Alternative music notation and keyboard layout

Sophia · 2025-01-27T23:23:55+00:00

Yeah, agree! I think it would be better to have a stave like this: Start with A, end with G. All between the lines. Then the 1/2 tones can go on top of th...

keystring

MRC How long does it take me to read it and play it? A few seconds:
I see an extended dominant 7th chord in the bass, instantly recognisable from the intervals that compose it.
For the glissando in thirds, all I need to do is to look at the first and the last chord.
Then I play the bar.
That's it.

Even if it was a series of staccato thirds instead of a glissando (the tempo would have to be slower in this case),

MRC - what you wrote (all of it) is valuable for the learners here! This section is in fact for learners, even if the thread isn't, so much. Personally at this very time I am trying to "update" my ideas and approaches on reading piano music, and am going in exactly those kinds of directions.

Earlier today in this thread I responded to the idea of playing B major first, and the "black key scales" (B, Db, Gb), and went through some details that I've learned. This was a dialog for fellow learners here, because we are all in here learning and growing, or sharing what we have learned so as to help each other. I never lose sight of the purpose of this actual section. Thus for everyone, I find your post a benefit to everyone here, esp. those in earlier stages.

keystring

genuse3050

Even without knowing what the actual notes are, I can prepare my hand position to play all of the notes in advance based on the pure visual contour of the passage. This is exactly what sight readers do. They do not need to internalize the notes exactly before preparing their hand posture to play the notes, which is what your system requires. It would literally be impossible to sightread anything farther than a single chord in advance otherwise.

Same comment as to MRC. For the learners here, this is valuable information. You have isolated an aspect of reading music. When we read music we are mindful of a number of aspects and shuttle between them. That is, some learners may only be aware of some of the aspects. They might only be looking for "this is E", "this is G", "this is C" so as to get at C/E - not aware of the visual clue. Teachers who teach may neglect to make their students aware of such things (though some will just catch on).

Both you and MRC have just given a wealth of ideas on 'reading' and this should almost be referenced in a parallel thread, or perhaps the teaching section.

PASHKULI

keystring You wrote something way up in the thread about handwriting where your mother taught you one thing but you were forced in another because those are the rules. That is an indoctrinating type of "education".

In fact my mother was writing in sort of a 'fast script' and my teachers were right that the digit 2 should look like a swan… that is how it is handwriten. Those were like 1st grade school when we learnt to basically draw letters (alphabet) and digits (numbers).
The way holding a pen\pencil was what I considered an 'indoctrination' (I did not know that word then, rather – unpleasant or fatiguing). I never bought that:
....

genuse3050

PASHKULI Great example of… 'special case'. Let's now apply it to actual "music".
Play this (I just took it off of a real score and removed the lines and clef and key sig):

I know you gave me this example to try to trip me up, but I can show you that it already provides me with ample information to know how to play the passage, regardless of what the actual pitches are. From the visual contour of the notes, I already know that I only need to clump the passage into 3 different hand positions to play the whole passage, which I've circled.

The numbers show which fingerings I would possibly use, depending on which hand this passage belongs to. The specific fingerings themselves don't matter all that much. What's most important is I can quickly group the passage into discrete hand positions based on the visual positioning of the notes. And this is all without you telling me what a single note is!

Your screenshot is actually indicative of what a sightreader would see in their peripheral vision as they look ahead while they're playing the music, so it's a great example to use. It's just not possible to register and identify perfectly all the notes in both hands a full 2 or 3 measures ahead of you while simultaneously playing all the notes in the current measure, so the visual positioning of the notes provides a quick shortcut, which then you can make subtle adjustments to your fingers as you finish identifying all the notes.

PASHKULI

genuse3050
That is all good guesses, I guess. But in Music the notes are more important. It is how they recorded Music (notes and duration).
The very early neume notation (medieval) was such that it only showed up down general movements (as in pitch). It was intended for singing (the so called 'Gregorian chants') but that was the general practice.
The note symbols from Alypius times were long forgotten during the middle ages (the time of Boethius). We are talking about 1800 years back in time from today. The knowledge existed but was long forgotten.

