One that must cause untold frustration and the quitting of many promising students is the disconnect between the G and F clefs. Generally, I imagine, people learn the G-clef notes first, and then are introduced to the bonkers set in the left hand, two notes out of kilter from the right.
I'm biased towards the traditional way of notating things, because it's simply just very elegant and logical once you get a hang of it, especially on a keyboard instrument like the piano. I'm interested in hearing if this way of presenting things makes sense to you.
The way I was taught notation from the start solved this problem quite neatly. I did not learn the G clef notes first, but rather the notes in both clefs at the same rate and at the same time, starting with middle C. If you squish the staves together a bit, middle C ends up in the "same place" for both clefs/hands. It makes sense that middle C looks a bit special (with the ledger line) and is right in the middle, since it is, well, middle C. Then you simply use the spaces and lines in the two staves to represent the white keys on the piano. If you go up in the system, you go up on the piano's white keys, and if you go down in the system, you go down on the piano's white keys.
Then, going up or down along the piano is simply one unbroken chain of black dots in the system. One step on the piano, i e going from one white key to the next, is one step in the system, so if you play each white key in turn up the piano, you get an even sequence of rising black dots in the system, and vice versa. Makes sense, right?
The clefs simply show which hand is which and act as little reminders of where G above middle C and F below middle C are located, since the clefs kind of circle the lines these keys are on.
With this basic mode of thinking, I learned to read notes quite fast.***What next? The lines and spaces in the system representing the white keys is great and all, and if we want to notate a C major scale, it works perfectly, since it is only made out of white keys:
But what happens if we start from G, for example, and want to play a scale that sounds "the same", in terms of how the pitches relate to each other (G major)? It doesn't work if we only use the white keys on the piano starting from G, because it sounds rather different from how C major feels now:
If we use a black key (F sharp) instead of the F we can solve this problem.
However, we need some way to show that we now need the black key just to the right of the white key F, instead of the white key F which the dot represents. For this, we decided to use the sharp sign, which tells us "Use the key just to the right of the white key this dot represents" - in this case the black key we need.Lets say we only had access to flat signs, the G major scale would look very different from C major, though it sounds "the same". It would no longer be a neat row of rising pitches, because we would have to modify a G, instead of an F, to get the black key.However, we still need the flat signs, because if we play a scale from, for example, F just using the white keys, it will also not sound the "same" as C major:We need the black key to the left of B instead of B to make it sound right. To indicate a key right to the left of the notated white key, we decided to use the flat sign:Using a sharp sign to generate the same sounds will no longer give us a neat row of rising pitches.
Now, if we have a piece in G major we know that the F is by default going to have to be turned into an F sharp, and in F major we know that the the B by default is going to have to be turned into a B flat. So instead of littering the score with sharps and flats, we simply put them at the start of the system, as a key signature.
The way the rest of the scales are notated can be derived from these simple problems and solutions, including double crosses and double flats.
We simply want the scales, and the chords we build out of them, to be possible to notated the "same way", with a connected row of rising pitches (and the possibility to build chords out of stacked thirds), regardless of what white or black key we start from.
The sharps and flats accomplish this for us. I think it would make less sense, for example, if a key like A major was a jumple of different leaps in the staves rather than a neat row of steadily rising pitches like C major.
The theory behind this is a bit more advanced but I feel this is a way one can look at the basics behind why things are as they are.
Something like Klavierskribo might offer something that is easier to understand for some beginners (I took to traditional notation rather quickly so I don't think Klavarskribo would ahve made it faster)
but I challenge you to notate something like Scriabin's 5th sonata with that system in a way that is anyway near practical:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xDTgj_69JKA
I don't think Klavisboro would work, really. The vertical arrangement is rather weird, and it is too visually cluttered.
I'm not against a new musical script, but I think the current one is quite sensible for most tonal music, especially in the Western tradition. I think one can absolutely design a better system for 12-tone serialism where all of the 12 notes are kind of similar, or microtones or whatever, or for simple music (e.g. Nashville numbering). But what you really want is simplicity and clear visual cues, while at the same time being invisible. You aren't really thinking too much about the font being used for the text right here, because it has the property that the design decisions are "invisible", and that is what you ideally want for a notation system to be understood well at high speed. None of the alternative musical systems I've seen so far seem better than the grand staff at achieving this goal. Even for an intermediate-advanced student, by and large, sheet music is considerably more effective than most other systems out there imo.
