4 ms·

As someone trying to learn to read sheet music as an adult, it is clear to me that the system is in dire need of a refactor. I'm always excited to see alternati

As someone trying to learn to read sheet music as an adult, it is clear to me that the system is in dire need of a refactor. I'm always excited to see alternative notations, but you are right about the problem where there is a vast amount written using the notation we have right now. I look forward to the day when I can don a pair of high-tech glasses, look at something written in standard musical notation, and have it "transnotated" on the fly to something easier to read!

analog31 9y ago
One huge problem is that very little of the literature is in computer readable format, otherwise we'd probably already have translators and more open exploration of alternative notation systems. But I don't know how much of the problem is our notation, versus the fact that learning to read is hard. It's almost like becoming fluent in a foreign language, which we know gets harder as we get older. I started learning to read music when I was 6. I don't know what it's like to learn reading as an adult.
- armagon 9y ago
  I have no doubt that learning to learn to read English would be a real pain. (There's a poem called "The Chaos" that makes fun of how we spell; see http://ncf.idallen.com/english.html http://ncf.idallen.com/english.html ) Since I know it, I have no interest in learning a different system that maps graphemes onto phonemes (ex. Shavian, or the International Phonetic Alphabet). I suspect that that is part of how it is with our standard musical notation. The people who already know it have no interest in learning another system, even if it were demonstrably "better" (for some definition of better). It is my opinion that our current system expresses a lot of irreducible complexity, but also has a lot of incidental complexity due to quirks of history. Accidental marks, in particular, strike me as making a backwards-compatible change that is easier for the people already locked-in to the system, but has made it more difficult for learners in the centuries since. There's a really simple change that would roughly halve (!) the effort to learn to play music written with a grand staff. Right now, it is, from the bottom up, composed of a bass staff, one ledger line, followed by a treble staff. Simply changing it for a treble staff, two ledger lines, and another treble staff, would make it so much easier for people learning to read the music. Going one step further, if every octave looked the same -- why should half the Cs be on lines, and half on spaces? -- that would make it far easier to learn the notation. (And don't get me started on the timing system!) I heard of a fluent sheet reading kid who was introduced to Klavarskribo. Apparently after 45 minutes of learning, he (she?) was able play pieces he'd never played before, just because the incidental complexity was reduced.
  - analog31 9y ago
    Indeed, I've had the experience of trying to explain music notation to non musicians, typically engineers. You spend more time apologizing than explaining. Perhaps another thing that saves standard notation from itself is that most of the time, we're not actually reading all of the notes. In my case, working within a particular musical genre (jazz), my brain knows what the next notes will be, even if I'm not looking at the page. And when working up a classical piece, you've memorized it after a couple weeks, and the chart is just a place to annotate special things like fingerings and problem areas. There was an article about a famous piano concerto, where someone discovered a mistake in the accepted transcription, and nobody even knew about it because everybody just instinctively played the right note.

analog31 9y ago

One huge problem is that very little of the literature is in computer readable format, otherwise we'd probably already have translators and more open exploration of alternative notation systems. But I don't know how much of the problem is our notation, versus the fact that learning to read is hard. It's almost like becoming fluent in a foreign language, which we know gets harder as we get older. I started learning to read music when I was 6. I don't know what it's like to learn reading as an adult.

armagon 9y ago
I have no doubt that learning to learn to read English would be a real pain. (There's a poem called "The Chaos" that makes fun of how we spell; see http://ncf.idallen.com/english.html http://ncf.idallen.com/english.html ) Since I know it, I have no interest in learning a different system that maps graphemes onto phonemes (ex. Shavian, or the International Phonetic Alphabet). I suspect that that is part of how it is with our standard musical notation. The people who already know it have no interest in learning another system, even if it were demonstrably "better" (for some definition of better). It is my opinion that our current system expresses a lot of irreducible complexity, but also has a lot of incidental complexity due to quirks of history. Accidental marks, in particular, strike me as making a backwards-compatible change that is easier for the people already locked-in to the system, but has made it more difficult for learners in the centuries since. There's a really simple change that would roughly halve (!) the effort to learn to play music written with a grand staff. Right now, it is, from the bottom up, composed of a bass staff, one ledger line, followed by a treble staff. Simply changing it for a treble staff, two ledger lines, and another treble staff, would make it so much easier for people learning to read the music. Going one step further, if every octave looked the same -- why should half the Cs be on lines, and half on spaces? -- that would make it far easier to learn the notation. (And don't get me started on the timing system!) I heard of a fluent sheet reading kid who was introduced to Klavarskribo. Apparently after 45 minutes of learning, he (she?) was able play pieces he'd never played before, just because the incidental complexity was reduced.
- analog31 9y ago
  Indeed, I've had the experience of trying to explain music notation to non musicians, typically engineers. You spend more time apologizing than explaining. Perhaps another thing that saves standard notation from itself is that most of the time, we're not actually reading all of the notes. In my case, working within a particular musical genre (jazz), my brain knows what the next notes will be, even if I'm not looking at the page. And when working up a classical piece, you've memorized it after a couple weeks, and the chart is just a place to annotate special things like fingerings and problem areas. There was an article about a famous piano concerto, where someone discovered a mistake in the accepted transcription, and nobody even knew about it because everybody just instinctively played the right note.