4 ms·
My point is that the perceived "ubiquity" of notation is far exceeded by the plethora of ways music is recorded outside notation or recorded in a symbolic forma
by qmmmur 6y ago
My point is that the perceived "ubiquity" of notation is far exceeded by the plethora of ways music is recorded outside notation or recorded in a symbolic format that is nothing like western notation (from which is obviously the context of the OP).
I can think of sample-based music (MPC/Decks/Acousmatic tradition/Ikeda/Microsound/Chartier/Field-recordings), improvised music, as well as the most obvious modern development of MIDI data and the piano roll which is not an interchangeable format with a "score".
If we aren't exclusively talking about "notation" in a more general sense, we haven't even touched on the wealth of folk/traditional music out there with literally no recorded symbolic formats or concept of a written history such as australian aboriginal music.
- PeanutNore 6y agoMIDI data can easily be converted into western score notation and vice-versa. You can write a musical score in western notation using MuseScore, export it as a MIDI file, and then import that into Ableton and see it on the piano roll. It's all one big "the map is not the territory" situation. The same piece of music is still the same piece of music whether it's written in staff notation, programmed into a sequencer in some proprietary format, written out in LSDJ code on a GameBoy, drawn in a piano roll, or played from memory by someone who doesn't know how to read any of those.
- qmmmur 6y agoyeah, but just because a program can function as an adapter between two formats doesn't mean the person who wrote the music understands the intricacies of italian dynamic markings or the connotations of notation style. By the same logic any translation of a non-english novel is equivalent. Buh-buh
- jcelerier 6y ago> as well as the most obvious modern development of MIDI data and the piano roll which is not an interchangeable format with a "score". midi is pretty much a piano-oriented subset of western music theory in terms of expressive power
- qmmmur 6y agoYes, it is commonly known that velocity is expressed in scores in 127 discrete and linear steps. I mean, the differences beyond the X and Y axis of time and height (pitch) are the only thing that are similar and even then traditional notation is far more expressive compared to the declarative nature of MIDI.
- jcelerier 6y agovelocity in scores can be expressed with arbitrary precision simply by the composer annotating it - a quaver annotated with "akin to a velocity 50 grand piano on a 1988 roland keyboard" is still a valid western-tradition score