11,” and you’re gonna be 12 in three weeks. Maybe I’ll fill out more of my profile at some point when I am less new here, or just mention the odd factoid as it comes up in a thread now and then.

 

Thank ye kindly. Nice to be here.