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>> you should stop thinking about it like it's a secret language meant to keep you pesky programmers out of it. > I find it's rarely a constructive thing when

>> you should stop thinking about it like it's a secret language meant to keep you pesky programmers out of it. > I find it's rarely a constructive thing when someone tells others how they "should" think. You're not really offering any evidence to counter the other user, you're essentially just saying "you're wrong, just stop questioning things and get in line." OP is making all kinds of claims about how current keyboards, music theory, and notation ("verbiage" -- jargon?) are overdue for a "refactoring" to the "codebase". My evidence is: the current state of the art of music theory and practice in Western civilization. OP's evidence is hand-waving conjecture not backed by anything. But you want me to defend my side? > get in line If that means "learn your scales like every other grown-up musician" then yes I will be kind of harsh about it. That's the barrier to entry, because no one wants to hear a musician who doesn't know what they're doing. > Your argument is like saying Mandarin must always be written in traditional characters because it's just complex, it's as efficient as it can be. Yet China went from traditional to simplified characters, and Vietnam abandoned characters altogether and uses an alphabet, despite having one more tone than Mandarin. Nothing of the sort. The complexity of language is baked in there. Whether it's one character that says 47 different things depending on the inflection, or 47 characters that describe one thing not depending on inflection, the complexity is going to be there. OP wants to make an improvement to the music system to ostensibly reduce complexity, which while appearing admirable, seems to be based more on his frustration that the "vain professional musicians" are making things too hard for him. Which is misguided energy in my opinion. > You're allowed to say you just personally aren't interested in new notation or theory verbiage. But you need some pretty strong evidence if you want to claim that the current methods are as efficient as they can be when human history shows that most times, lack of innovation is due to cultural and political factors rather than lack of opportunity for improvement. As efficient as theoretically possible, ever, for the rest of time? Probably not. As efficient as is practicable by today's professional musicians? Yes for sure. But improvements are always welcome. > cultural factors There is no way to separate cultural factors from music, which innately involves culture. It's not like music exists in an ethereal vacuum and if it wasn't for politics and culture, music would be better. Music is part of the fabric of culture.

thomastjeffery 6y ago
> If that means "learn your scales like every other grown-up musician" then yes I will be kind of harsh about it. That's the barrier to entry, because no one wants to hear a musician who doesn't know what they're doing. Jimi Hendrix. Elton John. David Bowie. The list goes on. Just because you are happy with an arbitrary barrier to entry does not mean that everyone around you must be. Music is a wonderful thing. Anyone can learn to make it. Telling someone they need to learn their scales first is just condescending. > As efficient as theoretically possible, ever, for the rest of time? Probably not. As efficient as is practicable by today's professional musicians? Yes for sure. > But improvements are always welcome. Hah. You have already proved this statement wrong. You do not welcome changes. You approach the very idea of progress with condescending skepticism. Need more examples? How about the article we are discussing? The fact is that it is prohibitively difficult to market a piano with slightly smaller keys. Getting something like the Janko keyboard to get traction in this industry is practically impossible, and not because Janko's design lacks merit. Look: Nowhere did I say that musicians shouldn't learn scales. That's absurd. Neither did I complain that, "I don't want to learn scales, because it's too hard." On the contrary, I have learned scales. I have been playing music since childhood, and am quite proficient. My point is that learning scales is arbitrarily difficult, by nature of the way we write them and talk about them. We have Ionian, Dorian, Phrygian, Lydian, Mixolydian, Aeolian, and Locrian. We call Ionian "Major", and Aeolian "Minor". When we write anything that isn't Ionian, we use "accidentals". It's a mess. We can do better. We can make learning scales a simpler process. We can make better abstractions for them, which will make it easier to talk about more complicated theory. Instead, people like you insist we all stick with 17th century western notation for eternity, because that's what we've got, and it's good enough. People like you insist that new players must be motivated to learn overtly unnecessary skills, for no reason other than "that's how piano keyboards are shaped". In doing so, you turn away intelligent people who are more interested in music than slogging through the centuries of cruft that traditional western music theory is made of.
- sporkologist 6y ago
  > Nowhere did I say that musicians shouldn't learn scales. That's absurd. Yes you absolutely did. Your whole point is that 11/12ths of musicians' muscle memory is needlessly redundant. Let's see what you got that is better than this. You use a fully transposing MIDI keyboard and play everything on the white keys, am I right?

thomastjeffery 6y ago

> If that means "learn your scales like every other grown-up musician" then yes I will be kind of harsh about it. That's the barrier to entry, because no one wants to hear a musician who doesn't know what they're doing. Jimi Hendrix. Elton John. David Bowie. The list goes on. Just because you are happy with an arbitrary barrier to entry does not mean that everyone around you must be. Music is a wonderful thing. Anyone can learn to make it. Telling someone they need to learn their scales first is just condescending. > As efficient as theoretically possible, ever, for the rest of time? Probably not. As efficient as is practicable by today's professional musicians? Yes for sure. > But improvements are always welcome. Hah. You have already proved this statement wrong. You do not welcome changes. You approach the very idea of progress with condescending skepticism. Need more examples? How about the article we are discussing? The fact is that it is prohibitively difficult to market a piano with slightly smaller keys. Getting something like the Janko keyboard to get traction in this industry is practically impossible, and not because Janko's design lacks merit. Look: Nowhere did I say that musicians shouldn't learn scales. That's absurd. Neither did I complain that, "I don't want to learn scales, because it's too hard." On the contrary, I have learned scales. I have been playing music since childhood, and am quite proficient. My point is that learning scales is arbitrarily difficult, by nature of the way we write them and talk about them. We have Ionian, Dorian, Phrygian, Lydian, Mixolydian, Aeolian, and Locrian. We call Ionian "Major", and Aeolian "Minor". When we write anything that isn't Ionian, we use "accidentals". It's a mess. We can do better. We can make learning scales a simpler process. We can make better abstractions for them, which will make it easier to talk about more complicated theory. Instead, people like you insist we all stick with 17th century western notation for eternity, because that's what we've got, and it's good enough. People like you insist that new players must be motivated to learn overtly unnecessary skills, for no reason other than "that's how piano keyboards are shaped". In doing so, you turn away intelligent people who are more interested in music than slogging through the centuries of cruft that traditional western music theory is made of.

sporkologist 6y ago
> Nowhere did I say that musicians shouldn't learn scales. That's absurd. Yes you absolutely did. Your whole point is that 11/12ths of musicians' muscle memory is needlessly redundant. Let's see what you got that is better than this. You use a fully transposing MIDI keyboard and play everything on the white keys, am I right?