3 ms·

I would much prefer music notation where time - the duration of notes and rests - was indicated by space, rather than symbols. That would be one less thing to

I would much prefer music notation where time - the duration of notes and rests - was indicated by space, rather than symbols. That would be one less thing to decipher. (This website does not appear to cover that option, considering this undesirable)

virgil_disgr4ce 6y ago
This quickly becomes intractable and useless for most musicians, as all it does is waste space, and in many cases is impossible to even use. If you can remember the duration of notes based on a few different symbols (which is partly systematized anyways), you can remember the duration of rests based on a few different symbols. Think of it this way: different sized spaces work semiotically the same way, but are much harder to read. Could you tell the difference between 31 and 32 1/32 rests?
- virgil_disgr4ce 6y ago
  > different sized spaces work semiotically the same way Actually I'll nitpick myself about this. They aren't the same, semiotically, because traditional musical notation is purely symbolic (the signs have literally nothing to do with the signified) whereas white spaces would be somewhere in between indices and icons, which do share some semblences of some kind with the signified. In this case, width of space maps to duration of time, which is a fairly basic embodied metaphor in the George Lakoff sense.
- throwawayfire 6y ago
  I agree that it wastes space to represent time on one axis, if space is a resource that you want to conserve, and I see how that has historically influenced music notation. But, I have a digital screen that can scroll at a specified pace, so I don't find it necessary to conserve space. > If you can remember the duration of notes based on a few different symbols I can do this but I find it a heavy cognitive load to translate symbols into duration while I am also reading/playing music: that was my point. > Could you tell the difference between 31 and 32 1/32 rests? Yes, if there was an adequately marked time scale/axis. There are already bars: just turn them back into the equal areas they are already abstractly representing. (I'm not suggesting that you notate a rest with only blank space - you can still explicitly notate a rest).
zserge 6y ago
I think Chinese numbered notation does something similar: https://web.stanford.edu/group/scme/cgi-bin/wordpress1/chinese-music-%E4%B8%AD%E5%9B%BD%E9%9F%B3%E4%B9%90/chinese-musical-notation-numbered-system https://web.stanford.edu/group/scme/cgi-bin/wordpress1/chine... Notes longer than quarter look like `1`, `1-` and `1---` which creates visual spacing between notes.
schwartzworld 6y ago
That seems challenging with fast, complex rhythms. I don't know if I'd want to eyeball anything with a lot of syncopation.

virgil_disgr4ce 6y ago

This quickly becomes intractable and useless for most musicians, as all it does is waste space, and in many cases is impossible to even use. If you can remember the duration of notes based on a few different symbols (which is partly systematized anyways), you can remember the duration of rests based on a few different symbols. Think of it this way: different sized spaces work semiotically the same way, but are much harder to read. Could you tell the difference between 31 and 32 1/32 rests?

virgil_disgr4ce 6y ago
> different sized spaces work semiotically the same way Actually I'll nitpick myself about this. They aren't the same, semiotically, because traditional musical notation is purely symbolic (the signs have literally nothing to do with the signified) whereas white spaces would be somewhere in between indices and icons, which do share some semblences of some kind with the signified. In this case, width of space maps to duration of time, which is a fairly basic embodied metaphor in the George Lakoff sense.
throwawayfire 6y ago
I agree that it wastes space to represent time on one axis, if space is a resource that you want to conserve, and I see how that has historically influenced music notation. But, I have a digital screen that can scroll at a specified pace, so I don't find it necessary to conserve space. > If you can remember the duration of notes based on a few different symbols I can do this but I find it a heavy cognitive load to translate symbols into duration while I am also reading/playing music: that was my point. > Could you tell the difference between 31 and 32 1/32 rests? Yes, if there was an adequately marked time scale/axis. There are already bars: just turn them back into the equal areas they are already abstractly representing. (I'm not suggesting that you notate a rest with only blank space - you can still explicitly notate a rest).

zserge 6y ago

I think Chinese numbered notation does something similar: https://web.stanford.edu/group/scme/cgi-bin/wordpress1/chinese-music-%E4%B8%AD%E5%9B%BD%E9%9F%B3%E4%B9%90/chinese-musical-notation-numbered-system https://web.stanford.edu/group/scme/cgi-bin/wordpress1/chine... Notes longer than quarter look like `1`, `1-` and `1---` which creates visual spacing between notes.

schwartzworld 6y ago

That seems challenging with fast, complex rhythms. I don't know if I'd want to eyeball anything with a lot of syncopation.