What the play button on the score is for

Today, any music notation software meant to be a serious challenge to the dominance of Finale and Sibelius must have computer playback capabilities (and some other features beyond the scope of this post). Computer playback can be an extremely useful tool, provided one understands its limitations.

One of the dismaying things about the music composition program at a local university is the over-reliance on Finale's computer playback. A comp lesson seems to consist of the instructor and student sitting down in front of a computer and listening to Finale play back the latest draft of the student's piece. The teacher asks a few questions and offers some advice based on what they just heard. The instructor is of course someone whose chamber music has been played many, many times by actual musicians (and maybe his orchestral music once or twice), so he's aware of the ways in which computer playback falls short, but he might not always successfully impart this awareness to his pupils. One of the problems with this heavy emphasis on computer playback leads to is a uniform badness to performances of student compositions by student musicians who at best rehearsed the piece thrice.

At the other extreme we have composers who avoid computer playback like the plague. If you can perfectly hear in your mind what the actual raw notes are saying, that's great. But I think even the most innately musical mind can be led astray. Let me tell you a little story. Many years ago, I wrote a keyboard piece, by hand. I had three different pianists read it through. Each time I heard what I expected to hear. But then this fourth pianist also read it through, but he stopped not that far into it. "Do you really mean a sixth here?" he asked.

It was a passage in octaves. But at one point, I needed one more ledger line than I had actually written. The first three pianists must have automatically assumed the whole passage is in octaves. Would I have caught my mistake if I had entered the music into Finale prior to showing it to the pianists? Maybe, maybe not. It is unlikely, though possible, that I would have carried the mistake over into the Finale file (especially if for whatever reason the piano keyboard interface was unavailable and I was forced to use the mouse to enter the music). But, as soon as I listened to the playback, I would have noticed the wrong note.

Here's a list of things computer playback is good for, in order from very good to not so much:

• Spotting wrong pitches. (Especially in tonal music; unintended sevenths should stick out like sore thumbs).
• Spotting wrong rhythms. (But keep in mind the computer is capable of greater rhythmic precision).
• Spotting missing staccato and accent articulations.
• Getting some idea of the correct metronome marking. (Some composers get way too finicky about metronome markings. I suggest rounding off in 5s or 10s: if, for example, quarter note equals 74 sounds perfect in computer playback, it might be best to write 75 or 70 for the human performers).

And here's a list of things computer playback should not be relied on for, from not so much to not at all:

• Spotting missing tenuto articulations, legato. (In the absence of articulations, computer playback tends to be legato).
• Spotting missing dynamics markings.
• Deciding dynamics markings (forte, piano, etc.) to achieve the desired balance of voices (e.g., in computer playback, a violin can be heard regardless of which other instruments are playing).
• Predicting how an Audience will react to a live performance.

Also, it is worth mentioning that you must not assume human players will make the same assumptions as the computer, for example, in regards to dynamics after long rests.