I like the idea of working to make music notation better -- it's certainly not flawless -- but I'd strongly discourage music teachers from using this system wit

I like the idea of working to make music notation better -- it's certainly not flawless -- but I'd strongly discourage music teachers from using this system with any actual music students. I'd much rather see methods of improving the readability of standard notation, by adding colors, interactivity, or anything along those lines -- but not replacing standard notations (for accidentals, note flags, etc.) without really, really good reason. The further your system departs from standard notation, the less valuable it is automatically, so for a departure even as far as hummingbird (which is still obviously related to standard notation), the value it adds already needs to be huge just to break even.... Think about the choice you're making for your student -- instead of getting started learning standard notation, you're starting them down another path of reading music; the moment they leave your studio or classroom and walk into a music shop (or even another music class), they will be completely lost. There's a lot of sheet music freely available online -- whoops, not for your students, though. There are also a ton of apps, interactive sites, online tutorials, software, etc. that can help music students master all aspects of music performance, analysis, and even composition. Well, some students. Not yours. I know this sounds harsh, but it's a bit like attempts to fix the English language. Everyone knows it -- English is horribly irregular; every rule of thumb for spelling has a million exceptions; there seem to be more irregular verbs than regular ones; there are obsolete tenses only used in some common phrases and nowhere else. But if we fixed the problems -- even if we just regularized spelling and nothing else -- the first generation of students using the new system would be a bubble in a world that used "old" English. If we successfully rode out the change, after a century or so all new documents produced would be in new English... but anyone interested in reading anything before the switch would be at the mercy of automatic translators. It sounds like a dystopian novel where an autocratic government wants to cut their population off from all knowledge of history.