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one improvement to the current piano music notation is making both staves start/end on the same notes. ie, EGBDF for both. right now a student learns the "rig

one improvement to the current piano music notation is making both staves start/end on the same notes. ie, EGBDF for both. right now a student learns the "right hand" / treble staff to be EGBDF... you'll mentally learn that the third line is a B note - maybe natural/sharp/flat, but it's a B. great. now you learn the bass clef and all the work you did for the treble clef is not applicable anymore: cause it's GBDFA! WTH? the third line is now a D and not a B like before. sure, youre supposed to learn both clefs together, but especially for beginners and sight reading, it wouldve been nice if both had the same sequence. especially when theyre only a 3rd apart! a possible way to achieve this is to add an A to the top of the treble clef: EGBDF[A], and add and E to the bottom of the bass clef [E]GBDFA. now both are are easier to learn and you dont have to constantly shift a third in your head. the 3rd line is always a B in both staves. Another improvement, especially for piano music is to make the white/black key indication carried in the note shape/head. right now the note head carries duration information. it could also include whether it's a black key or white. this is useful especially for complex keys with many sharps/flats. this way whether you're in C major or Ab Minor, you dont have to constantly remember which notes are accidentals. sure, youre supposed to learn the scale and remember (including all the cancellations, double sharp/flats), but it's massively easier if this useful info is carried in the note shape. eg: square note head = black, triangle = white. sorry for the rant!

pinneycolton 9y ago
I'd argue that both scales do indeed "start" and "end" on the same note - middle C. If I were playing an arpeggio that spanned both staves, I think I'd find your method harder than simply moving in thirds from the E on the treble clef to middle C to the A on the bass clef. Interestingly enough, other clefs do already exist. The "C" clefs (alto and tenor clef) identify middle C and simplify note reading for instruments that have atypical tessiturae.
- acjohnson55 9y ago
  Fun fact, the : of the bass clef and the spiral of the treble clef indicate the F and G, respectively, which the clefs are stylized versions of.
lameloid 9y ago
The thing about your second suggestion, although quite useful for pianists, is that it "detracts" from the experience of playing other instruments. Music theory is not confined to a singular instrument. Guitar tabs suffer from the same problem; you're not learning how to play music, you just learn how to operate a guitar as a mechanical tool (e.g. if I play the 3rd fret of the 2nd string, I'll achieve the desired result, nevermind what that actually is). The beauty of a musical notation system independent of any instrument is that it works for all of them! Regarding your first suggestion, there is actually a relation between the two staves: the ledger line above the bass clef and below the treble clef represents the same note: a middle C. Also, keep in mind that, the "larger" the staff, the harder it is to recognize quickly the note to play. It's not a bad idea though, and worth exploring!
abecedarius 9y ago
A bigger problem: even within the same staff, the same notes on different octaves look different. Like, a middle E goes through the first line of the treble staff, but a high E goes between the top two lines. Music “rhymes” at octave intervals, but the staff spans a different, clashing interval. There’s a new notation whose name I’m forgetting which resolves this problem — I’d expect it to make sight reading significantly easier to learn.
jay-anderson 9y ago
As others have said there are bigger issues than this. Becoming fluent in two clefs is unfortunate, but doesn't take too much time. Adding most lines I could see becoming more confusing and it takes up more vertical real estate. The overall score will expand vertically. My biggest problem with music notation is it being centered around the key of c major. When ever critiques of current music notation come up I like to bring up the janko keyboard. It has an isometric layout which means that any interval will have the same shape no matter the starting pitch. With this layout if you learn a major scale in one key you've learned it for every key. Transposing from one key to another is just shift your hands. I haven't seen an alternative music notation system which has advantages like this while still being compact and readable. See here for some experiments in attempts to improve the situation: http://musicnotation.org/ http://musicnotation.org/
- acjohnson55 9y ago
  But what if we simply used 2 F clefs? We'd only need two ledger lines between them for C and E. Given how many ledger lines we put up with above the top staff, I think it would be pretty easy to work with. After 2 decades, I _still_ read treble clef better than bass clef.
  - jay-anderson 9y ago
    This depends on the instrument. For many instruments reading ledger lines below the staff is more common. For instance french horn players are used to reading well below the treble clef staff and tuba players well below the bass clef staff. Standardizing on one clef isn't sufficient to fix the issues in my opinion.
    - acjohnson55 9y ago
      I really mean as a replacement for the grand staff.
craigsmansion 9y ago
Changing the number of lines for the clefs would only result in easier "counting" early on in the learning process, and becomes unimportant when notes no longer represent a distance from a known note, but as notes unto themselves. Even though the prospect of initially having to memorise only half of the notes, this amount of time is trivialised by the time it takes to get your fingers to respond by hitting the right note fluently. Also, even easier than your proposed extra line would be to double the treble clef and indicate it's to be played 1 octave lower. I haven't seen this in mainstream teaching materials, and I surmise this isn't done because of the trivial time saved in the long run [1]. As for your second point: I strongly feel that for complex keys muscle memory and interval awareness trump extra visual information. In other words: if you are playing in a complex key, you should already have this awareness, and if you don't, you shouldn't be playing in this key. There might be an interval between starting to learn a key, and becoming familiar with it, where extra information regarding the colour of the key might be useful, but I'm unsure if it outweighs the extra visual clutter, especially when considering that, when mastering a complex key, one presumably would have already mastered less complex keys, and already has a developed sense of muscle memory and considerable interval awareness. [1] I have seen notes that have the value of the note imprinted on them. These are used mainly in children's teaching material, and are dropped fairly quickly after the concept of note-key correspondence is established.
TheOtherHobbes 9y ago
The reason they're a third apart is because middle C goes on an imaginary line half way between the other two. The grand staff is really a single giant clef with the middle line missed out for clarity, and some extra space added around it to allow for leger lines. Your system would need extra legers above/below the clefs, so it wouldn't be an obvious improvement. Coloured note heads are better at conveying pitch than note shapes - which are already used in percussion notation. But coloured note heads cost a lot more to print, and scores are expensive enough as it is. Having notation that is consistent across all instruments, not just piano, is a good thing. I doubt anyone would duplicate current notation if it was designed from scratch today. But like a lot of things - including CSS and HTML - it's a mass of accreted compromises with a massive existing user base. No one is going to re-notate centuries of music with a new system, no matter how much more logical it is. It's not going to happen for the purely practical reason that most music will still be in the old system, and musicians would still have to learn that system to play it.
- Y_Y 9y ago
  Then again, if someone came up with a new One True Notation, I can imagine someone producing a translator (like Google's augmented reality one) that takes pictures of historical scores and gives them back in the new style.
- edjw 9y ago
  > Coloured note heads are better at conveying pitch than note shapes - which are already used in percussion notation. Shape notes are used in singing traditions such as Sacred Harp and Christian Harmony to help singers find the right pitch. It works very well. I don't know if anyone uses them for instrumental music. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shape_note https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shape_note
crispinb 9y ago
I've recently taken up the piano. Being a guitarist, I already knew treble but not bass clef. It took me about 5 minutes to run through the bass clef enough to memorise it, and a few days of practise to 'see' the notes instantly. Learning a musical instrument is inherently a long-term project. Any aspect of it that can be done and dusted in a few days is barely worth consideration.
jakewisse 9y ago
The two staves used in piano music (tend to) represent the two voices of the left and right hands. In fact, notation for any pitched instrument uses a clef suited to its register, or interval of notes it is capable of playing, so that they are centered on the five-line staff. It wouldn't make sense to notate music for every instrument on a single expanded staff, where each one only utilizes five lines. This ends up being particularly helpful when reading scores, because you can see at a glance where each instrument is playing in their register. Who's playing the melody? Just look for the notes that are highest up on the staff. Notes that are high in an instrument's register tend to have more high frequency partials and stand out in the mix.

