The future of music notation

[ahinton]

Thanks for the latest posts, guys.

Firstly to Alistair, I'm sorry that the copyright issue may be a bit more problematic than I thought you were at first implying,

I didn't say it would be problematic! I merely added some comments about that aspect of what you may have proposed to do, in terms of how to go about it. In short (once again), if you seek and obtain a publisher's and/or composer's permission to reproduce a mere page or so here for the specific purpose that you mention and then reproduce it here, duly crediting the publisher and requesting that it is not reproduced elsewhere, I would be most surprised were you to encounter any permission or copyright problem. I hope that this is now unequivocally clear!

If I find a piece, or make up an 'aleatoric piece' of random notes and bung it in the transnotator, would that show you what you want to see?

My suggestion was that you find a particularly problematic passage in a piano work by, say, Barrett, Finnissy, Ferneyhough or Sorabji and then present it as is and also in your notation system for comparison, with some comments about how difficult or otherwise you believe it was to set them in your system and how difficult or otherwise you believe it may be to read them in your system. To be more specific, may I suggest you look at Barrett's "Tract", Finnissy's "English Country-Tunes" or Concerto No. 4, Ferneyhough's "Lemma-Icon-Epigram" and Sorabji's Opus Clavicembalisticum for the purpose of finding some particularly challenging pages and then go about the procedure?

I remain concerned that you appear not to have clarified whether your ideal aim is the establishment of a new notational system in preference to the existing one or the co-existence of two or more such systems; there seemed to me to have been some to-ing and fro-ing on this previously and, unless I've misssed something (which is far from impossible, I fear!), the jury's apparently still out on that...

Best,

Alistair

[ahinton]

As a "P.S." (addressed to John K), you could perhaps try Finnissy's "Song 9" and/or the solo part of his Piano Concerto No. 7 which are available on the British Music Information Centre's website
https://www.bmic.co.uk/composers/default.asp

Best,

Alistair

[abell88]

I'm sorry, John, but I haven't kept it up  but I will try!

[johnk]

I downloaded the Finnissy PC score. (Is this stuff serious?) and scanned a page of it into Finale. As expected, Finale couldn't recognise 99% of the notes. But I get the idea. Even the composer had to write in letternames for all the legerline notes.

So here is my quasi-Finnessy aleatoric excerpt, and its transnotation into ES.

Notice that the legerline notes are immediately recognisable (if you have learnt to read ES that is) and that the chord 'shapes' on the keyboard are depicted.

ES clarifies note identities. You can see that the highest note in m1 is A; the top note of the chord at the start of m1 beat 4, is Eb, not E; that the lowest RH note of m2, start of beat 2, is G (not Gb, because the Gb at the start of the bar is in the lower part); the last RH note of m2 is Bb, not B, ... etc

Now, would anyone like to hear the piece ... ?

JohnK

PS Abell88, try the Moonlight Sonata.

[ahinton]

I downloaded the Finnissy PC score. (Is this stuff serious?) and scanned a page of it into Finale. As expected, Finale couldn't recognise 99% of the notes. But I get the idea. Even the composer had to write in letternames for all the legerline notes.

So here is my quasi-Finnessy aleatoric excerpt, and its transnotation into ES.

I presume you to mean Finnissy's Piano Concerto No. 7, since that is the only one available on the British Music Information Centre's website; in that case, can you please clarify the page reference from the original score that tallies with the extract that you have reset? I notice no tuplet rhythm patterns in your extract. What you have done seems to me very much like some kind of simplification of the text itself, rather than merely of notation technique per se, but I'll say no more until you answer my question.

Thanks.

Best,

Alistair

[ahinton]

So here is my quasi-Finnessy aleatoric excerpt, and its transnotation into ES.

I think I may have misunderstood you, in that what you have done here is to produce an example that is not Finnissy's music at all - in which case you have not done what I suggested. There's nothing "aleatory" about the piano writing in that score! Part of the notational challenge that I wonder about is the abiloity of your system to deal with (a) intricate note-values and polyrhythms and (b) interweaving lines of text. You don't have to do this, of course, but what I was trying to ask from you was the resetting of an extract from the Finnissy 7th Concerto itself, accompanied by your comments on how easy or otherwise it was to do so and how easy or otherwise you find the result to read, so unless and until you reset such an extract, the practicality or otherwise of your notation system in dealing with such writing will remain unanswered.

Please let us know your thoughts and/or intentions re this.

Thanks.

Best,

Alistair

[johnk]

If Finnissy's music was available in a proper Finale format, or another music program that could be converted into Finale, then every notational method employed in his original TN, such as complex polyphony and polyrhythms, can be copied unchanged into the ES template. The main difference between the original and an ES translation is simply that playing the right notes is easier in ES, because of the unique representation for each of the 12 pitch classes, and the 'cycling' of octaves. These are properties that are demanded of any AN in the MNMA's screening criteria.

I am not going to enter such complex music by hand into Finale to satisfy your desire that I accurately transnotate an actual passage of his music. Maybe you don't quite understand that I have developed an automated program for converting TN into ES and also into some of the other ANs that have been requested of me.

And this is the crux of my argument - that followers of Klavar notation, or the Japanese Chroma system, or Express Stave, or Tom Reed's Twinline, can all have access to any music as long as it is in a computer 'format' to start with. And all music, unless scanned from handwriting, is 'engraved' for publication by computer software these days. So it could be made available to musicians who would rather play from their favourite AN instead of TN.

