sforzando music engraving

It's dead easy to work out what your music is going to cost.

You pay the engraving charge
+ any special printing & delivery options
+ any special turnaround options
+ any professional musical services

Because regular e-mail delivery and regular turnaround are both free, most people will just pay the engraving charge—which can be as little as £2.50!

Engraving charge

The price you pay depends on how many pages there are in your original source manuscript. You pay per page.

If you give us A4 pages or thereabouts
Pages 1-20 cost...	£2.50 each	50% off for students!
Then pages 21-50 cost...	£2.00 each
Then pages 51+ cost...	£1.50 each

If you give us much bigger pages than A4
Pages 1-20 cost...	£3.00 each	50% off for students!
Then pages 6-50 cost...	£2.50 each
Then pages 51+ cost...	£2.00 each

We won't rip you off. When we work out the total number of pages, we'll only count pages that actually have at least a few bars of music on them.

Also, there's no minimum charge. So if your manuscript is just one A4 page long, it'll cost you just £2.50, and that's that.

If you give us a back-to-back original, we'll count written sides, not physical sheets. (In other words, two pages are two pages whether they're written out separately or on two sides of the same sheet. A 10-page manuscript is still 10 pages, even if you write it out back-to-back on just 5 sheets of paper.)

Special printing & delivery options

Regular delivery by e-mail as a high-resolution PDF is free. Other delivery methods cost a little more because we have to cover our printing costs as well as Royal Mail's postage and packaging.

For e-mail delivery
As a hi-res PDF	free
As a page-by-page set of hi-res graphics (for commercial printers)	50p per graphic (of any size)

For postal delivery
As a bundle of printed paper	£1.50
If the bundle has more than 20 sheets in it	+50p per extra 10 sheets
As a page-by-page set of graphics on a CD-ROM	£1.00 +50p per graphic
For more than one copy	just multiply the price accordingly

These prices assume first-class Royal Mail delivery to a UK address. Of course we're happy to arrange special delivery, recorded delivery, international delivery, courier or whatever you like: we'll simply bung the charges on your bill.

Delivery charges are cumulative, so if you want a PDF and page-by-page graphics and a hard copy and a CD-ROM, the cost will add up.

Finally, if you want your original manuscript returning to you by post, we'll simply bung this in the same envelope as your printed score and work out the postage cost including it. (If you opt for e-mail delivery, we can still post your manuscript to you at the costs shown above, but it'll probably work out cheaper for you to send us a disposable manuscript in the first place.)

Special turnaround options

You can expect most jobs to take 10 working days. If you catch us at a quiet time, it may be significantly less. If your job is long or complex—more than a dozen pages or more than a dozen instruments—it may be longer.

In any case, as soon as we receive your manuscript and instructions, we'll let you know our estimate. If you have any special requests (like "I must have this by the end of the month"), we'll do our best to meet them.

If a deadline is looming and you need express turnaround, this will cost you more.

Special turnaround options
To get your score back within 48 hours (PDF by e-mail only)	double the engraving cost
To get your score back within 24 hours (PDF by e-mail only)	treble the engraving cost

When doing the maths here, it's like Scrabble: you should work out the complete engraving cost before doubling or trebling. For instance, if you needed a 25-page A4 manuscript engraving within 24 hours, it'd be 20x£2.50=£50 for the first ten pages, plus 5x£2=£10 for the next 5 pages: £60 in total. Then you'd multiply that by 3 for 24-hour turnaround, for a total of £180. Eeek!

Also, these turnaround times aren't guaranteed. They depend not just on our availability but also on the complexity of your music. By 'complexity' we mean not just length, but number of staves, unusual notation, lots of lyrics, and so on.

So the golden rule is: you should always drop us an e-mail to check your requirements before you request special turnaround options!

Professional musical services

The final thing you might want to consider is our professional services. These are basically added extras which you might find useful for big or important projects. They're all optional.

For more details on any of these options, or for a precise quote, just ask.

Professional musical services
For a once-over to check for musical rationality (time signatures, instrument ranges, beaming, enharmonic spellings and much more)	+50p per page
For particularly ancient, damaged, scruffy or otherwise illegible manuscripts	+50p per page
To add a new piano reduction, generated from 1-8 staves	+50p per page
To add a new piano reduction, generated from 9+ staves	+£1 per page
To transpose an entire piece into a new key (and check for any absurdities of range or enharmonic spelling that may result)	£2.50 flat fee
To fully mark up a score and parts for rehearsal, adding rehearsal marks (bold letters), cues and so on	+50p per page
To present your score and/or parts as a bookshop-quality bound volume	ask for prices
To post scores and parts out to a set of addresses you specify (e.g. for orchestral players)	£1.50 per recipient
To create a computerised MIDI file recording of your score	£2.50 flat fee
To use a specific house style of your choice (specified fonts, design, etc.)	+£2.50 flat fee

Remember, all our services are carried out by a professional musician, and they come with the promise that if you find an error, we'll fix it without quibbling.

Again, we won't rip you off. All our "per page" prices refer to the pages of your original manuscript, not our finished product. So even if our finished product ends up much longer because of extracted parts, multiple copies and so on, we won't charge you any more.

For really important or complex projects, you may also want to consider our premium service. With this service, a musician will meet with you and discuss your score requirements in detail, so you can explain the technicalities of what you want us to do. We'll then check back with you repeatedly throughout the engraving process, sending you working drafts for your approval to make sure we're on track.