I believe in alternative notation for those learning to read ONLY if it relates to the standard way you read. For example with early beginners I will avoid the drudgery of reading a score by representing position in terms of letters, shape and finger numbers and then using numbers, letters and direction to map out what they need to do. If there are movements into other position the logic how one moves from one to the other, what fingers are replaced, how the shape has changed etc are looked at. I might learn around 20-50 pieces with an early beginner in this fashion and then introduce the standard reading while attaching all the shape, fingering and movement observations onto actual sheets so it looks again like our alternative notions. This allow them to be able to see pattern in actual music in the basic form they began (drawing from past experience) with and they can draw that pattern out if needed or merely leave it as a mental appreciation once it becomes more ingrained. I find reading before you have a little experience playing and coordinating yourself is somewhat inefficient.
Here is an alternate notation system I really like, although have spent the majority of 68 years reading standard notation i would have trouble playing from it.https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ddbxFi3-UO4
But smalin is a very creative person.As far as the idea of not using a key signature, but writing in accidentals, that would not work for me.
I have not had a gig in a long time, but in times past it was not unusual to sightread sheet music for a several hour job. I would be familiar with the style but might not have seen the individual pieces. Accidentals clutter the page - I need to know I'm in D and all the Fs will be sharp unless told otherwise. Reading at tempo with an ensemble requires some level of predictability.
My brother on the other hand plays trad jazz, and hasn't seen sheet music in years, so notation is not relevant. That's a skill set i don't have.
I confess I know almost nothing of these kinds of alternative teaching techniques, but I agree, as far as that's worth much at all, that no system is useful that doesn't give a help towards a final goal, or worse, gets in the way. When I learned piano in the late '60s / early '70s, I was introduced to the staves and notes with the G and F clefs, relating them to the notes on the piano, their duration symbols, etc., in a graded system of exercises, simple pieces and scales, as I'm sure millions of others were.
Creating alternative notation came out of necessity for me since I needed to solve how to rapidly develop early beginners without the drudgery of reading a score. Almost all the time score reading sucks out the joy of learning to play the piano at an early stage.
My beginner students all have alternatively written pieces I write out in front of them during each lesson, that creation of the music is important for them to see as well I find. I feel that teachers need to know how to write forms of music infront of students so they can see how the music is put together especially at the very early stages. Laying the foundation for the logic of sight reading skills in a simpler format other than traditional notes but of which has connection to them has rich grounds for innovation and I have found great success teaching early beginners with this type of system.
You should study traditional notation right from the beginning in a theoretical format and as simple exercises.
Tapping out rhythms, coordinating two hands tapping, reading worksheets, naming notes, basic maths ratio understanding of note durations etc all these can be tied into traditional reading skills right from the start of our training.
I don't feel that people should ever avoid that, I just have not seen any alternative system that can be used at a high level, at least none which connects strongly to traditional high level reading, if they manage that it would be much more interesting.
What this does hammer home to me, however, is the weakness of my suggested solution of an "all-accidentals" method.
.I'd be interested in the more advanced theory and whether it influences the comparison. I do understand all of the above - I've read music for several years - and I know roughly why things are the way they are. That doesn't mean people can't move on to a more elegant and logical system.
It may be that my intuition is off and traditional notation is really, objectively, the best possible notation system, but I imagine an ancient Egyptian scholar repeating the truism that everyone should study hieroglyphics.
So, the only value of an alternative writing system is as a bridge to the one true system? I'm not saying you're wrong, just trying to clarify.
It took me the last few days to realise that, while there may be some advantages to giving equal weight to the black notes (instead of having them as afterthoughts on the stave, imaginary points in between some of the lines and spaces, but not all), that's what a keyboard has, kind of......So there's a tension in what I'm trying to do when I give equal weight to the black notes.