By the way, how on earth could anyone possibly learn such music? Are you sure it was 'composed', note by note, to start with? Would anyone, including the composer, recognise if wrong notes were played???

But i am not really here to debate the validity or otherwise of specific musical works. I am not really here to debate the validity of ANs either. Nor whether an AN will eventually replace the traditional notation we have grown up with.

Since you have issued me with a challenge, Alistair, could i challenge you to learn my notation and then learn a piece from it, such as the Chopin Mazurka on the MNMA site; or if you would prefer, I can provide you with ANY piece of piano music you would like, AS LONG AS YOU SEND ME A COMPUTER MUSIC FILE OF IT!

I should think that learning ES would be less time consuming than writing all these posts!

Regards, JohnK

[ahinton]

If Finnissy's music was available in a proper Finale format, or another music program that could be converted into Finale, then every notational method employed in his original TN, such as complex polyphony and polyrhythms, can be copied unchanged into the ES template. The main difference between the original and an ES translation is simply that playing the right notes is easier in ES, because of the unique representation for each of the 12 pitch classes, and the 'cycling' of octaves. These are properties that are demanded of any AN in the MNMA's screening criteria.

I am not going to enter such complex music by hand into Finale to satisfy your desire that I accurately transnotate an actual passage of his music.

My "desire", as you put it, was to ascertain what problems might be encountered in doing this and then in reading the result. I now appreciate the difficulty of which you write, in that the Finnissy piece is not available in Finale and, had I realised that this would present an additional problem, I would not have suggested this work to you.

Maybe you don't quite understand that I have developed an automated program for converting TN into ES and also into some of the other ANs that have been requested of me.

I do now! I apologise again that I did not fully appreciate the precise detail of how you do what you do.

By the way, how on earth could anyone possibly learn such music? Are you sure it was 'composed', note by note, to start with?

The answer to your first question is best provided by suggesting that you listen to recorded performances by those who have made them and then, if you wish, to ask the performers; I am not sure if this particular work has been recorded, but his 4th Piano Concerto (this is for piano solo) has and, I believe, can be listened to on the British Music Information Centre's website (as I am unable to do this myself, i cannot tell you how much of it can be heard there - I've heard the piece and it is a toughter challenge than no. 7, I think). The much shorter answer to your second question is "yes".

if you would prefer, I can provide you with ANY piece of piano music you would like, AS LONG AS YOU SEND ME A COMPUTER MUSIC FILE OF IT!

I would gladly oblige if I could, but I do not have the software or such files necessary to be able to do this, for which fact I again apologise. I guess, therefore, that we'll just have to take your word for the implication that works that are as textually complex, demanding and elaborate as the one I suggested would present neither the music setter nor the end user with no greater problem than they do in traditional notation, unless someone else who is following this thread can provide to you a similar example in the form of a Finale file (perhaps someone out there can and would like to do that) from which you could work on a brief extract.

I should think that learning ES would be less time consuming than writing all these posts!

I imagine that this would rather depend on our respective typing and learning speeds!

Best,

Alistair

[johnk]

Aha, Alistair, at last we have connected!

Maybe my typing speed is not as good as yours then. I had a look at some of your other posts and you are quite prolific. I'm glad i by chance came across this Sorabji bloke. The Etude excerpts on the site you gave were very interesting.

I do feel rather sorry for traditional composers of such complex music though, to think that they are forever counting legerlines and aligning them so carefully from note to note and having to write an accidental in front of every single note, because otherwise a reader will be checking backwards for accidentals and each bar is so long! At least this new music seems to have abandoned the 15 key signatures in their notations!

I feel sure that many of them must have wished for a notation that has a simple 12 step coding and octave similarity, such as the ones MNMA is examining. Well we know that both Schoenberg and Busoni looked into such ANs and designed some themselves.

I think it was you who earlier in this thread made the comment that nothing ever came of Busoni's attempts. This is indeed a pity. Just because TN is so widespread today does not mean we must give up on the hopes of Busoni and others.

As I have tried to explain, the time is now ripe for various ANs to be tried out. And with computer music converter programs, musicians need no longer be afraid that by learning an easier notation system, they are cutting themselves off from the vast library of composed music.

So widen your horizons, dear musicians; try to think outside the confinements of the traditional notation we have all been conditioned with since childhood. Try some ANs! You have nothing to be afraid of!

Cheers, JohnK

[ahinton]

I do feel rather sorry for traditional composers of such complex music though, to think that they are forever counting legerlines and aligning them so carefully from note to note and having to write an accidental in front of every single note, because otherwise a reader will be checking backwards for accidentals and each bar is so long!

As you probably noticed, Michael Finnissy inserts accidentals in front of every note to avoid the risk of equivocation or the need to look back within the bar at what may have gone before; not all composers do this, but he is by no means alone in allotting an accidental to every note. Ronald Stevenson would counsel that the adoption of this policy results in unnecessary cluttering of the score, although in so saying I am mindful of the fact that the tonal language of the two composers is diametrically different. If the usual rules for accidentals are to be applied, the "long bar" aspect of the problem can be reduced by editorial addition of dotted barlines within those same rules, in order to avoid each bar becoming progressively accidental-filled. As to the leger line problem, I would not choose to write those extremely high or low notes with so many leger lines, preferring instead to use an additional stave on top for these with a Î sign (indicating 8va) or its inverted equivalent (indicating 8va bassa), although some pianists would not necessarily like this, as they prefer as few staves as possible to be used.

