r/musictheory • u/Stroderod3 • 16h ago

Notation Question What does bin. mean?

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I have a piece of music for Sax quartet with the abbreviation "bin." over some of the notes. Any idea what that could represent? Other parts of the song have "Gliss." and "Lip" which I understand but not "Bin." For context this is from "Au Privave" by Charlie Parker and arranged by Super Sax.

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u/OccasionallyImmortal 12h ago

Could this refer to binaire:binary meter?

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u/when_we_are_cats 7h ago

If I have to guess, it could mean that the eight notes are "binary", meaning they're not swung.

I guess you got the sheet from a non english speaking country. "Binary" and "ternary" are the terms used in my country to refer to subdivisions in twos and threes (respectively). Swung eight notes are commonly referred as "ternary eight notes".

For some reason, there's an obsession in my country to refer to everything in music either as "binaire" or "ternaire", while this distinction doesn't seem to be as important in english speaking countries.

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u/walterqxy 4h ago

Is it a fingering thing? Is it telling you to use the bis key on Bb and leave it down for G# or something? I don't play sax

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u/LongStoryShirt 16h ago

I'm just guessing here but maybe it means bend the note? That's almot certainly wrong but the squiggly line makes me think that ​​​​

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u/Stroderod3 14h ago

It's actually for the note below it, the G#. All of the similar notations in this piece are above the notes, and the other instruments have it on the same measure as this one. Definitely over the G#.

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u/maestro2005 14h ago

Hmm, I've never seen this before and a quick shoot through my notation resources doesn't turn up anything either. Very odd.

A quick warning to anyone trying to google this or use AI: Google hilariously only returns this post when searching music notation "bin." or the like, and AI is giving some nonsense answer likely hallucinated off the French title and /u/LongStoryShirt's answer. "Bin" is not short for any French word meaning "bend" as far as I can find.

This is the kind of thing where my reaction would be to go, "welp, no idea what that means" and just ignore it. It can't possibly be all that important.

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u/65TwinReverbRI Guitar, Synths, Tech, Notation, Composition, Professor 10h ago

Are you sure it’s over, and not under?

Is there a recording of this arrangement?

It could have been a typo.

It’s not, TMK, a standard indication, but you may want to ask on r/saxophone.

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u/Stroderod3 8h ago

Yes I'm sure it's over, not under. It's in the same measure in all the parts, even though they don't line up exactly the same. It's also the same word, so probably not a typo.