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Reading music is not hard, playing it is. You'll be comfortable with reading standard notation relatively quickly compared to how long (forever) it takes to ge

Reading music is not hard, playing it is. You'll be comfortable with reading standard notation relatively quickly compared to how long (forever) it takes to get your fingers to move to the right keys at the right time. Standard notation may not be ideal for many instruments, but it is perfect for piano. It was designed off of the keyboard layout after all. I've sometimes been asked if there is an equivalent of guitar tabs for piano. Yes, I say, there is, sheet music.

burke 8y ago
I really don’t think this is true. I don’t think what’s provided here is better for piano than standard notation, but much of standard notation is optimized to be easy to write by hand. We don’t really need that constraint anymore, and could probably come up with a notation that would be easier to build familiarity with without throwing away information.
- furgooswft13 8y ago
  I'm curious what you, or anyone else, thinks could be improved without just being different. I've seen suggestions such as ditching accidentals and just giving every note their own line or space, but that would make it much harder to recognize common chords or shapes in different keys. Really the problem is the piano layout itself. It's designed to make playing C major easy and everything else hard (though many experienced players would say they prefer a scale with lots of black keys such as B major because those are easier to hit accuratley). Of course there's already an answer to that, the Janko keyboard[1], which has been available for well over 100 years. It has a regular layout for easy transposition, and allows each hand to reach a wider range of notes without large jumps. Perhaps music notation would have evolved differently if this type of keyboard had been prominent. Alas we got what we got, and have a massive catalog of music designed for it, and already experienced piano players certainly are not going to try to help change that. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jank%C3%B3_keyboard https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jank%C3%B3_keyboard

burke 8y ago

I really don’t think this is true. I don’t think what’s provided here is better for piano than standard notation, but much of standard notation is optimized to be easy to write by hand. We don’t really need that constraint anymore, and could probably come up with a notation that would be easier to build familiarity with without throwing away information.

furgooswft13 8y ago
I'm curious what you, or anyone else, thinks could be improved without just being different. I've seen suggestions such as ditching accidentals and just giving every note their own line or space, but that would make it much harder to recognize common chords or shapes in different keys. Really the problem is the piano layout itself. It's designed to make playing C major easy and everything else hard (though many experienced players would say they prefer a scale with lots of black keys such as B major because those are easier to hit accuratley). Of course there's already an answer to that, the Janko keyboard[1], which has been available for well over 100 years. It has a regular layout for easy transposition, and allows each hand to reach a wider range of notes without large jumps. Perhaps music notation would have evolved differently if this type of keyboard had been prominent. Alas we got what we got, and have a massive catalog of music designed for it, and already experienced piano players certainly are not going to try to help change that. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jank%C3%B3_keyboard https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jank%C3%B3_keyboard