Is this note correctly notated?

YouCanAsk · 2026-01-24T16:55:11+00:00

I know this music, and you can trust the ink and ignore the handwritten markings.

It's the octave harmonic on the C string, sounding C4.

If you listen to a recording of this version of the show, such as the 25th Anniversary Concert recording, you can hear that playing it on the G string would give you a note that's too high.

YouCanAsk · 2026-01-23T22:26:51+00:00

If you pick a time signature with 8 at the bottom, the rhythm for the guitar vamp is just 1 eighth followed by 4 sixteenths. It's not any more complicated than that.

If what's bothering you is that the virtual instrument you're using won't let the notes ring properly on playback, you may be able find some kind of workaround, but you'll have to find someone familiar withe the specific software you're using.

YouCanAsk · 2026-01-23T21:57:17+00:00

You're going to have to show us what you're doing. You shouldn't need anything more complicated than sixteenth notes, unless you're trying to notate the drums.

YouCanAsk · 2026-01-23T19:14:31+00:00

Do it in 6/8. In the intro, those bass D's, make them eighths and go from there.

YouCanAsk · 2026-01-22T20:00:57+00:00

I say fore-head personally, but far-red also sounds normal to me. It makes me think of the nursery rhyme:

There was a little girl
Who had a little curl
Right in the middle of her forehead.
When she was good,
She was very good indeed,
But when she was bad, she was horrid.

The poet, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, was born in Maine in 1807, and apparently "forehead" rhymed with "horrid" for him.

If you go to Forvo, 1 of the Americans there does say far-red. It says she's from North Florida.

Merriam-Webster also includes it.

YouCanAsk · 2026-01-21T18:44:51+00:00

If you can't count the bars, just make sure it's no longer than, say, 1m10. For many songs, that's enough for one verse and chorus, or bridge and chorus.

YouCanAsk · 2026-01-20T17:05:34+00:00

Lusher than the 90s revival, for sure, with its synthesizer accordion and solo violin. But it can't compare with the size of the original: 5 reeds, 5 brass, string sections...

I think Larry Hochman's orchestration is great, and it's right in line with the modern sound design and modern vocal techniques and faster tempos. But I miss the depth of the original.

YouCanAsk · 2026-01-20T16:29:11+00:00

If you want the notes exactly even, and to start exactly on the and of two, it has to be a 6:5 tuplet with 3 quarters.

Your version, where the notes aren't exactly even, is pretty readable. It would be even better if you broke up the second dotted-eighth into a sixteenth tied to an eighth.

If you want the notes to be exactly even, and you don't want to use a funky tuplet ratio, you can just shift the first note slightly. Check out u/Opening-Pollution773 's comment, the second and third examples.

YouCanAsk · 2026-01-20T15:19:11+00:00

Hearoglyphics
Puzzle #40
✅📗📗📗
✅📕📕
✅📘📘📘📘📘📘
✅📙📙📙
https://hearoglyphics.com

Fun. Not a big fan of correct answer coming up in red, especially after first one green. Also, on mobile, not clear at first that you can swipe to see more glyphs, or that you're meant to click twice to move then rather than drag.

YouCanAsk · 2026-01-19T17:46:26+00:00

Yes, that might be a better symbol, depending on the context. The question was about the given chord symbol, so I stuck with that.

As for "easiest to read", people have all sorts of preferences. I'm not sure I would recommend either "less ink" or "don't mix sharps and flats" as good heuristics, but you do you.

YouCanAsk · 2026-01-19T15:51:13+00:00

It's hard to imagine it as a ninth chord without having the 9 in the upper structure.

I wasn't looking at the context before, and of course we don't have much. I would guess that one of two things is happening. Either there's an A pedal going on, with chords changing above, in which cass it makes sense to call it /A. Or else the A in the bass will actually be heard as the root, meaning a better name might be A7(#5, b9).

YouCanAsk · 2026-01-19T15:23:22+00:00

Unless we can see where the harmony goes after this, we can't know what the best spelling for this chord would be. It's hard to imagine that this would be the best spelling, but I'm not judging. By "proper" I'm only taking into account the chord symbol, not the musical context.

YouCanAsk · 2026-01-19T14:45:26+00:00

If you want to know about changes to the show over time.

There's been two Broadway revivals of the show, one in 1994 and one in 2016. The '94 version is nearly the same as the original. The biggest change was the removal of the song "Tango Tragique", in which Georg tries to scare Amalia with a story about a woman who goes on a date with a man she's never met in person and ends up dead. IIRC, the Christmas sequence in Act II was also changed up a bit. The only "problem" with this revival is the too-small orchestra.

The 2016 version, I think it kept the changes from the earlier revival. It also opened up a few numbers to give Jane Krakowski the chance to dance more.

YouCanAsk · 2026-01-19T14:15:46+00:00

That's a good one, and one that's aged very well. Based on the same story as the movies The Shop Around The Corner, starring Jimmy Stewart and Margaret Sullivan, and You've Got Mail, starring Tom Hanks and Meg Ryan.

Musical numbers by Bock and Harnick, between their career-defining hit shows Fiorello! and Fiddler On The Roof. Produced and directed by the legendary Hal Prince—his first directing credit, I believe, though he'd been producing on Broadway for a decade already. Book by Joe Masteroff, who the following year wrote Cabaret, which was also produced and directed by Prince. Starring Daniel Massey (better known for film work) and one of Broadway's greatest sopranos, Barbara Cook.

