I would like piano teachers to consider how much easier learning the piano could be with a simpler music notation system.
If you have some method to get someone, especially someone who isn't particularly talented to play a difficult piece I'd focus on selling that instead. I'd sell everything I own to pay for that info.
I play viola, and have played ES on viola, even a whole orchestra concert. I disagree that it is piano tablature. As long as the 12 equal tempered pitches are named unequally, ie as A to G plus 5 "sharps or flats", all instruments reading TN have to know whether a given note is a natural or a "black key" - so having the black and white noteheads is not just for pianists.
Well I would say these students ARE quite talented, but not good enough at reading TN to easily learn the FI. They read at a lower level than their playing capability. The first difficulty a student faces is simply knowing what notes to play. With TN you have to keep checking backwards for accidentals, or to see what clef and key signature you are in. And working out legerlines. All this causes frustation for the student and teacher alike. (How often do teachers have to correct notes? One teacher remarked that they are always yellling F SHARP! etc) Take away this problem and the student can see more fluently what actual notes they have to play.
You guys really are brainwashed by your early music learning experiences. I am probably more adept at reading TN music than either of you, but can also (at age 59) enthusiastically embark on a new learning experience.
Frankly I am surprised and disappointed that so few people here seem willing or able to think outside the traditional square (or is it 'box'?)
I would like piano teachers to consider how much easier learning the piano could be with a simpler music notation system. Firstly, if bass and treble clefs were both read the same way.
Secondly, if all octaves of a note looked the same.
Thirdly, if each of the twelve pitch classes had its own position on a 'chromatic' stave, and there was therefore no need for the five accidental signs and for learning fifteen different key signatures.
Perhaps this is more a difficulty with teaching methods than with the notation system. I'd venture to guess that the majority of people who've learned the TN and can read it reasonably well have no issue with the TN.
This would only be possible, if the range of a staff is limited to an octave. I don't think, that this would be very helpful.
As far as the key signatures go, I believe it's a failure of the teaching method when students end up thinking that hefty key signatures with lots of flats or sharps are "scary." What's scary about them, honestly? I don't understand that mindset. Perhaps students should be taught those "scary" key signatures at the same time as they're taught the "unscary" ones, so that they see there is nothing to be worried about.
I would oppose that one. The interval Eb-F# is a dissonance, in contrary to D#-F#, which is a consonance. You press the same keys on the piano keyboard but the meaning is totally different. I will not sacrifice the differentiation of intervals and chords just for simplification, which would be a real distortion.
In the end, I'm rather inclined to think that it's just laziness that is prompting this desire for a new and easier system of notation. Uncountable numbers of people over centuries have learned to read music written in TN; the notation isn't hard, it just requires study, and practice. The more that a student works with TN, the more familiar it will become to them and the easier it will get to read. Of course a student starting off won't find it easy, but the more work they put into learning it, the easier it will become.
Well I read TN very well, having played piano concertos with, and being lead violist in our community orchestra. But you are correct, most people having mastered TN think it is fine. One of the aims of the Music Notation Project (the new name for www.mnma.org) is to raise awareness of the problems of TN. Have you never misread a clef? missed an accidental later in the bar, not applied the accidental to the proper note in a compact chord? had to work out a legerline rather than immediately recognising it, borked over double flats or double sharps, ETC ETC?
Try reading viola music! You know bass and treble, but alto? Where are the semitones?
Are you fluent in a key sig of 7 flats? Why did the editors reprint Bach's C# major prelude in Db if there is no problem with 7#s?
I have ONE student that learnt from the start in only ES. He plays the same pieces as kids who have learnt 3 or 4 years longer. He is not particularly gifted but is very motivated. All other students learnt TN first and ES as a second language. There can be some confusion but no more than between bass and treble TN.
If TN is so good, why is there such a huge dropout rate in piano students? So much that the AMEB regard the statistics as confidential.
The problem is there are 15 (fifteen!) different ones to learn, and they are usually taught in order of increasing numbers, so most students never reach the end ones.