I wish you luck in getting a suitable computer file of some really challenging Finnissy, Barrett or whomsoever to work on, however.

Best,

Alistair

[abell88]

Okay, my progress so far...I have not managed to practise every day, but I've spent 20 minutes a day at least every other day, so I hope that's almost as good.

I've played the Bach Badinerie a few times and can now play it HS pretty easily. Today I worked on a few bars HT. Two days ago I sight-read the Moonlight sonata...it was very frustrating. It really reminded me of the first time I ever attempted the piece...about 30 years ago -- when I was a very poor reader. Today I tried it again and it went a lot better (I should mention that I have played through the piece many times over the years, although I've never officially "learned" it.

I'm beginning to get the hang of the notes...what I found really hard in the Moonlight was keeping track of what clefs/octaves I was in.  Something curious I have noted is that generally I am not thinking of the notes by name, but by location...I expect that's what you wanted when you were designing the system, but it surprised me as I do read TN fluently.

So, that's my progress so far...I'll report back again in a few days.

[johnk]

Great, Abell88!

You have the honour of being the first volunteer trained musician who is not a friend or colleague, to try ES. Im pleased you are starting to get it. In the Moonlight, I myself found the registers a bit confusing. I even think there may be some mistakes in them! The reason i did it this way was because the original uses 'cross stave' notation, and I haven't experimented with how this would go in the ES staves, so at the time I was playing safe. It also shows the benefits of a unified stave system, where all registers are read the same way.

I am currently working on a new version of the Finale Notation Converter and Express Stave template, which when finished will allow direct copy and paste, or simply drag from TN to ES and vice-versa. The present version requires a more complex set of steps to achieve the translation.

It is good of you to offer to continue with the experiment with a further report. I hope you are starting to enjoy the experience and are not finding it a chore.

Many, many thanks,

John Keller

[abell88]

Well, the Bach is coming along pretty well. I still don't know what notes I'm playing...no, I know what they are, but I'm not thinking about them by their letter names. I do recognize a few of them instantly, or pretty quickly at least...B and F were the first, because of the dots, then E (because it looks like Bass E).

I am a very analytical player, so I must say that it's very odd to be so unaware of what key I'm in or what chord I'm playing.

My son, who play the cello and reads bass clef fluently, started to work on the Moonlight Sonata a couple of days ago. It's way over his head technically -- he's not a pianist at all -- but he is getting the hang of it. He had looked at the real score in the summer and was really put off by the number of sharps and by having to read the treble clef.  I don't know if he'll stick with it or not, but I'll let you know how it goes.

[johnk]

Hi Abell88,

This is all very interesting. You say you are not thinking about letternames, yet you mention the notes you recognise quickest by their lettername (B, F and E). So is it mainly the black keys that you are not thinking about letternames for?

If so, this is understandable, and would occur with any chromatic staff, because the 'correct' enharmonic name is never specified in an AN. Only TN writes 'F#' rather than 'Gb'. In a chromatic staff all you get is this black key (pointing to the keyboard). Whether you call it F# or Gb or a new single name, is up to you.

In TN, we are so used to associating a 'key' with its 'key signature', ie with #s or bs, that when we no longer see a black keys as specifically a # or a b, we have no way of thinking of the key in traditional terms.

A new kind of theory is more appropriate for ANs. Instead of the key signature concept, it would be more like ... "This set of 7 notes out of the 12 predominate: A, B, C, Eb/D#, E, F#/Gb, G. Halfsteps (semitones) occur between B&C, Eb/D# &E, and F#/Gb & G." And this information then gives you the tonality of E minor. Plus of course as you play the piece, you hear which note is 'home' so you also get E minor.

As you see, it gets cumbersome to refer to the black keys by dual names, but this is what you must do when talking about them because while TN specifies which name to use, an AN does not. So, for a start, I refer to G#/Ab as 'LINK' or 'L' since it links each register unit ABCDEFG to the next. But I also use new single letternames for the other 4 black keys. This then puts all 12 notes on an equal footing, which is the aim of all ANs. Other inventors seem to prefer to keep the # and b dual names, or else choose either the # or the b names only.

Being 'analytic' is great, but you might try thinking in a new way, more like noticing the chord 'shapes' on the keyboard. Eg in the Bach Badinerie, there is a nice chord of two black notes a major 3rd apart and a white note a tritone away on top. This notational pattern is mirrored by the keyboard pattern, and you will recognise it as an F#7 chord (or equally a Gb7 chord, or 'K7', but again, just think of its keyboard pattern. It is like someone plays it and asks you to name it. Either name will do, but to relate it best to E minor key, the 'F#7' is more appropriate if you are used to TN theory).

One of the new things about ANs, is that all intervals are distinct.  The major 3rd is notated wider than the minor 3rd. And all tritones are opposite colours (except the spotted BF) and the 2 notes occupy equivalent positions relative to two adjacent lines in ES. So gradually you will start recognising the intervallic coding.

Having said all this, there is a way to relate ES notation to TN keysignatures. This is only available with ES because it distinguishes the black and white keys. Other ANs do not.

'Sharps' start under the lines and gradually accumulate upwards, while flats start above the lines and accumulate downwards. The pattern is also seen on the keyboard. Also # keys 'lose' the spotted F, but retain the B, while the flat keys go vice-versa.

