Compose two styles
Rather than blending two styles into a middle, this assigns them roles: one carries the structure, the other appears as an accent. Where the two fight, it says so before you start.
How to divide the work
- Composition
- Follow Sheet Music Cover: Title across the upper half, scene below, publisher block at the foot
- Type
- Set in Sheet Music Cover's manner (Title in ornamental lettering, composer credits dropped to light type), and let Staff Notation's lettering (Uniform head and stem weight, accidentals given clear space ahead) appear only where you want the eye to catch.
- Material
- Ground in Sheet Music Cover's material (Three or four flat lithographic colors over a yellowed paper ground); bring in exactly one thing from Staff Notation (Thin staff lines, note heads printed darker than the spaces).
- Colour
- Build on #e9e6dd, #67635d, #171615 and admit one accent from #e9e6dd, #67635d, #171615.
Where they fight
- Sheet Music Cover and Staff Notation share no intent, so the contrast has to become the subject rather than something to smooth over.
- Roughly 1809 years apart. Keep one of them recognisably period rather than letting both drift into the middle.
Caution
- Sheet Music Cover Lining up ornamental faces without painting the scene of the song leaves a cover holding the signs of a period and none of its subject.
- Staff Notation Setting every bar to the same width breaks the link between spacing and duration, so fast passages jam and sight readers fall out.
Image prompt
An original image that takes its structure from Sheet Music Cover (Style, 1820s–1920s) and its accent from Staff Notation (Style, 11th century–). Structural cues: Scenes of the song; Ornamental title lettering; Lithographic color; Publishers' stock frames. Accent cues, used sparingly: The five-line coordinate system; Time running left to right; Clefs and key signatures; Bars dividing time. Composition: Title across the upper half, scene below, publisher block at the foot. Type and lettering: Title in ornamental lettering, composer credits dropped to light type. Let one material quality come from the second style: Thin staff lines, note heads printed darker than the spaces. Mood: Nostalgia, Intimacy, Exhilaration, Trust, Technology, Calm. Color: build on #e9e6dd, #67635d, #171615 with a single accent drawn from #e9e6dd, #67635d, #171615. Constraints: do not imitate, reference or name any specific artist, studio, brand, character or copyrighted work. Produce an original composition in the general period languages described above.
Related entries
- Sheet Music Cover 1820s–1920s / Style / Printed Ephemera
Lithographed covers kept alive by the piano in the parlor. Illustration of the song's scene combined with ornamental lettering into a single picture, and before the record sleeve existed this was how music was shown.
- Staff Notation 11th century– / Style / Notation Systems
Notation that fixes pitch to a coordinate, running from Guido's invention of the line to the five-line staff. Time reads left to right and pitch up and down, a flat design still in use after a thousand years and the longest-lived format in information design.
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