Music notation (or musical notation) is the practice of prescribing which notes are to be played by one or more instruments, and provide just enough information such that the performance by players will be exactly as intended when engraving sheet music.
During the past five centuries a widely accepted set of (implicit) rules has grown to which music notation must adhere to be comprehensible by most players. Without the aid of a computer, music engraving was a tedious job, requiring skills and knowledge. Most of these rules, skills and knowledge are implemented in the music notation software program MusiCAD.
Even when all formal requirements for music notation are met, there are more notation conventions that will greatly enhance score readability depending on usage requirements like layout. When notating music you should focus primarily on the notes, and start thinking about layout as late as possible.
One of the great advantages of computer assisted notation is the ability to hear what you have written, which makes it easy to catch mistakes that could pass unnoticed until the first group rehearsal...