pinneycolton 9y ago

I'd argue that both scales do indeed "start" and "end" on the same note - middle C. If I were playing an arpeggio that spanned both staves, I think I'd find your method harder than simply moving in thirds from the E on the treble clef to middle C to the A on the bass clef. Interestingly enough, other clefs do already exist. The "C" clefs (alto and tenor clef) identify middle C and simplify note reading for instruments that have atypical tessiturae.

acjohnson55 9y ago
Fun fact, the : of the bass clef and the spiral of the treble clef indicate the F and G, respectively, which the clefs are stylized versions of.

lameloid 9y ago

The thing about your second suggestion, although quite useful for pianists, is that it "detracts" from the experience of playing other instruments. Music theory is not confined to a singular instrument. Guitar tabs suffer from the same problem; you're not learning how to play music, you just learn how to operate a guitar as a mechanical tool (e.g. if I play the 3rd fret of the 2nd string, I'll achieve the desired result, nevermind what that actually is). The beauty of a musical notation system independent of any instrument is that it works for all of them! Regarding your first suggestion, there is actually a relation between the two staves: the ledger line above the bass clef and below the treble clef represents the same note: a middle C. Also, keep in mind that, the "larger" the staff, the harder it is to recognize quickly the note to play. It's not a bad idea though, and worth exploring!

abecedarius 9y ago

A bigger problem: even within the same staff, the same notes on different octaves look different. Like, a middle E goes through the first line of the treble staff, but a high E goes between the top two lines. Music “rhymes” at octave intervals, but the staff spans a different, clashing interval. There’s a new notation whose name I’m forgetting which resolves this problem — I’d expect it to make sight reading significantly easier to learn.