Thus in the Bach, measure 2, you can recognise 1 #. (No F, but a black note under the L line means F#) In m. 6, you see a 2nd black note appear under the D line, so you think 2 #s. Of course, this piece has a few other black notes to confuse the method, but they tell you that it could be in a minor key. So together with the E minor chord at the start, you can tell its in E minor. Notice BTW that the E minor chord shows a minor 3rd interval at the bottom.

How old is your son? It will be interesting to see how far he gets with the Moonlight. You might have to give him a crash course in piano technique!

Thanks once again for your reports.

John K

[johnk]

I have looked closely at the Moonlight Sonata file and I did find some register mistakes. So I have uploaded a corrected version back where it was originally posted on page 1.

I also noticed that this file does not open very easily on my computer. If anyone else has the same problem, I found that right clicking on it and saving target, then open works. And while the on-screen version looks a bit rough (on my monitor anyway), a printout should look nice and clean.

I'm still working on another version of the transnotator, so havent got round to converting many new pieces lately.

Thanks to all who have viewed this thread. If anyone else besides Abell88 has tried ES, I would like to hear from you.

Cheers,

JohnK

[abell88]

This is all very interesting. You say you are not thinking about letternames, yet you mention the notes you recognise quickest by their lettername (B, F and E). So is it mainly the black keys that you are not thinking about letternames for?

Both black and white...black for the reasons you mention, but even for A, for example, I just sort of think of "above that black key".

I'm starting to recognize 8ves because they look more like 7ths, but other intervals really flummox me....I find I'm thinking almost purely by location.  Now that I think of it, I think I can recognize G  below the staff, but it's really hard remembering that the note below the top line is also G. (Not hard to play, just hard to remember...I'm sure it will come).

How old is your son? It will be interesting to see how far he gets with the Moonlight. You might have to give him a crash course in piano technique!

He's almost 17. I'll definitely have to teach him to use the pedal...and he'll have to get used to reading two staves at once.  I'll download the new version for him.

[johnk]

You mentioned that you recognised E because it looked like bass E; I would think that all the bass spaces ACEG would look familiar but I guess everyone is going to experience it differently. I presume you dont have difficulty with D?

Thinking 'above that black key' is fine. The correlation of patterns on the keyboard and in the notation is why I feel that ES would be easier for traditional pianists to learn than other ANs might be.

Dont worry, I wont ask you to learn another AN for comparison!

I found it interesting that you say 8ves look like 7ths. I distinctly remember a time when learning TN, that I was annoyed that 8ves didnt 'look' like 8ves, in that the notes dont look similar. Then eventually i got to accept that this 'odd' looking line-to-space interval was an octave. In ES I find the similarity of octaves makes them quite easy. But other intervals may take a while. The tritone is distinctive, as I mentioned, its half-octave size meaning its notes have equivalent positions on two lines, and the opposite notehead colour (except for the distinctive B-F) give a sense of unrelatedness. Then the P4 and P5 are (usually) similar colours, and one more or one less than the tritone.

The intervals in ANs are often described by the number of semitones rather than the TN names. Thus a tritone = 6 halfsteps; P4 = 5 and P5 = 7. I prefer a new term for halfstep or semitone that does not imply half of something. Some people use 'degree'. I came up with 'pitch line increment', or 'pli' for short. Thus an octave is 12 pli, and a minor 3rd is 3 pli. The major 6th is 9 pli, or 3/4 of an octave.

A diminished 7th chord built of 3 pli has an easily recognised coding in ES. You can see some in the Moonlight Sonata. They are either lines and spotteds (L B D F), or two notes of the same colour in each space 'band', changing to the opposite colour in successive bands. Thus ACJK and HIEG.

I should explain my black key letternames...

It's simple.
Between two LINKs, the white keys are ABCDEFG, and the black keys are H  IJ  K.
Black keys are written in bold.
These letternames have some convenient coincidences:
B and H are reversed in German;
I and J are the dotted pair of letters, and they fall on the two black key group;
After HIJK comes L for LINK!

And there is one more coincidence which I'll leave you to guess...

I was thinking specifically of pedalling when I mentioned you giving your son a crash course in piano technique! Please thank him for trying the ES notation.

And thanks to you once again.

JohnK

[johnk]

I have transcribed the last movement of the moonlight sonata into a version of Express Stave that looks even simpler. It supports cross-stave notation and also will allow direct drag-copying of TN into ES and vice-versa with finale's NotePad.

I had some interest in my notation from the UK Piano Teachers Group, which is encouraging.

Is anyone still trying it here?

[abell88]

I'm still having fun with the Bach Badinerie -- almost learned to my satisfaction now.

By the way, I sent you a private message a few days ago -- did you get it?

[johnk]

Nice to hear you're having fun!

I had forgotten about the private messages section so thanks for alerting me to it. I have sent a reply.

Is you son still tring the Moonlight 1st movement?

Cheers, JohnK

[abell88]

Yes, he's still playing it -- when he has a chance.

[Tash]

ok i sort of read most of the first page of this and have a query

firstly, ok so you can do your notation as an alternative- i can see this as posing problems in 2 areas- one being the school classroom in music- if you have some kids reading music through the AN then they're going to get completely screwed when it comes to doing stuff in class, and if they want to join the orchestra or other ensemble i doubt the conductor is going to go find a copy of the score in the AN
Other thing- composition: not everyone composes directly onto their computer, and sometimes it's enough of a b*tch reading the notation of particular composers, but with this AN, reading the little notes that are still in the same little gap between lines could prove a pain because if the composer is too careless there could be trouble with working out what note it's actually meant to be. like we're thinking budding composers who are just doing school stuff, then their teachers are going to be what if they don't understand the notation...