With my notation I am trying to bring it back in much simplified and organised form. No special cases. Just pure writing of Music as it would have been written by hand using a pencil\ink and a blank paper.

keystring

PASHKULI That is all good guesses, I guess

Genuse3050 was describing how s/he experiences such notation as a pianist. It is one element, an important one, to how we experience written music - what I called pictorial. Remember my analogy to if I were to critique drumming equipment and practices, as an outsider. It should be possible for you to take in how an experienced person interacts musically, and learn about that world - can you try to do so?

You go back to what your notation system does. We get it. At least, I get it. That has nothing to do with the fact that pianists also see written music pictorially. That picture can be an important element. There are different types of music, different ways of notating it and so on. Jazz music, notated, speaks to the jazz musician who freely improvises and expands on a chord called "Gm7b5", while also having an internal map of where this goes chord-wise, and how that relates to melodic passages or "riffs". We have different systems for different purposes. The problem comes when someone says "this system is good, (therefore) this other system is bad."

There is no "I guess". I related to the hypothetical passage in a similar manner. It is one important element in reading music, which combines with other elements.

genuse3050

PASHKULI That is all good guesses, I guess. But in Music the notes are more important. It is how they recorded Music (notes and duration).

Notes are of course important. But when actually sightreading you need to be able to extract information from the periphery of your vision to prepare your next moves approximately. Look at the following:

This is what you would actually see if you were playing along with the music. The first couple of notes are clear in your vision. But anything outside of the first 5 or 6 notes is blurred and the only information you can extract is the visual contour. In both examples you can't see all the notes in the whole passage clearly, but the traditional notation gives more information because the vertical location of each note corresponds directly with the how high the pitches are.

In your notation the best guess you could make out would be that every 5 or 6 notes the register shifts up, but other than that you have no way of distinguishing between notes on the same row in your peripheral vision. It even obscures the fact that each note has the same interval spacing (thirds), because sometimes the letters are stacked horizontally and sometimes they're stacked vertically. There is no visual consistency between them, and you simply have no clue what the actual notes are until they fully enter your vision like the first 5 notes, no matter how familiar you are with the notation.

In traditional notation, it is possible to make out that each successive note is a little higher than the last one (so a scale of some kind), and also from the visual consistency that likely they have the same interval spacing. You can even faintly make out that there is an anomaly in the middle of the measure, with 2 small dots separated differently from each other compared to the rest of the passage. This is, of course, also completely obscured in your notation no matter how long you stare at the blurred image.

So it's not a matter of learning. It's just that your notation provides less information for the person reading in real-time.

PASHKULI

keystring
Yes, but you are talking about 'knowing' the instrument. This comes with practice.
All I am proposing is sort of 1:1 script for Music. And 90% of it is not my work as the concept is 2000+ years old.
The ancient established diatonic and chromatic, alhtough and due to the fact intonation\temperaments were devised back then those terms had slightly different meaning than what we use today al diatonic and chromatic in the context of 12TET.
Even in early jazz chromatic passes were really supposod to 'colourise' (chroma = hroma = χρωμα = colour) the diatonics and or\pentatonics such as the blues scale and so on practices such as substitutes.
I come from Balkan folklore background and Spanish flamenco where such things are 'the norm' and have been for centuries.

Many reasons can be addressed regarding the fact why standard music notation is not suitable at all for guitar notation. Yet, still, there exist some kind of disaproval when a guitarist plays jazz but does not use score for notation.

I've had similar experience when musicians did not want to jam with me because I do not read score notation. And I understand that it is 'The language' they use to communicate. That is what they have been taught and practiced, had exams on it. But overall I am glad I did not take time to learn such an abstraction.

That is why I think musician should know that there are alternatives but they won't get them aprovals and prizes from competitions. They just have no other option. Well, guitarists and alike have Tablature but generaly it has been frowned upon by 'pro' musicians.

keystring

Again, I'd entertain the idea of having various types of musical notation, and players having a choice of which ones they want to use. We already have different types, such as the straight notation that has been debated here, the chord letter "jazz" notation (Cm7b5 type) and tablature. Each has its place.