In orchestra the players are fine in the easy signatures and play more out of tune the more the key signature increases. I dare say this is the same in amateur orchestras all over the world. Why should one semitone up in pitch be associalted with so much additional difficulty?
I dont see it as lazy to seek out easier ways of doing things, that have the possibility of more people succeeding. It is very old fashioned to think in terms of hard work is good for you! And even greater uncountable numbers have failed to learn to read music.
Well if I play a blues lick on the piano, how do I know whether to write the notes as # or b? Do I "mean" a consonance or dissonance? Is the C blues scale correctly written as [C, D#, F, F#, G, A#, C] or [C, Eb, F, Gb, G, Bb, C] or any other combination? Is the Eb to F# that I just played a consonance or dissonance? Ask any jazz player and they will tell you it doesnt matter!
TN has a "theory" that justifies and explains the 12 et pitches in terms of 7 diatonic notes plus 5 inflections. ANs have a theory that is a different way of explaining it, but just as valid, even more logical, in that 4 st + 3 st = 7 st. (major 3rd + minor 3rd = perfect 5th).
Why did guitarists invent TAB?
And its much easier for me to play the Prelude in C# (with 7 sharps => all notes are sharpened) than in Db (with 5 flats).
As I explained before, I do not like to calculate chromatic steps for intervals wider than thirds.
You raise some good points, johnk.
All it takes is practice and experience with the key signature.
I'm curious. Has this student learned TN? What was his feeling about it and the differences with ES? What is his opinion of learning ES first, and what were the opinions of the students who learned TN first as far as how the two systems compare? It'd be interesting to see a survey of the two different groups (although it's kind of a small sample right now, what with only one student having learned ES first). As more students learn it (I'm assuming more of your students will be), it would be interesting to survey them.
Hello Leahcim,Thanks for joining us again. I am a bit mystified when you say you can read music but not play it. What do you mean by "read"? To me, reading music means looking at the score and playing it on the piano (or other instrument). It doesnt mean being able to name the notes, or hearing it in my head or any other thing.
This proves my point. You havent done enough practice yet in 5 flats!!!
With 15 different key signatures to learn, you will probably be "much" better in some than in others. And the "grammar" and "intervals" etc are the same, so its just the deciphering of notes that is different.
But are you sure you have read it in both keys? The C# version has a lot of double sharps and goes into B# major, which when you play it, you realise is just C major!
Could you please tell me, where the original C#version goes into B# major??? In the Fugue, there is a B#7 chord as a dominant to E# minor, which is quite funny but not that unusual, when you are used to the Sonatas and Impromptus of Schubert...
The "grammar" and "intervals" etc are the same in theory, that's true. But on the trad. keyboard layout, the black and white notes are different (unpredictably different!) dependent on the key of the piece. So this different black and white combination has to be mirrored in a 12-tone notation => there is no advantage compared to TN.
QuoteAll it takes is practice and experience with the key signature.Exactly!
Zac learnt ES from the start. He has no hesitation or confusion as to what notes to play. Even less than me because he hasnt had a middle C and two different clefs drummed into him. His parents want him, and he wants to learn TN, so i gave him a fairly easy piece, (without # or bs) but he avoids practicing it. He knows about FACE and EGBDF etc from school and he knows that the bass is virtually the same as ES, but he just didnt play the piece, so I think to him the ES notation just "looks" like what it is supposed to be, but with the TN, he has to decipher it and its hard. I'll do some more on it this year.A lot of my students have learnt ES after TN. If TN is very well established, ES is still easy for them, but in a number of cases I taught ES too soon and they then forget TN or get it mixed up. In one case I inherited an advanced student who (typically) was not a good reader, and we learnt the repertoire for her higher school certificate exam in ES because even though this was new to her, she made fewer mistakes than in reading TN, and time was getting short.Re the dropout rate of piano students, you may be right and I am too hasty to blame TN's difficulties.Re the idea that students should be prepared for the difficulty of learning piano, I sort of agree, - we should not be saying it is simple; but seeing how Zac has improved last year makes me think that a kid who is motivated will do the practice, and that the difficulties of TN may very well destroy this motivation. This is why Im not going to push the TN reading too much. The main objective is to keep the motivation going.