So, trying to escape it is perhaps a little pointless. We find our way around the keys by the pattern of black keys, and what such scripts as Klavarskribo do (mostly) is reflect that navigation system on the staff. However, that is still a real benefit, at least potentially (if its downsides can be ameliorated, like its greater width).
@lostinidlewonder, I'd be interested to see - or get a brief description of - the alternative system you use with students.
I could say my system strongly relates to the "five finger style" playing where people are given a single position to hold their hand and numbers are used to represent what they have to do with their fingers. Rhythm can be represented in multiple levels, with traditional notes or with different sized numbers. For example: ♩ ♫ ♩ can be written with larger numbers for the crotchets and smaller ones for the quavers, rests or tied notes can be represented with dots (segmentations of the beat based on the fastest notes used in the piece) and dashes (whole beat rests). It is a rough estimation but usually enough for the early beginner. Once traditional rhythm is learned which can be done very early on you can attach the traditional notes above the numbers to represent their rhythm. Chords can be written else where and defined as vertically stacked letters representing the order of the chord just like traditional writing. I can attach numbers to each letter and also define the shape of those chords, eg: Cminor root triad would be a triangle shape. You can also define how chords progress into one another with horizontal lines defining an unchanged position and diagonal arrow defining an up or down movement. These chords can then be given a specific colour and then can be included in the melodic lines by circling the melodic numbers with the appropriate colour. The system is for early developing pianists to get them thinking in the way traditional music is written without the drudgery of having to read a score. If you want more info PM me.
I wonder.Could you pair one of the alternate systems with one of the alternate keyboard layouts, like the Wicki-Hayden?
It would take someone experienced with it to know what's best, and probably they have a system already. Have you used one yourself, timothy42b?
I have not used alternate systems because I have so many decades reading the traditional staff notation.
I had a fun idea the other day to try - to mark the board above the keys with sticky labels, just small, plain rectangles above the lines of the stave. There's the risk that I start looking down a lot more, when I'm really working at not doing so, but it's worth a try and a quick glance might start making the connections better than all cows eat grass. I've been doing that till the sodding cows have stripped the field and come home for milking.
I was going to say I'm jealous of you people for whom the dots come more easily, but then I'm not sure how much it's nature and how much I just haven't "nurtured" it (i.e. put in the work) for some reason. It's a common thing, though, to hear people say they're much better at one skill than another.
That might work if you are able to eventually wean yourself of it.
I run a handbell choir, which is basically a way for nonmusicians to attempt to play music.
That's not bad, really.
I have a few whiteboard/dry-erase markers at home, and one always above one of the pianos. I always put graphical cues up on there, either chord spellings and little arrows to try to remember pieces.
It hasn't helped me for the Prokofiev Precipitato or the Schönberg Gigue, which I'd say are about intermediate-to-difficult pieces to read at tempo (yeah, I guess those are difficult-ish for playing, but they're beasts to memorize, so I need to rely on some cues which I just make up as heuristics), but I suppose it's an alternate representation. At the very least, it keeps me from *** up my neck by staring at the score. (No, I don't need reading glasses, but I do use eyeglasses for things about two feet away, which is uncomfortable while playing piano).
It is a bit odd that, in my case, the more natural languages I learn and read regularly, the worse my spelling becomes in, say, English. I was a spelling competition champion at very young, like, I don't know what age. 5? 6? Something like that.
Where do you put it? That reminds me I must construct something to extend the music stand so I can get more pages on it. I saw someone with a long board attached to it and bulldog clips - maybe Paul Barton.
Yes, I have to wear reading glasses for that kind of distance. But they're just off-the-shelf so-many-diopter things so I can shop around and try various sorts.
I soon scrapped the idea of the stickers. I found it distracting, and then realised this is mad and the answer is obvious - everyone's been telling me in one way or another - more sight-reading practice. I began to think no amount of practice would do it, not realising how little practice I actually do.
I haven't really found learning other languages to interfere with my reading or spelling. How does your spelling become worse -- do you just randomly forget how to spell words?? I can technically read the scripts of four languages, but I pretty much only read or write in English as I don't have much use for the others.
