The Relative Score Notation is a new way of writing scores. The basic idea is to read the notes by their position (1, 2, ..., 7) within the diatonic major scale rather than their absolute name (A, B, ..., G). The motivation behind this is to have a notation adapted to instruments like the guitar or violin, that have a 'transposition invariant' interface, in the sense that they do not favour any special key (as opposed to the piano keyboard which favours the C scale). Using this adapted notation has many advantages: easier reading, simple transposition of the scores, worthy information for improvisation.

The concept of Relative Notation is presented and more thoroughly discussed in the case of the guitar in the paper Notation Musicale Relative: écrire des partitions pour les instruments invariants par transposition, available below. Also available is RelMusicTeX, an altered version of MusicTeX that supports relative score notation. This is handy both for creating scores from scratch or for printing existing scores in relative notation.

Available for download:

Notation Musicale Relative: écrire des partitions pour les instruments invariants par transposition. Alexandre Gerussi, unpublished, 2002. Paper (.ps.gz)

• RelMusicTeX 0.91 (.tar.gz): a TeX (LaTeX) package for producing scores using relative score notation.
• MusicTeX 5.20 (.tar.gz): a TeX (LaTeX) package by Daniel Taupin for typesetting polyphonic or instrumental music. RelMusicTeX is based upon this version (5.20) of MusicTeX, so it is most probably needed. The latest version of MusicTeX should be available in the CTAN.
• Ave Maria (.ps.gz): as an example, this is Ave Maria by Charles Gounod and J.-S. Bach, originally typesetted by Daniel Taupin using MusicTeX, printed here in relative notation with RelMusicTeX.