4 ms·

If only someone would rethink music notation successfully.

by WalterSear 15y ago

mattgreenrocks 15y ago
What would you change? I'm curious.
- mutagen 15y ago
  That musicnotation.org site outlines the major issues with traditional music notation. Traditional notation is very piano-centric, making learning to read it on a chromatic instrument more difficult than it needs to be. Nearly all stringed instruments have no distinction between sharp, flat and natural notes. That being said, there are hundreds of years of tradition behind current notation and that kind of momentum is unlikely to change. Guitar players came up with tablature, which is great except for the lack of rhythmic information in the notation.
  - stdbrouw 15y ago
    I fear it's always going to be something-centric though. I play the clarinet and there's simply no easy way to indicate which fingerings to play short of sketching a clarinet and drawing it out (which is what happens, very schematically). That said, it is remarkable how easy it is for a pianist to play on sight, whereas for classical guitarists that's usually only a skill you can hope to attain if you major in music. Banjo and ukulele are even harder, because of the re-entrant tunings where your highest note is the topmost one instead of the bottom one, destroying what little correlation there was left between sheet notation and hand/finger position.
jayanderson 15y ago
I agree. The janko keyboard layout for the piano appeals to me because no key is different from another. For instance if you learn one major scale on the janko keyboard you now know them all. Doing something similar for music notation is hard, but would be incredibly useful if done well. See http://musicnotation.org/ http://musicnotation.org/ for some attempts.
oblique63 15y ago
Agreed. I'm currently working on a startup that's focusing pretty heavily on that (http://www.tabrat.com/ http://www.tabrat.com/), and let me tell you, even if somebody were to get it 'exactly right', it would still be quite the uphill battle to get it adopted. That's assuming it's a legitimate re-imagining that deviates from the current system of course, and not some C++ style superset. Nothing wrong with teaching an old dog new tricks (in fact it's what we're planning to do in the meantime), but it wouldn't really be anything new, because that is exactly how music notation evolved to be how it is today (excluding tablature for fretted instruments, which should be considered a good, albeit limited, innovation in it's own right). The people that use notation the most, and take it the most seriously, are usually the ones that have invested a ton of time learning to sight read and knowing how to properly express their ideas in it; hence they are almost certainly going to be hesitant about switching to a new format. We musicians tend to be a conservative bunch; after our first few years playing/experimenting, we pretty much solidify what we like and hardly ever deviate from it afterwards. I (a guitarist) for example, only really play 2 brands of strings, I have already made vast generalizations in my head about what amp/guitar/pedal brands I like and don't like (as opposed to judging on a product-by-product basis like I would for most other things), and I don't see that changing soon. Likewise, once you develop your notation style, it would probably be hard to really think of trying something new when you've just come up with a cool riff and get caught up in the heat of the moment trying to build on it. Although I can't wait to see the day the next evolution in songwriting starts getting widely adopted, I can't say that what we have now is really that bad. Traditional staff sheet music does makes it easy to 'visualize' what a piece sounds like, and that's a feat that even well notated tablature can sometimes struggle to convey. As for my startup? We just want musicians to be able to precisely jot down something like this on a moment's whim (fx and all): http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YU52hGo3nNc http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YU52hGo3nNc
- icarus_drowning 15y ago
  Yeah, my degree is in Music Theory/Composition, and while I understand where people are coming from when they complain about music notation, I can't see myself investing any significant amount of time learning an alternative system when I already have the current system down well enough that I can sight-read and sight-sing a vast majority of music. tl;dr I'm not giving up the ability to look at an orchestral score and have a pretty good idea of how it sounds just to learn that skill all over again.

If only someone would rethink music notation successfully.

mattgreenrocks 15y ago

What would you change? I'm curious.

mutagen 15y ago
That musicnotation.org site outlines the major issues with traditional music notation. Traditional notation is very piano-centric, making learning to read it on a chromatic instrument more difficult than it needs to be. Nearly all stringed instruments have no distinction between sharp, flat and natural notes. That being said, there are hundreds of years of tradition behind current notation and that kind of momentum is unlikely to change. Guitar players came up with tablature, which is great except for the lack of rhythmic information in the notation.
- stdbrouw 15y ago
  I fear it's always going to be something-centric though. I play the clarinet and there's simply no easy way to indicate which fingerings to play short of sketching a clarinet and drawing it out (which is what happens, very schematically). That said, it is remarkable how easy it is for a pianist to play on sight, whereas for classical guitarists that's usually only a skill you can hope to attain if you major in music. Banjo and ukulele are even harder, because of the re-entrant tunings where your highest note is the topmost one instead of the bottom one, destroying what little correlation there was left between sheet notation and hand/finger position.

jayanderson 15y ago

I agree. The janko keyboard layout for the piano appeals to me because no key is different from another. For instance if you learn one major scale on the janko keyboard you now know them all. Doing something similar for music notation is hard, but would be incredibly useful if done well. See http://musicnotation.org/ http://musicnotation.org/ for some attempts.

oblique63 15y ago

Agreed. I'm currently working on a startup that's focusing pretty heavily on that (http://www.tabrat.com/ http://www.tabrat.com/), and let me tell you, even if somebody were to get it 'exactly right', it would still be quite the uphill battle to get it adopted. That's assuming it's a legitimate re-imagining that deviates from the current system of course, and not some C++ style superset. Nothing wrong with teaching an old dog new tricks (in fact it's what we're planning to do in the meantime), but it wouldn't really be anything new, because that is exactly how music notation evolved to be how it is today (excluding tablature for fretted instruments, which should be considered a good, albeit limited, innovation in it's own right). The people that use notation the most, and take it the most seriously, are usually the ones that have invested a ton of time learning to sight read and knowing how to properly express their ideas in it; hence they are almost certainly going to be hesitant about switching to a new format. We musicians tend to be a conservative bunch; after our first few years playing/experimenting, we pretty much solidify what we like and hardly ever deviate from it afterwards. I (a guitarist) for example, only really play 2 brands of strings, I have already made vast generalizations in my head about what amp/guitar/pedal brands I like and don't like (as opposed to judging on a product-by-product basis like I would for most other things), and I don't see that changing soon. Likewise, once you develop your notation style, it would probably be hard to really think of trying something new when you've just come up with a cool riff and get caught up in the heat of the moment trying to build on it. Although I can't wait to see the day the next evolution in songwriting starts getting widely adopted, I can't say that what we have now is really that bad. Traditional staff sheet music does makes it easy to 'visualize' what a piece sounds like, and that's a feat that even well notated tablature can sometimes struggle to convey. As for my startup? We just want musicians to be able to precisely jot down something like this on a moment's whim (fx and all): http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YU52hGo3nNc http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YU52hGo3nNc

icarus_drowning 15y ago
Yeah, my degree is in Music Theory/Composition, and while I understand where people are coming from when they complain about music notation, I can't see myself investing any significant amount of time learning an alternative system when I already have the current system down well enough that I can sight-read and sight-sing a vast majority of music. tl;dr I'm not giving up the ability to look at an orchestral score and have a pretty good idea of how it sounds just to learn that skill all over again.