Yes, I know how to create impeccable sentences in at least a handful of languages, but often I get distracted and finally don't care much anymore.
I really can't get behind the idea of stickers. Note names are laid out linearly on the piano -- either try to recognize a note directly, or count upwards or downwards from the nearest note you can recognize. IMO. You can possibly get the hang of it in a few days, although it will take a bit longer before it becomes second nature.
I would also say that the note reading games helped me out in the beginning. (Now that I think of it, it is kind of embarrassing that I was resorting to those as late as last April.) I think it's useful until you can recognize any note on the treble or bass clef within 1-2 seconds. At that point, just push yourself into reading, ideally a lot of material.
Another thing I've found is that sight reading is the kind of skill which simmers in your head and which takes a while to get better at -- sometimes, you may realize that you're magically better after a month of basically not practicing than when you were working your ass off everyday. Over time, I find myself agreeing more and more with the reading analogy. I find that similar things occur with reading, where I was just more fluent at reading a second language after 2-3 years, even though I had barely used it in the meanwhile.
What is structured sight reading practice for your personal situation though is not such a simple question to answer. You need to practice successful reading and that requires you study pieces that are easy enough to allow you to experience that. Hundreds of pieces a month and go from there, then you can say you are actually being more serious with your sight reading training.
I see this opinion a lot. I had at least three years of consecutive lessons and some exams, including in sight reading, and I always hated it and could never quite get to grips with it. Of course, I know how to work out the notes. It's about moving on to fluency and not faltering. I mean, the alphabet is laid out in a neat row, but working out letters isn't the end point of reading.
Also, I can only keep up the mental concentration if I'm reasonably passionate about what I'm doing, so instead of, for example, the 354 exercises in the C Position that you kindly suggested, I let myself loose on Bach's Aria from the "Goldberg" Variations, which was taxing.
It's a style thing - we don't articulate Ellington the same as Bach.My sentence construction is context sensitive. Speech rhythms are very different from formal writing, and if I'm on a forum with friends, I may revert to the way i would say it rather than the way I would write it in a formal document. Email? somewhere in between. Just the way it is.
I feel that sight reading needs to be considered in such a way that you are not studying necessarily pieces which excite you. You need to be excited about the process of practicing good reading and what rewards that brings you. Yes this is much more difficult than studying pieces which bring you joy but I feel those who really want to develop their reading skills need to forget about always doing things which bring them immediate joy. I really feel that there is no joy spending a long time learning pieces you love, it actually become addictive to improve your reading skills once you realize how fast you can learn your music. When one submits to studying less exciting pieces with the aim to improve their reading they really are investing in something that will give huge returns. You don't have to do this hours at a time but you should at least make time each day for it. This is not to say that one shouldn't explore all sorts of pieces for the reading training. Any reading is better than nothing! Bach certainly is a good choice. It is important though to have pieces which you can complete immediately that is the nature of good sight reading skills. Good reading skills allow you to play pieces with mastery immediately and it is important to feel that occur. It breaks away from the idea that pieces take many hours to improve and introduced a really intoxicating notion that pieces can be mastered immediately. Of course what you can play with mastery immediately is much lower than your actual skill level playing memorized works but that is what reading training is about, raising the bar as to what is easy for you to read and thus increasing your repetoire logarithmically, eclipsing any effort memorization would ever manage with the same pieces.
I was puzzled by those exercises, when I realised that "the C position" didn't even mean "in C major", but involving only the notes in each hand from C to G, and with accidentals, sometimes long strings of them. These seem like odd, arbitrary limitations for me, with several years of study behind me, despite it being a long time ago as a child. I can see that a mass of Fs with sharps next to them might help someone, particularly a complete beginner, see that what's on the F line or space will sometimes be the black note above, and later they'll learn to play in G major and know that from the key signature, but I wonder if I'd be better skipping things like that. Similarly, it seems odd ignoring G#, A, A# and B for a whole raft of exercises, and not moving the hands from that position. Again, for a complete beginner, maybe, or I guess it would remove however much mental processing I'm putting into fingering choices if the range strays too much from a position.
Topic: Alternative Musical Notation Systems 