[tac-tics]

I remember in my Calculus class in high school, I was irked by the loose standard for mathematical notation. For example, using sin² x to represent the square of the sine of x. So, like any perfectionist would, and I decided to make my own standard math notation. This, in turn, irked off my teacher.

Case in point, society has a hard enough time keeping 5-year-old technology standardized. Anything over 300 years old is going to have way to much initeria to overturn completely. At the very best, it will only serve to create two concurrent systems, both of which are fundamentally incapable of fully expressing the composer's true intent.

Sorry. I don't mean to be a rainy cloud. I do find this system to be quite interesting, and I would like to see what you can accomplish with it. Seeing it just reminded me of my calculus class ^^.

I might as well add something to this thread too
Does the system have any concern for ornamentals? I hate having to look up the meaning of every new squiggle I find in every piece I play.

[johnk]

Ok, you guys are making it hard for me, but here goes!

First to Tash:

  if you have some kids reading music through the AN then they're going to get completely screwed when it comes to doing stuff in class, and if they want to join the orchestra or other ensemble i doubt the conductor is going to go find a copy of the score in the AN.

You might ask this question to Jean de Buur at www.mnma.org. She teaches Klavar notation in France and has reported on comparing progress with TN and Klavar notation in high school piano students. Klavar, invented by the Dutchman Cornelius Pot, is the oldest commercial AN, with over 200,000 pieces of music published.

My own answer would be that the music teacher gets his scores online or arranges in a music software program which he sends to the AN kid's PC, and the kid sticks it in his converter and out comes the piece in ES or whatever he wants.

but with this AN, reading the little notes that are still in the same little gap between lines could prove a pain because if the composer is too careless there could be trouble with working out what note it's actually meant to be.

Same with carelessly written TN. If a note is not precisely in the space or on the line, the player grinds to a halt. This occasionally happens with printed music too. As far as the handwritten ES notes go, the writer has to draw the note so that it touches one line or doesn't. I found that the non-touching notes were the hardest, but they have a spot in the printed notation so they cant be misread. Putting the spot in the centre of a handwritten note was a pain, so I decided that in handwriting ES, a > symbol is used instead for these center-spaceband notes (B and F). The other notes are all pretty foolproof.

like we're thinking budding composers who are just doing school stuff, then their teachers are going to be what if they don't understand the notation...

I think maybe the teacher will be like what anyway with some budding composers.

Tictacs, sorry tac-tics:

There is nothing wrong with aiming for precision in maths notation or any other. When the mathematician wants a new term or concept he makes sure he clearly defines it - maybe this is what your teacher forgot to tell you. "sin(2)x" is defined as meaning sinx by sinx.  Now what does "C-9" mean? C minor with a 7th and major 9th added, or C major with a 7th and minor 9th added?

I am flattered to think you guys are considering my notation invention as a rival for TN! All I want is for more people to be able to enjoy music making. Many alternative notations could do this. Why learn two different clefs, four different sets of legerlines, 5 accidental signs, and 15 key signatures, when you could have all 12 pitches depicted logically, the same for all clefs and octaves, nothing more needed.

I just think ES has a better chance for pianists, because it is closer to the bass clef, intervals are about the same size as in TN so chord shapes look familiar, and a black and white coding representing the 5 black and 7 white keys is more intuitive than most other AN note codings.

I had the 'revelation' of seeing the symmetrical pattern of ABCDEFG on the keyboard at the age of 17, and I also defined the black key letternames HIJK and L at that age. I think maybe at this age the brain is more logical, creative, and less brainwashed by conventions, than at any other age. Good on you for wanting a tighter maths syntax in your highschool calculus class. May you never loose that mindset!

Regarding ornaments, I suppose they could be written out, but to be consistent with what I've just said, I should just have a definition of each ornament written for reference before the piece.

Thanks for your interest.

John

PS We've broken through the 1000 readers barrier!

[charleyg]

I had asked you this question in a private message, but I do see the value of sharing the question (and the answer) with other interested readers.

In TN, many times you have multiple voices represented in a single staff.  So, there may come a time when you have multiple pitches starting at the same time, but with different durations, also (less of a problem maybe) notes with different durations that perhaps start at different times, but end up overlapping.

Maybe I got it wrong, but I thought that the durations were indicated by the # of stems, not # of flags on the stem.  So, I can't quite see how you might notate several different pitches, starting at the same time, with different numbers of stems assigned to each note.

Can you share with us your design or philosophy in notating that sort of occurance?

[johnk]

In working on automatic convertion of TN into ES, the rhythmic part has been a problem, in that Finale does not support completely different coding for note values. So I attach the extra stem to half notes as an 'articulation'. This is semi-automatic, in that you can say 'Apply articulation X to all note values from halfnote to dotted halfnote'. However the extra stem cannot be joined to the note head and also be tha same length as the true stem so I opted for alligning the stem ends.

To convert wholenotes, I attach an extra double stem as an articulation, then convert all wholenotes to halfnotes without rebarring. The playback is a little inaccurate, but the notation looks correct.

I have done a little exercise of 4 part writing in one stave showing TN and ES. In ES the 4 parts are easily followed by:
part 1 = stems up on left,
part 2 = stem up on right,
part 3 = stem down on left,
part 4 = stem down on right.