All it takes is practice and experience with the key signature.Exactly!
... there is so much information expressed through TN that cannot be seen in what I've learned of ES. Like leahcim has said about the guitar tabs, it may be simpler, but simpler often means that something has been lost in translation and you're only seeing half of the information that should have been there. Key signature is merely one of those things that seems to be lost from ES.
John's notation would have a much better chance of being adopted if there was equivalent (free) software to produce scores. I understand that there is a way for Finale to do this, but Finale is most certainly not free.
Personally I don't believe that a notation which is based on the chromatic scale will ever be accepted by human musicians.
If we were thinking in 12 halftones, we needed 12 note names,
Based on a chromatic scale a major triad would be: starting note, then skip 4 steps (halfnotes) then skip 3 steps.
...bigger intervals (sixth + fifth) chromatic steps would be: 8 halftones + 7 halftones!
I notice you dont actually describe how you would form a MAJOR triad, just a triad in general.
A diminished 4th would be the same as a major 3rd in a chromatic system. But it's not the same interval, I swear. C# - F is not the same interval as Db - F: the first is dissonant, the second is consonant, something people do not understand who are only looking at the keyboard and don't look in the written music.
Oh I see now that you are the Soft Mozart Lady!Is this your own system? It seems quite impressive, but your YouTube video also tends to agree with what we at the Music Notation Project have been saying - that reading music is very difficult, and most people who start learning, never master it.
A lot of people like yourself have tried to develop better teaching methods, and this is very admirable.
But we take the view that it would be better to just invent an easier system!
Congratulations on developing your system. Did you develop it in Russia? Or only in the west, because here a lot of kids dont have the discipline to learn the traditional way.
Cant you see that the existing system has a poor success rate?
Cant YOU see that traditional notation have 100% success rate with a little development?
People that say reading a different clef is easy ...
The keys with the many b's or sharps do not exist to make playing easy - they exist to make playing more difficult.
The difficulty is the stimulus. Advanced piano players all want to learn more difficult pieces (the preludes&fugues with the many # and b) and they want to learn the most difficult Chopin etudes.
Composing music does not have the intention to make the musician a simple life.
I dont want to play stuff that looks difficult in notation but sounds easy! (Unless it is superb music of course.)
I dont think there is a fundamental difference between todays digital and the pasts analogue approach to notation.
When you say you learnt to read music yourself as a child, I presume you meant just the white keys. There is a one to one correspondance between notes on the staff and the white keys on the piano. So shapes on the stave can easily be seen as shapes on the white keys.
People that say reading a different clef is easy ... Have you really tried playing music at the same level of difficulty as you could read in your familiar clefs?
But I am interested in developing the transition between Express Stave and traditional notation.
Problem with music notation lays in physiology and has nothing to do with music theory.Please, read some articles like this and understand: any 'innovation' won't do any good for people, 'till they will consider...'Focus, Focus, Focus
1. Music - is a language of multiple sounds and foundation should be absolute - traditional piano keys layout, octave of 12 even pitches and Grand Staff.
2. Problem with music notation lays in physiology and has nothing to do with music theory.
Musicalrebel4U - So the reason for your system is primarily because of the way the human eye and mind sees, and how that relates to the grand staff?
Keypeg, thanks for illustrating your own musical beginnings in more detail. It is of interest to me that you were introduced to moveable doh, and feel that this gave you a nice uncomplicated introduction. (...You say this enabled you to perceive patterns of notes both aurally and visually, and that you would adjust to a sharp or flat if it sounded wrong. ... Can you say that you are really "reading" the notation if you do this though? You are partially reading it, then "guessing" when something sounds wrong.
All the written languages on Earth are linear, because human's speech is a one-voice production. Grand Staff – is a unit of multiple tracks designed for music language of multiple sounds. When music is sounding in real time, the sounds are having 2 physical essential parameters – pitch and timing and these parameters cross vertically. But this 'golden section' is not presented in music notation and unprepared human eye is unable to see the 'golden section', because each voice of music language is dispersed all over the Grand Staff.