This guy is showing off his “cool and casual” technique.

Technique is a very specific definition pertaining to the ability to carry the task with predetermined results, given a certain amount of time, energy and resources. In music instrumentation and notation it is often up to the composer to indicate what techniques should be used for specific passages, and this is written into the score. Although there are a standard number of techniques, or articulations, used by players of certain instruments, there are nearly infinite realms of possibility for playing instruments in non-traditional configurations.

It’s always great to have all the instructions when you start.

Music scores are a late development in the history of printing. It was 20 years after Gutenberg’s invention of the printing press that the first printed notation was created. As royalty supported music and composers for their own enjoyment and entertainment, the use of printed music was something that was usually suppressed. Most of the scores of written music prior to the 20th century were handwritten by the composer, along with each of the individual parts.

The 1980’s were a time of strong creativity and potential.

In 1984, when Will Harvey was 15 years old, he achieved fame for writing Music Construction Set, the first commercial sheet music processor for home computers. Music Construction Set was a prototype for much of today’s scorewriting software. As a powerful and novel concept for entertainment software, it was quickly ported from the original Apple II version to other popular platforms of the era, including the PC and the Commodore 64.