You cannot divorce notation to practical application, (what musicians do) because it is a practical matter. If I am playing music with multiple voices, various things that happen, then as a musician I want to quickly see that on the page and prefer something pictorial. If I'm a jazz musician I'll want to improvise. I'll arrange my own chords and do creative things with what's on the page: I'll prefer a different format. And so on.

What I addressed originally was you saying that Genus was "guessing". No, it was not that.

PASHKULI Well, guitarists and alike have Tablature but generally it has been frowned upon by 'pro' musicians.

Well, that's just as stupid as saying that the traditional notation is bad. Elitism exists and it's short sighted.

MRC

PASHKULI Many reasons can be addressed regarding the fact why standard music notation is not suitable at all for guitar notation. Yet, still, there exist some kind of disaproval when a guitarist plays jazz but does not use score for notation.

I've had similar experience when musicians did not want to jam with me because I do not read score notation. And I understand that it is 'The language' they use to communicate. That is what they have been taught and practiced, had exams on it. But overall I am glad I did not take time to learn such an abstraction.

I wonder: did you tell those musicians (as you did us) that the notation system they use was "a work of ignorance" that they were "indoctrinated", victims of "learning without understanding"? That could explain their negative attitude towards you.

I've participated in many music theatre productions where musicians from different backgrounds worked together. Classically trained, jazz, rock, pop or players of traditional music from India and Africa. Some used standard western notation, others preferred lead sheets, others tablature and some used no notation at all, playing by ear. We respected our differences and got on fine. A good musician will recognise another good musician, even if they come from completely different cultures.

PASHKULI

genuse3050 So it's not a matter of learning. It's just that your notation provides less information for the person reading in real-time.

Again, you are showing special case – one direction interval.
Also you have separated the images to apply different % blur – I can only assume because they are separate.

Here is a more realistic scenario.
If you see blurry images, you need prescription glasses. I am telling you this because I wear glasses and without them everything my eyes see further than 50cm is about 20% blurry. In practise, music notation and such prints get problems from bad scanning and\or bad printing quality. Something like this:
...
• as you can see the 'accidentals' are illegible, lines are gone
• I applied blur as well so that it complies with your examples

...
• losses and space compared to pure letters

Here is your 'blurry' scenario. I agree that for linear cases with no 'accidentals' and if you know the 'key sig' blurry staves are difficult to decode. But it will heavily depend on the amount of blur.

Do you have problems decoding intervals when written with Latin\English letters as they are from the alphabet?
I know I do not, yet… I firmly believe that using a 'special case' alphabet isa bit… indoctrinating and 'one sided' appropriation of music notes notation.

PASHKULI

keystring …the traditional notation is bad.

It has 'special case' origin and predilections. This is not only bad but it is a limitation ever since ET (equal temperament) was invented. Although in the ancient times there was no ET (because of the stubbornness of Pythagoras) the hellenic musicologists such as Aristoxenus, Philolaus up till Alypius, they understood the importance of every note, despite the fact diatonic and pentatonic were widly established compared to chromatic which was only occasionally (there was no accidentals) used to colorise (hence its name) the said genera (scale… but they were consigired as tunnigs\temperament of notes in those times).
It is even more uncomfortable when you look at a piano and see exactly that: a special case of diatonic (heptatonic, white keys) and a pentatonic (black keys).

PASHKULI

MRC
I play mostly by ear but have done lots of tablature… by hand (no software). Mostly studied gutar from tablature notation and by ear.

My encounter was with guitarists one of whome trtied to convince me how bad tablatures are for guitar compared to the grand stave. Of course, it (his arguments) was deemed to fail.

genuse3050

PASHKULI Also you have separated the images to apply different % blur – I can only assume because they are separate.

First, before addressing the rest of your post, you need to apologize for immediately jumping to the most dishonest conclusion when there are plenty of other innocuous explanations, as this only shows that you never intend to argue in good faith.

keystring

PASHKULI keystring …the traditional notation is bad.

It has 'special case' origin and predilections. ...........

I don't like being quoted in such a truncated manner. You've destroyed whatever it is that I was saying, and whatever you wrote is not a response to what I said. And what I said was fairly important. If you didn't get it (or don't respect the point) then I have nothing further to say. I've tried to be inclusive and that goodwill seems one-sided.

