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Rating: 
Summary: A must read for an amateur, good reference for professional.
Review: Being an engineer and a non-professional-but-keen MIDI music maker, I enjoyed reading this book and now have enough courage to print my own music for performance! It is so easy to grasp the material. It is not only a teach-yourself guide but shows the common mistakes musicians make while engraving. A must read for people like me. Worths the money ! Cheers.
Rating:
Summary: friendly and indispensable
Review: Everyone who writes down music needs to own a copy of this, not just composers and arrangers, but music students, copyists, transcribers, and so on. It is by far the clearest, most useful, and most practical book on the subject. It is not encyclopedic, though, so eventually you may need to supplement it with other books.Also recommended: PENTATONIC SCALES FOR THE JAZZ-ROCK KEYBOARDIST by Jeff Burns.
Rating:
Summary: great
Review: I found particulary useful the advice about how actually to draw musical symbols, and I enjoyed reading the chapter on "Popular-Music Notation", which really has to do with special notational practices for film, television, and recording session use,--although I happen to have no need for this sort of thing myself. I have one small objection to lodge, however: the author uses the word "meter" through out to mean time signature. Though the distinction is moot in this context, at this stage of notation, it is important at an earlier stage of notation--that is to say, you need to understand the difference between "meter" and "time signature" in order to decide properly what time signature to use. The distinction is analogous to that between "key" and "key signature". A key signature of two sharps, for example, tells us to sharp all F's and C's and only implies that we are in the key of D major or B minor. A tonal piece of any length and complexity will at some point change key without changing its key signature. Just so, a time signature of 3/4 tells us there will be three quarter notes worth of time in each measure and only implies that we will hear groupings of three beats or pulses. A piece of any length and complexity written will at some point change meter without changing its time signature.
Rating:
Summary: clearest and easiest to use manual on music notation
Review: I was a composition student at a prominent music school and no, I did not know all of the rules of proper notation even as I was turning out scores. Instead of taking a semester class in music copying, why not get this book? It is the clearest and easiest to use manual on music notation that I have ever seen. You will find the information you need quickly and you will see immediate improvement in the quality of your scores. Believe me, composers and arrangers need all the help they can get. Sometimes musicians won't even play your whole notes unless they look just right, honest! With the new computer programs you may not have that particular problem, but the same issue arises as when a non-musician writes music at his computer. Someone writes a violin piece in bass clef, nobody knows how to bow it, and the number of beats per measure does not match the time signature. The computer can sure write pretty notes, but you still have to know how to put them together properly.
Rating:
Summary: clearest and easiest to use manual on music notation
Review: I was a composition student at a prominent music school and no, I did not know all of the rules of proper notation even as I was turning out scores. Instead of taking a semester class in music copying, why not get this book? It is the clearest and easiest to use manual on music notation that I have ever seen. You will find the information you need quickly and you will see immediate improvement in the quality of your scores. Believe me, composers and arrangers need all the help they can get. Sometimes musicians won't even play your whole notes unless they look just right, honest! With the new computer programs you may not have that particular problem, but the same issue arises as when a non-musician writes music at his computer. Someone writes a violin piece in bass clef, nobody knows how to bow it, and the number of beats per measure does not match the time signature. The computer can sure write pretty notes, but you still have to know how to put them together properly.
Rating: 
Summary: This book is essential for all composers and arrangers
Review: My book covers all essential aspects of traditional music notation. My experience as a teacher of music theory at the college level has shown that students of composition are very weak in their knowledge of the rights and wrongs of music notation. My book serves to correct this fault in a clear and concise manner. Even for those composers who produce musical scores on a computer program, they must have a clear grasp of notational principles, since the computer does not know all of the rules. A score that is correct in every way in terms of notation is extremely important if you expect to receive performance.
Rating: 
Summary: I didn't find it that helpful
Review: This book is essentially a primer on the basics of how to notate music by hand, meaning how to draw noteheads, space things, etc. It does not contain information on score layout, terminology, etc. that are also essential to notating a piece of music. For instance, it will tell you how to draw a fermata, but not the common practice rules for how and where it should appear in an orchestral score and parts. Since I was looking more for these specific rules rather than for the basics, I was disappointed with the book.
Rating:
Summary: I didn't find it that helpful
Review: This book is essentially a primer on the basics of how to notate music by hand, meaning how to draw noteheads, space things, etc. It does not contain information on score layout, terminology, etc. that are also essential to notating a piece of music. For instance, it will tell you how to draw a fermata, but not the common practice rules for how and where it should appear in an orchestral score and parts. Since I was looking more for these specific rules rather than for the basics, I was disappointed with the book.
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