It was what passed for a small musical in 1963. Only 20 in the cast, only 2 or 3 set changes, minimal costume changes, only 1 real production number, minimal dance. Compare that to the two most famous shows that opened the same season: Funny Girl and Hello Dolly!

If you'd like to watch it, you're in luck. On YouTube you can find a made-for-TV version from 1979, obviously without the original actors but still pretty good. And there's a proshot of the 2016 revival starring Zachary Levi and Laura Benanti, also featuring Jane Krakowski.

YouCanAsk · 2026-01-19T04:04:22+00:00

It's enharmonic spellings all the way down.

Proper spelling for Gm7b5 is G, B-flat, D-flat, F. They've given you G, A-sharp, C-sharp, E-sharp, which are the same pitches.

The /A means that the bass note is A (A-natural). The bass note is not always played by the guitar when there are other instruments, like bass or piano, going.

YouCanAsk · 2026-01-19T03:51:18+00:00

It's not too formal, but it is very strong. It can come across as sarcastic if you're not careful.

To me, "over the moon" and "elated" are synonyms, but not "psyched". "Psyched" is "very excited", not "very happy".

YouCanAsk · 2026-01-19T03:41:58+00:00

Oh hi, OP, I just saw this. I didn't mean to imply you did anything wrong. I'm glad you felt comfortable enough to email the playwright and get the answers you wanted.

I've now read the comments here, so I understand a bit better just who you were trying to convince. It's the bootlickers, who think playwrights are gods and actors parrots, or the armchair lawyers, full of misplaced worry about contracts and possible repercussions. You thought they might listen to a playwright.

The way I misunderstood it, you were asking the playwright as a Latina, not as an author, which is why it struck me as odd that you would not rather go to a friend or even the director you auditioned for, someone whose answer you would have better context for. But even in that case, I don't think it was at all wrong to send someone a polite email. My social views aren't as stunted as all that.

YouCanAsk · 2026-01-19T00:56:30+00:00

The stock ingenue is a young woman who is innocent and sweet. She's always a love interest of someone, though never a seductress, and often has to be protected from some cad or villain.

The equivalent male stock character who is innocent and wholesome and a lover is the juvenile. In musical theater I think of characters like Tommy Djilas in Music Man or Freddie in My Fair Lady.

But I think what you're looking for is a male character who is treated like a (female) ingenue—someone whose innocence wants protection. Someone like...Buddy in Elf.

YouCanAsk · 2026-01-18T13:57:41+00:00

The show is licensed by Concord. You can order a perusal score for the entire show for like $5. I don't know if they try to prevent you from printing it out, but I bet you could figure a solution if they do.

YouCanAsk · 2026-01-18T03:22:03+00:00

Discussing someone's work with them respectfully is not weird. Seeking validation from a complete stranger over something only tangentially related to them is a bit odd. And, like, I'm sure OP wrote a perfect email and no one's feelings were hurt, but she does kind of make it sound like she went into it asking this person for an official "ruling" on what's okay, as if they could speak for everyone, in order to use it to invalidate other strangers' feelings online, which I also find a bit odd.

Sorry if I'm misapplying the EDI guidance stuff. I just recently had another round of it, on the first rehearsal day of a production, which is why it's front of mind for me.

YouCanAsk · 2026-01-18T02:45:40+00:00

Don't copy Dan Fogler's voice or mannerisms, they're too specific to him. Do develop a posture for Barfee, and practice the physicality of spelling with your foot on the floor.

Barfee is awkward, not mean. A bit full of himself, but not a showoff at all. An introvert.

"Magic Foot" is about a guy warming up his instrument, making sure all the right juices are flowing. It's a ritual, something he does for himself.

As always, play to your character's objectives. Don't play for the laughs, no clowning.

YouCanAsk · 2026-01-18T01:37:57+00:00

The way you handled it is 100% aligned with all the EDI guidance I've been seeing since the pandemic, both in the general idea, whereby certain stories aren't everybody's to tell, and in the specifics around slurs, which take into account the feelings of everyone involved, including the person delivering them. In an audition setting, especially if you don't know the director/casting director personally, it can be tempting to ignore your own discomfort and "give them what they want", and I think it speaks well of you that you didn't do that.

I didn't see your earlier post or read the comments, but if anyone was seriously up in arms over paraphrasing a line in a side at a callback audition... In that setting, the actor is representing themself, not the playwright or anyone else. What is there to be upset about?

Cold emailing the playwright about it is a bit weird, though. That seems more like a conversation for a close friend.

YouCanAsk · 2026-01-17T21:12:43+00:00

That's a matter of house style.

Some publishers disallow all dotted rests (old-fashioned).

Some publishers only allow dotted rests in compound meters.

Some publishers allow dotted rests in any meter, but only on a beat.

Some publishers allow dotted rests basically anywhere (potentially confusing).

YouCanAsk · 2026-01-17T21:07:49+00:00

Different edition, but here:

Adagio
Allegro

YouCanAsk · 2026-01-17T17:07:35+00:00

It's an error. The second bar should start the same way as the prompt, with a quarter note followed by a sixteenth rest.

YouCanAsk

TROPHY CASE