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I see what you mean. For what it's worth, I wasn't mainly trying to comment on whether classical music notation is a good general language of music. My view, to

I see what you mean. For what it's worth, I wasn't mainly trying to comment on whether classical music notation is a good general language of music. My view, to emphasize, is that classical notation is very useful in certain contexts, absolutely not in others. Some cases where Western classical musical notation is a really poor fit: - anything with pitch bending and non-Western or microtonal scales - non-tonal or percussion instruments - folk or popular styles of guitar (which anyway has a whole subculture of guitar tab) On the other hand, if you want to learn classical piano... I don't think it would make much sense not to learn classical musical notation. In this sense, I don't really agree with the COBOL analogy; COBOL is obsolete in a way that sheet music just isn't. I can't say I really have any opinion on what is the best general case musical notation style for newbies. I guess I leave it to school music teachers to figure that out!

ajross 3y ago
> COBOL is obsolete in a way that sheet music just isn't. Is it not? I mean, look at teenagers playing with garage band. They're making music, but not using anything remotely like traditional notation. Pop guitarists have long since abandoned staves for tablature. Even very talented professional singers on broadway are often unable to sight read a melody. You're right that if you want to learn, I dunno, the clarinet, there is a long tradition of tutorial and practice material in traditional notation that will take you all the way up to master level. And that's good and worth celebrating and preserving. But it's not an argument that there isn't a better way to notate music for the clarinet! Again: no one writes COBOL. No one writes COBOL even for the tasks (c.f. batch processed accounting systems) COBOL was good at. And the reason is that we invented better tools and adopted them. It strains reason to argue that a 4-century old collection of kludges and hacks can't be improved upon.

ajross 3y ago

> COBOL is obsolete in a way that sheet music just isn't. Is it not? I mean, look at teenagers playing with garage band. They're making music, but not using anything remotely like traditional notation. Pop guitarists have long since abandoned staves for tablature. Even very talented professional singers on broadway are often unable to sight read a melody. You're right that if you want to learn, I dunno, the clarinet, there is a long tradition of tutorial and practice material in traditional notation that will take you all the way up to master level. And that's good and worth celebrating and preserving. But it's not an argument that there isn't a better way to notate music for the clarinet! Again: no one writes COBOL. No one writes COBOL even for the tasks (c.f. batch processed accounting systems) COBOL was good at. And the reason is that we invented better tools and adopted them. It strains reason to argue that a 4-century old collection of kludges and hacks can't be improved upon.