In the TN version there is ambiguity as to which part sings the wholenote.

Thanks for the question Charleyg.

JohnK

[ahinton]

In working on automatic convertion of TN into ES, the rhythmic part has been a problem, in that Finale does not support completely different coding for note values. So I attach the extra stem to half notes as an 'articulation'. This is semi-automatic, in that you can say 'Apply articulation X to all note values from halfnote to dotted halfnote'. However the extra stem cannot be joined to the note head and also be tha same length as the true stem so I opted for alligning the stem ends.

To convert wholenotes, I attach an extra double stem as an articulation, then convert all wholenotes to halfnotes without rebarring. The playback is a little inaccurate, but the notation looks correct.

I have done a little exercise of 4 part writing in one stave showing TN and ES. In ES the 4 parts are easily followed by:
part 1 = stems up on left,
part 2 = stem up on right,
part 3 = stem down on left,
part 4 = stem down on right.

In the TN version there is ambiguity as to which part sings the wholenote.

Thanks for the question Charleyg.

JohnK

Whilst I realise that what I am about to write is arguably not directly germane to the subject here, it might be worth bearing in mind that the shortcomings of Finale (or, for that matter, Sibelius or other major music setting software) are another factor in this whole issue, especially in the field of keyboard writing.

Best,

Alistair

[johnk]

Hi Alistair,

I'm not sure if I understand your implication here, and invite you to explain further.

If you mean that these music programs are not set up specifically for writing in ANs and thus at present are not perfect transnotation applications (specially for rhythmic coding), then I would simply say that future versions may cater more to ANs if there is the demand.

Or alternatively, dedicated software could be developed for the purpose. There are already free downloadable programs for writing in Klavar, and for the Japanese Chroma AN associated with their 6-6 keyboards.

The present shortcomings of Finale for transnotation have certainly been a factor in my more recent ideas for developing ES. In particular, omitting the dotted and bolder stave lines, which as it happens, I think I prefer. I am now working on slight modification of the notehead glyphs.

Cheers, JohnK

[rimv2]

Ah just looked through the score of the Beethoven.

Tis weird.

Ah believe that combining both these notations would be better, or at least better spacing of notes. A kid could tell the differences of the small spacing, but mah brain aches. Ah've juss got a grasp on the standard notation. And when its made with whatever it looks just as weird as ES.

Show some better examples or use better samples.

The...

After taking a second look-

Ah think the problem is the conjestion of the music on the page.

Ah is new to this. If elementary school books were like this ahd have failed- not really

[johnk]

Yo rimv2!

Ah dig yo lingo man, but which Beethoven did ya look at (Moonlight mvt 1 or 3?).

Da jpg files dat show on da screen aint da best lookin samples, but da PDFs is cool when ya print em.

An which part looks congested? - dats wot AH'd like to know! Could be dat you is tryin to look at da notes touchin or overlappin like some other dudes did, instead of jus lookin at da note color. Da color is wot tells yo wot key to play.

An yo aint gonna fail nothin bro! Youse jus gotta get da raht tude!

Ya dig?

JohnK

[ahinton]

Hi Alistair,

I'm not sure if I understand your implication here, and invite you to explain further.

I was referring specifically to the shortcomings of these programs that eduitors of Sorabji's scores hae encountered when using them to create scores using the traditional form of musical notation; things are not as difficult as once they were, but I have had a couple of editors in the past mentioning that they have had to spend considerable amounts of time forcing the programme to "cheat" in order to get around one problem or another when dealing with, for example, long beamed groups that intertwine with other such groups and which may traverse multiple staves.

Best,

Alistair

[johnk]

Are there any scores of Sorabji's solo piano music available online, so i could look at what you refer to, and also possibly listen to the music? I did find the music very interesting when I followed some links a while back, but i dont think they showed the scores. From what i recall, it seemed that his music involved a new kind of harmonic language, which, while not being atonal, did not seem to be derived from conventional tonal sources either, yet seemed to make sense. In any case i am interested to hear (and see) more of it. Also to see the kind of notation requirements.

The fact that the editors did 'engrave' the scores with music software programs means that they could be presented in this form online in the future, and therefore available for future notation conversion applications.

Cheers, JohnK

[ahinton]

Are there any scores of Sorabji's solo piano music available online, so i could look at what you refer to, and also possibly listen to the music? I did find the music very interesting when I followed some links a while back, but i dont think they showed the scores. From what i recall, it seemed that his music involved a new kind of harmonic language, which, while not being atonal, did not seem to be derived from conventional tonal sources either, yet seemed to make sense. In any case i am interested to hear (and see) more of it. Also to see the kind of notation requirements.

The fact that the editors did 'engrave' the scores with music software programs means that they could be presented in this form online in the future, and therefore available for future notation conversion applications.

Cheers, JohnK

No, these scores have not been made available online - at least not with our consent. We supply all of them, however, in paper copy format, just as we do the original mss. I won't bother you with the detail as to why this is the way it is on this forum, but if you want to write to me at
sorabji-archive@lineone.net
I can do so if you wish. We also supply many of the CD recordings of Sorabji's work.

Best,

Alistair

[mandrake]

johnk, I just looked at Klavar.
I'm curious about why you decided not to have a vertical notation.

[johnk]

johnk, I just looked at Klavar.
I'm curious about why you decided not to have a vertical notation.

Well years ago I learnt a piece in Klavarskribo, as it was then called. I found it very difficult, despite its logic and keyboard tablature design. (It was Liszt's Petrarch Sonnet 104.)