jay-anderson 9y ago

As others have said there are bigger issues than this. Becoming fluent in two clefs is unfortunate, but doesn't take too much time. Adding most lines I could see becoming more confusing and it takes up more vertical real estate. The overall score will expand vertically. My biggest problem with music notation is it being centered around the key of c major. When ever critiques of current music notation come up I like to bring up the janko keyboard. It has an isometric layout which means that any interval will have the same shape no matter the starting pitch. With this layout if you learn a major scale in one key you've learned it for every key. Transposing from one key to another is just shift your hands. I haven't seen an alternative music notation system which has advantages like this while still being compact and readable. See here for some experiments in attempts to improve the situation: http://musicnotation.org/ http://musicnotation.org/

acjohnson55 9y ago
But what if we simply used 2 F clefs? We'd only need two ledger lines between them for C and E. Given how many ledger lines we put up with above the top staff, I think it would be pretty easy to work with. After 2 decades, I _still_ read treble clef better than bass clef.
- jay-anderson 9y ago
  This depends on the instrument. For many instruments reading ledger lines below the staff is more common. For instance french horn players are used to reading well below the treble clef staff and tuba players well below the bass clef staff. Standardizing on one clef isn't sufficient to fix the issues in my opinion.
  - acjohnson55 9y ago
    I really mean as a replacement for the grand staff.

craigsmansion 9y ago

Changing the number of lines for the clefs would only result in easier "counting" early on in the learning process, and becomes unimportant when notes no longer represent a distance from a known note, but as notes unto themselves. Even though the prospect of initially having to memorise only half of the notes, this amount of time is trivialised by the time it takes to get your fingers to respond by hitting the right note fluently. Also, even easier than your proposed extra line would be to double the treble clef and indicate it's to be played 1 octave lower. I haven't seen this in mainstream teaching materials, and I surmise this isn't done because of the trivial time saved in the long run [1]. As for your second point: I strongly feel that for complex keys muscle memory and interval awareness trump extra visual information. In other words: if you are playing in a complex key, you should already have this awareness, and if you don't, you shouldn't be playing in this key. There might be an interval between starting to learn a key, and becoming familiar with it, where extra information regarding the colour of the key might be useful, but I'm unsure if it outweighs the extra visual clutter, especially when considering that, when mastering a complex key, one presumably would have already mastered less complex keys, and already has a developed sense of muscle memory and considerable interval awareness. [1] I have seen notes that have the value of the note imprinted on them. These are used mainly in children's teaching material, and are dropped fairly quickly after the concept of note-key correspondence is established.

TheOtherHobbes 9y ago

The reason they're a third apart is because middle C goes on an imaginary line half way between the other two. The grand staff is really a single giant clef with the middle line missed out for clarity, and some extra space added around it to allow for leger lines. Your system would need extra legers above/below the clefs, so it wouldn't be an obvious improvement. Coloured note heads are better at conveying pitch than note shapes - which are already used in percussion notation. But coloured note heads cost a lot more to print, and scores are expensive enough as it is. Having notation that is consistent across all instruments, not just piano, is a good thing. I doubt anyone would duplicate current notation if it was designed from scratch today. But like a lot of things - including CSS and HTML - it's a mass of accreted compromises with a massive existing user base. No one is going to re-notate centuries of music with a new system, no matter how much more logical it is. It's not going to happen for the purely practical reason that most music will still be in the old system, and musicians would still have to learn that system to play it.

Y_Y 9y ago
Then again, if someone came up with a new One True Notation, I can imagine someone producing a translator (like Google's augmented reality one) that takes pictures of historical scores and gives them back in the new style.
edjw 9y ago
> Coloured note heads are better at conveying pitch than note shapes - which are already used in percussion notation. Shape notes are used in singing traditions such as Sacred Harp and Christian Harmony to help singers find the right pitch. It works very well. I don't know if anyone uses them for instrumental music. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shape_note https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shape_note

crispinb 9y ago

I've recently taken up the piano. Being a guitarist, I already knew treble but not bass clef. It took me about 5 minutes to run through the bass clef enough to memorise it, and a few days of practise to 'see' the notes instantly. Learning a musical instrument is inherently a long-term project. Any aspect of it that can be done and dusted in a few days is barely worth consideration.

jakewisse 9y ago

The two staves used in piano music (tend to) represent the two voices of the left and right hands. In fact, notation for any pitched instrument uses a clef suited to its register, or interval of notes it is capable of playing, so that they are centered on the five-line staff. It wouldn't make sense to notate music for every instrument on a single expanded staff, where each one only utilizes five lines. This ends up being particularly helpful when reading scores, because you can see at a glance where each instrument is playing in their register. Who's playing the melody? Just look for the notes that are highest up on the staff. Notes that are high in an instrument's register tend to have more high frequency partials and stand out in the mix.