PASHKULI

keystring
The idea is that tablature is applicable only to fretted string instruments – yes, it is a special case application.
Tablature does not work for let's say trumpet, harp, piano (unless we are talking Klavarkribo and its derivatives but that is for later) and actually any concert orchestral instrument! It works only for the guitarist in a jazz trio, quartet, quintet…

That is why that one of my friends (who was really good guitarist) did not like Tablature. He knew how to use it but in his words: "It was too easy.", as in "Only lazy, uneducated people use it." Therefore, to be able to "speak" with the rest of the musicians any guitarist must learn Standard music notation as he did in music school and conservatory for 10 years total.

Klavarskribo is exactly Tablature for piano but it is terrible in its design for reading as it (time) goes top to bottom with lines and big dotheads for black keys and circles for white. It certainly had been inspired by pianola roll as MIDI roll (the modern digital notation protocol) also is. For a machine to read is ok. For humans – not at all.
Klavarskribo can be learnt and is technically a chromatic notation (if we ignore the layout and pretend it does not represent piano layout). It is a pain for printing though – eats a huge amount of paper and usually has many lines which can be quite overwhelming and distracting.

Its design (as graphics) needs a lot of improvement though in terms of contrast for legibility but as you can see it also requires special paper for those lines as no one would like to do them by hand or using a special rastrum.

keystring

PASHKULI keystring
The idea is that tablature

I'm going to explain why I stopped responding.

I posted about mutual respect, the possibility of discussing various notation systems, without criticism of other notation systems, especially with negative adjectives. You wrote about how in life you've been criticized for your own musical orientation, and I was empathetic, stressing the need for respect. You then quoted a tiny fraction of what I had written, out of context, and followed that quote with yet another statement criticizing a notation system other than your own. The very thing I asked not to be done, and using my words out of context to do so.

I then responded to that, still stressing the same point. You blithely went on wanting to talk about your ideas, not acknowledging what I had written - again. Listening to each other, being open to ideas, must be a two way street. That is why I stopped responding.

PASHKULI

genuse3050
So now we are "arguing" over a blur % which actually depends on the pixel resolution of the screenshot image.
Let me clarify that in PMN (plain music notation) system there is no visual vertical movement for the intervals. Only in a few cases there is one where notes move to another row but the quantity of the interval can not be estimated if you cant read the letters (noteletters\noteheads) symbols.

In PMN the player must learn combinations of letters (as words or rather two syllable words) and remember them as intervals. For example (will use the "alphabetic" current diatonic letters):
CB → it is an 11^th (you call that maj7^th) ascending if C is the root\renova separator as they are in one row
CB → it is a prime or 1^st (you call that min2^nd) descending if B is the root

CB → how a root\separator is written (just an underline)
CB → is the second example

_B^C → certainly it is a prime up and definitely C is the root\renove separator (next row up)
^C_B → prime down

_C^B → the widest interval possible between two different notes on adjacent rows and C is the root\separator
^B_C → widest down respectively

PMN is inteded to be a general Tablature for any instrument, where the player is required to know the notes on the instrument as 12 letters. Those 12 letters are in fact the Alphabet of Music if 12TET is the genera (temperament).

If the player is not familiar (proficient) with the Alphabet of Music by heart (up and down), no further progress can be made.
And this exercise should be done from any starting note (letter). Once mastered, such knowledge is enough to read the notes fluently for any written music regardless of complexity. Then, of course, durations should be trained, intervals of any two letters combined, etc. for a full course.

I suppose you are familiar with this Alphabet of Music as a lazy job "invented" 1000 years ago:
_{C•D•EF•G•A•B}^{C•D•EF•G•A•B}…

This alphabet doеs not have a fixed 'first' letter. Any of the 12 letters can be chosen as 'first' and its role therefore becomes that of a renova row separator (or a clef if you will). It can be changed for any bar where a tonal center changes (for a mode or specific modulation) and that separator (clef\root) appears combined with characteristical interval formula (you may call it key signature) such as:
X^4·11 → this is "natural" major
X^3·10 → this is "natural" minor
X^4·10 → this is "dominant" major
X^3·11 → this is harmonic minor
X^1·4·11 → this is biharmonic major (arabic major)
…and so on where X is the desired root note

genuse3050

PASHKULI Let me clarify that in PMN (plain music notation) system there is no visual vertical movement for the intervals. Only in a few cases there is one where notes move to another row but the quantity of the interval can not be estimated if you cant read the letters (noteletters\noteheads) symbols.