I decided then that the left to right reading convention and up and down representation of pitch was fundamental, or at least very much ingrained, and that vertical notations would never become generally accepted by traditionally trained musicians. A general music notation could not be so tied to the left-right pitch axis of keyboards.

My aim in designing an AN, has always been to try to find a system which, as well as being easy for beginners, would also be relatively easy for TN-trained musicians to adapt to.

Even some Klavar teachers seem to be in favour of a horizontal stave, and mnma member Jeanette de Buur has submitted such a system to the website. Hopefully it will be shown soon.

To me one problem with vertical staves would be how to include lyrics for songs. Also any expressions in the written language cannot be neatly incorporated. But the main problem I see is that of adaptability from TN. How could I illustrate trasnotation with a vertical stave?

JohnK

[rimv2]

Yo rimv2!

Ah dig yo lingo man, but which Beethoven did ya look at (Moonlight mvt 1 or 3?).

Da jpg files dat show on da screen aint da best lookin samples, but da PDFs is cool when ya print em.

An which part looks congested? - dats wot AH'd like to know! Could be dat you is tryin to look at da notes touchin or overlappin like some other dudes did, instead of jus lookin at da note color. Da color is wot tells yo wot key to play.

An yo aint gonna fail nothin bro! Youse jus gotta get da raht tude!

Ya dig?

JohnK

*contemplates whether or not ah should be insulted*

Oh well.

The beethoven ah looked at was the 1st movemenet. Ah also looked at the Mazurka.

What ah mean by conjestion is the amount of  bars per line and the amount of lines per page. Most learners start off with staves that are slightly larger and more spaced out.

A beginner like mahself can be throwed off easily

[johnk]

Yo Rimv2,

It could be that different paper size standards between Oz and USA mean the printout is reduced slightly.

But I also admit that I did not think of doing stuff in 'big note' versions as in beginner books. My main concern was to get the noteheads looking the same saze, oops, size as TN notes. To do this i noticed that the Express Stave can be made smaller than TN staves.

Another factor is that because there are never any accidentals, the notes can be evenly spaced, and as there are no keysignatues taking up space, more bars can fit in a line.

The first page of the Moonlight has 5 staves on the page, and to my eyes it looks calm and peaceful. The other 2 pages have 6 staves and look more full, but i didnt want the page layout to go onto an extra page just for two systems.

I think any new notation will look weird at first. Imagine looking at Chinese writing. Yet to those who read it, it looks fine.

As a beginner, you might go through the tutorial on the mnma site and compare how long it takes you to play the snippet of 'Yesterday', compared with how long it would take to learn this in TN. (It would have a key signature of 6 #s or bs, and also contain 2 accidentals.)

But I will consider doing some big note stuff. 

JohnK

[abell88]

But I will consider doing some big note stuff. 

Well, I would appreciate it if it were a little bit bigger...not because I am a beginner, but because my eyes are not as young as they used to be.

[johnk]

Hi Abell88 and Rimv2,

I attach a version of the Chopin Mazurka with a slightly larger note size and more spacious page layout. I must admit it suits me much better too, since I lost my music glasses two weeks ago! I hope you like it.

Cheers, JohnK

[Herve]

Since day 1 of my piano experience I have been very unhappy with traditional music notation. 

About 10 years ago, when a piano-novice friend of mine complained bitterly about the same thing, I created for her what is essentially piano tablature.  After using it for a bit, shie asked why all piano music was not written this way.  I had no answer except to say that a violin player would not find it very useful.

Middle C is located as indicated by red arrows on the picture below - occupying the upper half of the double-space which, on the left-most portion of the "staff", is split by a heavier "line of demarcation".  B would appear on the lower half of this double space.

So what you see is a layout of two black, three black, etc., with single and double spaces - the white keys - similar to what one would see standing above the keyboard, but with the keyboard at 90 degress (stings extending to the left) to how one would view it as a player.  E and F occupy the lower and upper halves of the other double spaces.  This is more or less a "piano roll" way of expressing notes.

Time signature and note value are indentical to traditional notation, so go for it and see if you can identify this piece.

[johnk]

Herve, it seems you have independently invented a version of Klavar notation. Klavar (or Klavarskribo) is already used by many people, especially in Holland. My main complaint about it, is that the staves are much too fat, and your illustration shows this. I took me a while to realise that the two staves are meant to be played together.

JohnK

[cosine]

johnk,

Could you give a basic explanation of how to read your innovative musical notation? I can't figure it out by comparing it to standard notation.

[johnk]

Well naturals have white noteheads, and sharps and flats have black. So rhythmically I changed halfnotes to have a double stem (and wholenotes a triple stem).

The stave covers one octave, and has places for all 12 chromatic pitches, each note positioned proportionally. The white notes within a stave, in between the outer lines, are ABCDEFG.

The advantages of using ABCDEFG as my octave unit (instead of say CDEFGAB) are that it is the alphabet, and that it is symmetrical, so you can easily see the middle of the pattern on the keyboard.

A   BC   D   EF   G

The Express Stave only needs 3 lines - the outer border lines and a centre line.
The centre line is D and it is a white note. The outer lines represent A flat/G sharp, or 'link' (L), as I call this black key because it 'links' each octave unit ABCDEFG to the next. (ABCDEFG)L(ABCDEFG)L(etc ..

The note L (Ab/G#) is a black note on either outer line.

