3 ms·

Have you played with trackers? 2d grid, time is down, instruments(channels) are right, each cell can have a note or "stop this channel". There also can be modi

by ajuc 10y ago

Have you played with trackers? 2d grid, time is down, instruments(channels) are right, each cell can have a note or "stop this channel". There also can be modifiers in each cell (louder, start tremolo, slide this note into the next, etc). It's most applicable to keyboard music, I think. Sight-reading this without rehaersal would be trivial, right? https://www.dosbox.com/wiki/images/3/3a/ScreenShot004.gif https://www.dosbox.com/wiki/images/3/3a/ScreenShot004.gif

soundwave106 10y ago
The main problem I can see with that sort of system is that it probably would get quite unwieldy for decently complex chord patterns (try scoring a chord pattern up the keyboard, say, like what's at the beginning of Tchaikovsky's Piano Concerto 1 for a start -- http://imslp.org/wiki/File:PMLP02744-Tchaikovsky-Op23v1FSmuz.pdf http://imslp.org/wiki/File:PMLP02744-Tchaikovsky-Op23v1FSmuz...). For other styles I think it would be pretty good; although the score won't be as compact, it might be easier to understand a "fake book" scored piece (ala what's used a lot in jazz) written this way, let alone pop (which often can be represented with a melody line and Roman numeral chords).
analog31 10y ago
For better or worse, the only way to guess if this notation can be sight-read, is for someone to train themselves to do it. And to make matters worse, learning to sight-read for adults is so hard that it's virtually prohibitive. Every musician I know who can sight-read fluently, learned it as a kid. So it's virtually impossible to try out a new notation system. But my impression is that this would be phenomenally hard to read, especially in a live performance situation where your attention is divided between the sheet music and other stuff. If I were staring at a solid grid of text, and were to glance away for a split second, I'd be lost. Part of sight-reading for me is being able to read ahead by a few notes or even a few bars. It may also be that conventional notation displays a lot more density on a single page, because a 16th note takes up no more space than a whole note.

by ajuc 10y ago

soundwave106 10y ago

The main problem I can see with that sort of system is that it probably would get quite unwieldy for decently complex chord patterns (try scoring a chord pattern up the keyboard, say, like what's at the beginning of Tchaikovsky's Piano Concerto 1 for a start -- http://imslp.org/wiki/File:PMLP02744-Tchaikovsky-Op23v1FSmuz.pdf http://imslp.org/wiki/File:PMLP02744-Tchaikovsky-Op23v1FSmuz...). For other styles I think it would be pretty good; although the score won't be as compact, it might be easier to understand a "fake book" scored piece (ala what's used a lot in jazz) written this way, let alone pop (which often can be represented with a melody line and Roman numeral chords).

analog31 10y ago

For better or worse, the only way to guess if this notation can be sight-read, is for someone to train themselves to do it. And to make matters worse, learning to sight-read for adults is so hard that it's virtually prohibitive. Every musician I know who can sight-read fluently, learned it as a kid. So it's virtually impossible to try out a new notation system. But my impression is that this would be phenomenally hard to read, especially in a live performance situation where your attention is divided between the sheet music and other stuff. If I were staring at a solid grid of text, and were to glance away for a split second, I'd be lost. Part of sight-reading for me is being able to read ahead by a few notes or even a few bars. It may also be that conventional notation displays a lot more density on a single page, because a 16th note takes up no more space than a whole note.