This is precisely the flaw with the notation. You cannot prepare your hand positions in advance because your peripheral vision cannot extract any useful information. The blurred examples are just an imperfect approximation of central vs peripheral vision. It has nothing to do with needing prescription glasses but how your eyesight works. Let's take the following sentence as an example:

Focus your eyesight on the letter L and WITHOUT MOVING YOUR EYE, can you read the entire sentence? Of course not, you can at most probably read up to the word "clarify" before the words leave your fovea and the rest of the sentence is a huge blur. Even without being able to read the rest of the sentence though, you can use your peripheral vision to estimate that at least most of the sentence is on the same row. Now contrast that with this:

Same deal, focus your eyesight on the letter L and without moving your eye, try to read the entire sentence. Of course you can't. Again, if you're honest you can probably only clearly read just a few words before the words start to become unclear. However what does your peripheral vision tell you? Even without being able to clearly see some of the words you can barely make out that the words go up, go down, and you can probably just make out that's there's a gap up to some word at the high point, although after that is probably the extent of your peripheral vision. I even made the pattern semi-random so you'll stop complaining about scales being a special case.

This is the visual contour that traditional notation provides. Even without knowing precisely what the words (notes) are, you can prepare your mind and hand to roughly cover about 9 words (notes) in advance in this example, whereas in your notation since you can only prepare about 3-4 words (notes) in advance because the words have to enter your fovea in order for you to register what they are exactly and the visual contour does not give you any hints. So it's just much slower at processing information reading left to right no matter how fast you are at translating the letters or symbols into notes.

PASHKULI

genuse3050 This is the visual contour that traditional notation provides.

You need to watch out (and know) too many things and rules in advance.
Other than that the SMN (standerd music notation) sacrifices about 42% of vertical move (5 out of 12 notes do not have a line\space). Now, put double sharps and 8va, 15va and swap of clefs… and you get about 50% missing.

That is not the focus of PMN. It has a completely different approach at recording Music (on paper\screen).
To write it fast as well.
It is like vertically compressed MIDI-roll to such a degree that every cluster or range of 12 rows in a MIDI-roll is now one row in PMN and you can chose\mark the startind (root\clef) note and\or scale.

keystring

genuse3050 Same deal, focus your eyesight on the letter L and without moving your eye, try to read the entire sentence.

The quote is only for reference. We're at the "up and down wave-like words". When I look at that wavy sentence, I first look at a whole picture rather than zooming in to words. If this were modern poetry, I would expect there to be a symbolic meaning about waves, curves - maybe it's a poem about waves. If these were musical notes, a glance at this picture tells me that the notes will go up and down, maybe a jump. If a familiar genre of music, I might already be predicting the whole melody or chords or whatever. Then when I settle down to read, I'll be at the word "Let" and probably zip along in chunks.

There are now "reading apps" that are supposed to teach people to read music, or practice reading music, with this band of notes scrolling along like a conveyor belt. I only thought about this now. I don't think that is actually how we read music.

genuse3050

PASHKULI You need to watch out (and know) too many things and rules in advance.
Other than that the SMN (standerd music notation) sacrifices about 42% of vertical move (5 out of 12 notes do not have a line\space). Now, put double sharps and 8va, 15va and swap of clefs… and you get about 50% missing.

I know that up is up and down is down? And your notation sacrifices about 100% of vertical move, so what? Nothing is better than something?

PASHKULI

genuse3050
Ok good, up and down but here is a one liner… yes, I konw it it is a special case.

I just want to show that there is no vertical movement shown but actually there is.
You need to know the rules. For 8 notes, had to write 14 symbols. It is ironic. (or 15 if we see the 'bb' as two symbols)

With my PMN system I would like to be as punctual as possible and writting the chords exactly how the composer wanted them to be. The player can always "interpret" them then how they choose.

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