The midpoint between lower L and D is B, written as a note with a spot and centered in the bottom spaceband without touching either the L or D line. Similarly F is a spotted note centered in the upper half of the Express Stave.

The remaining notes are as follows:

Touching below the D line, we have C# (black) and C (white).
Touching above the D line, we have Eb (black) and E (white).

Similaly,
Touching below the L line, we have G (white) and F# (black).
Touching above the L line, we have A (white) and Bb (black).

Its all based on symmetry and is similar to the bass clef which also has D in the center.

Download the Tutorial from www.mnma.org if you need more info.

Thanks for your enquiry,

JohnK

[cosine]

Thanks john. It makes a lot more sense now. A little practice and I could porbably read it pretty well. However, even after reading all these posts, I still don't see the advantage to such an alternate form of musical notation. (That's probably because I'm already proficient in reading standard notation and don't want to learn a new system!  )

[johnk]

Cosine, how long did it take you to learn both treble and bass clef, up to the fifth leger line above and below each, all the key signatures from 7 flats through 0 to 7 sharps, the double sharp and flat, the rules for accidentals etc? And can you read in 6 sharps with the same fluency as no sharps or flats? Have you ever misread a legerline chord with a heap of accidentals because it was hard to line up the sharp, flat or naturals with the notes?

I dont really want to convince anyone who is comfortable with TN to change, but I was interested to see how quickly a traditionally trained musician could learn to read a piece in ES, because out of the various ANs that have been proposed, i feel that it is important that TN trained musicians should find the AN not too different. I suppose a lot of people may disagree, but looking at my picture of "Shave and a Haircut" in traditional bass and ES bass, I think that they are not all that different - certainly closer than other ANs I have studied.

Intervals and chord shapes are similar, however the major and minor thirds (4 and 3 semitones respectively) can be distinguished, as can the 'quality' of all intervals; and the 'hand shapes' of chords (how they look and feel on the keyboard) are plainly there in the notation.

I would like to thank the few people that have tried a piece or two and given feedback, with a special mention of Abell88, who has not only learnt a piece, but tried the notation with a student who had difficulty with a passage in TN.

Cheers, JohnK

[abell88]

Well, I saw my student today (after two weeks, as we had a break last week)...the good news is, she made very good progress with the part of the piece I had converted into ES for her. The bad news is, she found the ES too confusing and so just worked at the traditional notation...perhaps I'll experiment with some of my other students...maybe this time one of the good readers.

[johnk]

Oh well, the main thing is your student has progressed. I accept that it may take longer than i first thought for a student to get used to ES. Thanks for trying it. Now that you have the translation software, let me know of any future attempts.

With my own students it is probably easier because I teach in units of A to G from the start, with the 'link' being the first key taught, so as to locate the A to G unit on the keyboard. And bass clef A to G is taught by the symmetry. Quite a few of my young students enjoy playing 'Black and White Boogie' and one 5th grader plays the Moonlight 1st mvt in ES. (Definitely less wrong notes to correct.) Generally i am careful not to push ES too much at this stage.

[maul]

Whatever happened to this ridiculous nonsense anyway. *laffz*

[johnk]

Hello Maul,

Well I am now on the committee of www.mnma.org and we are about to launch the renovated website.

This year I had 2 higher school certificate students play pieces learnt in ES. They were at only 5th grade piano standard but both played the Chopin Fantasie Impromptu brilliantly.

I have been learning various jazz pianists' improvisations by turning their midi files into ES notation. You can see me play David Sprunger's Blues from my notation on YouTube. Also checkout my Hot Canary piano/whistling performance.

[ Invalid YouTube link ]

I invite comments on my YouTube videos :-)

You might also look at Japanese Chroma keyboard players, eg:

&feature=related

You will see I am not alone in considering 'ridiculous' alternatives to traditional notation and keyboard layout!

Cheers, john

[leahcim]

They were at only 5th grade piano standard but both played the Chopin Fantasie Impromptu brilliantly.

This sounds interesting. It's been over a year since I used your notation. I can now play, extremely poorly, the first 8 or so bars of the Chopin Mazurka, from memory. i.e it's over a year since I've needed to look at the score, I could dig it out if I ever play the first bars well enough to consider learning the rest, but I could just as easily have learnt to read the real music.

Indeed, given that practising for over a year I can't play even  part of the piece. If over the same year I also couldn't read the music, I may as well give in It's a chocolate fireguard, you may as well develop an easy way to open the piano lid for pianists without arms.

ES notation didn't make these kids play FI brilliantly. It hasn't increased the speed of learning to play the piano.

As I said at the time, playing the piano is far more difficult than reading the score [and imo far more in need of someone to try something different to give some clarity to how to do it - admittedly this isn't as trivial as reinventing the wheel]

In my case by a huge percentage. I could probably, just as an exercise in futility, sit and memorise the FI score. I doubt that after 20 more years I'll ever play it on the piano though.

But even in the case of people who can play well, they still need to spend years and years learning to play the piano. During which, learning to read music has plenty of time to develop, because, by comparison, it's easy. The younger they are when they start the easier it is.

You're solving a problem that doesn't exist. BUT, at the same time you're saying someone played the piece well almost implying that it should be surprising that they did. That's the information that's worth gold. What is the surprise? 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

OTOH, if you just gave 2 talented pianists FI in ES notation, that's not a selling point - why not teach them to read music? [If they are learning to read music, then what's the point you're making at all?]