4 ms·

This seems kind of like inventing a QWERTY alternative. The best thing about QWERTY is that its ubiquitous and good enough, not that it's optimal. Although in

This seems kind of like inventing a QWERTY alternative. The best thing about QWERTY is that its ubiquitous and good enough, not that it's optimal. Although in the case of chromatone, I don't see any arguments made about technical improvements. Instead of spelling note names with letters, we have colors. Why is this better? This some argument about the visible spectrum mapping. But like, how is that useful? I can tell a group of working musicians "1-4-2-5 in E minor", and we'd probably be able to play something moderately coherent based on that. How do I do that in Chromatone? What's the advantage? Most people (aside from those with perfect pitch) experience pitch relatively. Things like intervals or scale degree given a tonic. Maybe there's something interesting one could do mapping colors to something in this domain, a la solfege, like a minor 9 chord becomes green or something. I'm still not totally sure what the point would be. Maybe you could read a chart quicker. But like, what's the problem in traditional notation/theory that we're trying to solve here?

867-5309 2y ago
it is a cool toy just play with it
- recursive 2y ago
  I'd rather just play a real instrument. Also, the author seems to believe that this is a Big Idea, not just a cool toy.
vitaly-pavlenko 2y ago
that's a great point. i'm making my alternative https://rawl.rocks/ https://rawl.rocks/ which does exactly that: a relative color-coding, starting from the tonic aside from that, I make a library of structures used in Western music (in the header). I've started saving structures a week ago, so there isn't much content right now the main emergent property of my system is visibility of structures. chords, chord progressions, parallel / relative modulation symmetries suddenly make sense and are viscerally perceivable and I hope my visualizations are directly useful in a context of speaking about music theory to people without sheet music experience (or, dare I say, without 10 years of such experience) my thing is open source: https://github.com/vpavlenko/rawl https://github.com/vpavlenko/rawl
- vitaly-pavlenko 2y ago
  the main problem that i'm solving is that a standard notation mostly obscures structure. it's good for sight reading because people use it (like QWERTY or Chinese characters), but it's a suboptimal way to make underlining structural laws, patterns and symmetries of Western music visible i ranted about it here: https://x.com/vitalypavlenko/status/1771820942680830417 https://x.com/vitalypavlenko/status/1771820942680830417
  - _gabe_ 2y ago
    > the main problem that i'm solving is that a standard notation mostly obscures structure Can you expand on this? I’m a hobbyist that’s learned how to sight read, and one of the coolest things was when I stopped seeing individual notes and began to see structure, as in chords and progressions. I’m not sure how sheet music would obscure the structure because that’s all I see in it now.
    - vitaly-pavlenko 2y ago
      I have a detailed write-up in this thread: https://x.com/vitalypavlenko/status/1771820942680830417 https://x.com/vitalypavlenko/status/1771820942680830417 Basically, you can somewhat see chords in sheet music. Like, you can easily see a C major chord in a treble clef. 1) How many milliseconds does it take you to understand that the entire bar you're looking at is just a C major chord arpeggiated in different octaves? 2) What if it's a bass + treble clef? What if it's an orchestral score? 3) How fast can you verify that a treble clef is active now? That it's not a C-sharp major or a C major chord? 4) Do you actually care that it's a C major chord or rather should you care that it's a I chord (a tonic major chord)? 5) If you care about relative chords (Roman numerals), does it mean you should learn 7 to 12 times visual cues of what's going on now? These are just the beginning questions, where the end questions that I care about are: 101) What are the backbone structures making a list of midi pitches played suddenly a tango? A ragtime? A malaguena? A Bulgarian horo? 102) What are differences between styles (languages) of specific composers? How do I rapidly see what's different between Nobuo Uematsu and Koji Kondo? Between Chopin and Schumann? Between (tonal) Copland and (tonal) Debussy? 103) How do I imitate any of those or any fusion of those? How do I make sure that I don't miss any structural feature when I analyze and decompose their style and their pieces? Literature: https://github.com/vpavlenko/study-music https://github.com/vpavlenko/study-music
deleted 2y ago
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867-5309 2y ago

it is a cool toy just play with it

recursive 2y ago
I'd rather just play a real instrument. Also, the author seems to believe that this is a Big Idea, not just a cool toy.

vitaly-pavlenko 2y ago

that's a great point. i'm making my alternative https://rawl.rocks/ https://rawl.rocks/ which does exactly that: a relative color-coding, starting from the tonic aside from that, I make a library of structures used in Western music (in the header). I've started saving structures a week ago, so there isn't much content right now the main emergent property of my system is visibility of structures. chords, chord progressions, parallel / relative modulation symmetries suddenly make sense and are viscerally perceivable and I hope my visualizations are directly useful in a context of speaking about music theory to people without sheet music experience (or, dare I say, without 10 years of such experience) my thing is open source: https://github.com/vpavlenko/rawl https://github.com/vpavlenko/rawl

vitaly-pavlenko 2y ago
the main problem that i'm solving is that a standard notation mostly obscures structure. it's good for sight reading because people use it (like QWERTY or Chinese characters), but it's a suboptimal way to make underlining structural laws, patterns and symmetries of Western music visible i ranted about it here: https://x.com/vitalypavlenko/status/1771820942680830417 https://x.com/vitalypavlenko/status/1771820942680830417
- _gabe_ 2y ago
  > the main problem that i'm solving is that a standard notation mostly obscures structure Can you expand on this? I’m a hobbyist that’s learned how to sight read, and one of the coolest things was when I stopped seeing individual notes and began to see structure, as in chords and progressions. I’m not sure how sheet music would obscure the structure because that’s all I see in it now.
  - vitaly-pavlenko 2y ago
    I have a detailed write-up in this thread: https://x.com/vitalypavlenko/status/1771820942680830417 https://x.com/vitalypavlenko/status/1771820942680830417 Basically, you can somewhat see chords in sheet music. Like, you can easily see a C major chord in a treble clef. 1) How many milliseconds does it take you to understand that the entire bar you're looking at is just a C major chord arpeggiated in different octaves? 2) What if it's a bass + treble clef? What if it's an orchestral score? 3) How fast can you verify that a treble clef is active now? That it's not a C-sharp major or a C major chord? 4) Do you actually care that it's a C major chord or rather should you care that it's a I chord (a tonic major chord)? 5) If you care about relative chords (Roman numerals), does it mean you should learn 7 to 12 times visual cues of what's going on now? These are just the beginning questions, where the end questions that I care about are: 101) What are the backbone structures making a list of midi pitches played suddenly a tango? A ragtime? A malaguena? A Bulgarian horo? 102) What are differences between styles (languages) of specific composers? How do I rapidly see what's different between Nobuo Uematsu and Koji Kondo? Between Chopin and Schumann? Between (tonal) Copland and (tonal) Debussy? 103) How do I imitate any of those or any fusion of those? How do I make sure that I don't miss any structural feature when I analyze and decompose their style and their pieces? Literature: https://github.com/vpavlenko/study-music https://github.com/vpavlenko/study-music

deleted 2y ago

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