A Question About Musical Notation
 

I am learning a Mark Hanson piece ("You Don't Know Me"). I find one element of the musical notation puzzling and I can't find any mention of them online.

These instructions are above the staff and below the chord designations. A typical one reads;

1/3BV----------¬

It is clear that the instruction applies only to the notes directly under it. There are many of these instructions. Here are a few more;

1/2BIV---¬
BII-----------¬
BIX----------------¬

It doesn't really affect my ability to learn the piece since I can always listen to his performance (and quite frankly I can find nothing in the performance to suggest a meaning for them), I am just curious.

Barre-ing. 1/3 bar would be 2 strings, 1/2 Barre is 3, B is full six string bar.

The roman numeral is the fret to barre at.

It looks like it's a designation for how long/for which notes to hold a barre, or partial barre.

For example 1/3BV, likely means hold a 1/3 barre (i.e. two strings) at the fifth fret. (A "barre" is the act of holding down more than one string with the same finger, usually, but not always, at the same fret. Parkening, for example, used to like to barre diagonally across two frets, fretting some strings at one fret and the others at the next higher fret, using one finger. Barres can be done with any finger, not just the index finger.)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Barre_chord

Thanks so much!

I use that notation where appropriate. Sometimes it reflects how many strings you need to barre (there being some flexibility), sometimes how many strings you should barre.