Elements Of A Score

Sir Duke – Stevie Wonder

A: This is an 8^th note (quaver), which has it's name because in the Common time signature (4/) there is 8 quavers in a bar. This quaver is the note D. This piece is in the key of B major, so this note would normally be #D, but because of the ‘Natural’ sign in front of it, it becomes a D. the ‘Natural’ sign cancels out a # or a b and brings it back to the natural tones.

B: Fm7 is an extended chord, which is the 4^th interval in the key of B. The chord is minor, which you know because of the little m behind the F. Usually a chord is a triad and has 3 notes, the 1^st, 3^rd  and 5^th degree of the scale, but because of the 7 at the end of this chord, you also play the 7^th degree of the scale. In the F major scale are these notes: F G A Bb C D E. I have highlighted the notes that would be played in this chord if it were a Major chord, but because it is minor, you have to flatten the 3^rd and the 7^th degree of the scale, which then makes it F-Ab-C-Eb.

C: NC stand for No Chords. This means that the person playing this piece should not play chords, only the melody line/notes on the sheet.

D: D.C. stands for Da Capo (Italian). When you reach this sign, you go back to the beginning of the piece and play from there again. Because this sign says D.C. al Coda, you go back to the beginning and play until the ‘To Coda’ sign and then you jump back to the ‘D.C. al Coda’ sign, from where you continue.

-On the sheet music there is no intro where in the track there is. That is probably because the intro mainly contains brass instruments and as the sheet doesn't show that, they have left it out. 
-On the sheet music they only give you the melody line and the chords, where in the recording there is lots of instruments such as brass, percussion, bass, guitar. This gives you the opportunity to re arrange it more freely than if they would have given you all the parts.
- The melody line on the sheet music is simplified as it would be very difficult to notate all the little passing notes etc. that Stevie Wonder sings. (eg. in bar 5, the second time around, he sings 'Here' really high but on the sheet it does not say that and there is a #A in bar 9 which Stevie sings as an A natural. In bar 1 mu-sic should be #D to #F, not to E and 'self' should be a G quaver and not B to G semi quavers) it This also allows someone to interpretate it the way they want to.   
- in bar 21 till 28 and 37 44 until (on the sheet) there is an instrumental part that has been simplified as it is quite advanced. Certain parts are played faster in the track and should be
- In bar 28, the last two notes (F) are really low on the sheet but in the song they are played really high.
- In the track the part from bar 29 until the end is repeated, which they do not do on the sheet music.
- There is no signs for dynamics on the sheet while on the track there is loads of dynamics. This does allow you to interpretate it the way you want 

Is She Not Passing Fair? – Edward Elgar

A: This is called a Brace, whose purpose is to tie the treble clef and the bass clef together. This is done so that you can easily identify that the two parts are meant to be played together by one person, rather than separate.
The straight line that connects the two bars is called the Bracket. A bracket ties together all instruments that come from the same 'family', eg. all string instruments, brass instruments, percussion instruments etc. 

B: MF stands for Mezzo Forte, which means ‘moderately loud’. The pin behind it is the crescendo sign, which means ‘gradually getting louder’. So when you put those two signs together it means that you start off playing moderately loud and then you gradually get louder. You stop getting louder and stay at the same volume at the end of the pins.

C: This sign is called a slur. A slur binds two or more notes of a different pitch together. When a slur occurs, you are meant to play the notes slurred/legato, which means that you play them smoothly, without breaks in between.

D: On this occasion, this sign is a tie, because a tie connects two or more notes of the same pitch together and initially makes the note value longer.  When you play this, you sustain the note throughout the entire tie, you don’t press the note again.

E: Ped. stands for pedal, which means that at this sign you should press down the sustain pedal. I assume, because it is located underneath the tie, you keep the sustain pedal down for as long as the tie lasts.

F: Colla Parte means that the instrumentalists have to follow the tempo that the lead player is playing, whom is playing freely.  Because this is the ending of the song, it could well be that the vocalist decides to slow the tempo down to indicate that it is indeed the end, so the pianist needs to be aware of  this and adjust his playing to the ending the vocalist is going for.

- The pianist on the track plays rubato, which means that the speed changes frequently throughout the piece (eg. when he sings 'On earth, in sea, or air....' it speeds up andat 'Is she not passing fair....' it slows down again), where on the sheet it does not tell you to do that. Rubato is very common in classical music. The sheet music does have a lot of signs for dynamics, such as F, MF, Cresc., and the arrows. But even though, for example, F implies that the pianist should play louder, it does not tell how loud it has to be. This means that there is still a lot of freedom to improvise on those aspects.           One example of that is that in the first bar at the F, the pianist is not playing as loud as in bar 15 at the F.