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How I’d redesign piano sheet music

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Re: How I’d redesign piano sheet music

#71

Post by gjulianm »

amelius wrote: post #52

How I'd redesign a piano, is with the black keys equal in color and shape to the white keys. That way, transposing a song by a semitone is equivalent to shifting your hands by one key. Much more natural. I think they call an instrument with this property "chromatic", but I'm not sure. Actually, perhaps somebody can explain why the black keys were invented. Because their existence makes little sense to me. For example…

You have to ask yourself what should feel more natural: transposing songs or actually playing them. I don't know much about why the piano was designed like this, but I can see your idea wouldn't be useful:

- Black keys are a reference. Either by touching them or by looking at them, you can always know where you are. Not so easy with all the keys being the same. - The size of the keyboard is more or less adapted to our hand size. The distance between whole tones is similar to the distance between our fingers. A fifth is as wide as my hand, and I can play an octave without much effort. Making all the notes the same shape would change that and those common intervals would be more difficult to play. - Our hand is not flat. The fact that some notes are higher than others makes playing more comfortable. - Range. Same-shaped notes would occupy more space (unless you make them smaller than white notes, which would be uncomfortable) so either you get way bigger pianos (as if they were small) or pianos with less range.

There are probably more reasons why the black keys are there, these are just top off my head.

Re: How I’d redesign piano sheet music

#72

Post by vitorbaptistaa »

Interesting. Reminds me of the Synthesia game [1], which is like a Guitar Hero for the piano but where you can actually learn to play the real instrument, and not some plastic controller.

I still prefer the Hummingbird notation [2] though. Instead of this, it improves the classical musical notation without creating an entirely new notation. It's relatively easy to go from hummingbird to classical notation and vice-versa.

[1] http://www.synthesiagame.com/

[2] http://www.hummingbirdnotation.com/

Re: How I’d redesign piano sheet music

#73

Post by amelius »

gjulianm wrote: post #71
amelius wrote: post #52

How I'd redesign a piano, is with the black keys equal in color and shape to the white keys. That way, transposing a song by a semitone is equivalent to shifting your hands by one key. Much more natural. I think they call an instrument with this property "chromatic", but I'm not sure. Actually, perhaps somebody can explain why the black keys were invented. Because their existence makes little sense to me. For example…

You have to ask yourself what should feel more natural: transposing songs or actually playing them. I don't know much about why the piano was designed like this, but I can see your idea wouldn't be useful: - Black keys are a reference. Either by touching them or by looking at them, you can always know where you are. Not so easy with all the keys being the same. - The size of the keyboard is more or less adapted to ou…

Thanks for your explanation.

I think there is another advantage (to merely having the white keys) besides just transposing being easier. And this is that the same intervals will always have the same spacing on the keyboard. I guess this should be my main argument for this type of layout being more natural.

Re: How I’d redesign piano sheet music

#74

Post by gjulianm »

amelius wrote: post #73
gjulianm wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You have to ask yourself what should feel more natural: transposing songs or actually playing them. I don't know much about why the piano was designed like this, but I can see your idea wouldn't be useful: - Black keys are a reference. Either by touching them or by looking at them, you can always know where you are. Not so easy with all the keys being the same. - The size of the keyboard is more or less adapted to ou…

Thanks for your explanation. I think there is another advantage (to merely having the white keys) besides just transposing being easier. And this is that the same intervals will always have the same spacing on the keyboard. I guess this should be my main argument for this type of layout being more natural.

Yes, they would be the same spacing, but that spacing would be extremely uncomfortable and lots of pieces would become impossible to play. Making the black keys the same size as the white keys, a 8th would become a 13th. I don't have small hands and I can barely reach a 11th interval. Basically, a lot of simultaneous notes could no longer be played. A solution would be to make the keys smaller, but then you wouldn't be able to play semitones because your fingers wouldn't fit comfortably. To fix that, you could raise some keys, so basically you would end up with the current setup.

Re: How I’d redesign piano sheet music

#75

Post by jveld »

Here are some shortcomings I thought of immediately.

- Traditional notation is instrument-agnostic.

- It may be easily printable, but a staff is easily writable. With just a pen and a ruler, I can produce a neat staff in ~10 seconds. The ruler is optional if I don't care about prettiness. With this, you more or less have to print it: getting the spacing right by hand would be quite difficult.

- I have mixed feelings about the the traditional representation of key. Missing a sharp or flat in an unfamiliar key is probably my most common error when reading sheet music. OTOH, The traditional notation tells me which sharps and flats to use. With this system, I have to already know the structure of C# major if I want to noodle around (always). This would seem to be more hostile to beginners.

- The precision issue has already been brought up many times, but I would add that all the lost information is an archival disaster. It might seem superfluous since we have recordings, but given the rate of change in technology, access to data in old formats is by no means a certainty. Since this notation basically requires you to have heard the song in order to play it, it would become incomprehensible pretty quickly.

It seems to me that most of the complexity of musical notation reflects the "essential" complexity of actually playing the music. For example, consider key: even at the level of simple rock songs, a basic grasp of "key" is absolutely essential, and if you're playing a piano, this means you have to know which sharps and flats to use. If this seems pedantic, consider that the main difficulty of learning to play a piece is dexterity. It's going to take a bit of effort just to make your fingers hit the damn keys. Since this effort has to take place anyway, the little bit of extra effort to learn notation doesn't seem like much to ask. Besides, the amount of notation required to play pop songs is relatively small - that rendition of "Let it Be" contains about 10 symbols, most of which are related.

This isn't to say that traditional notation is perfect, or even good. It is rather baroque, and I'm open to a "redesign," as long as it really solves the problem. This redesign isn't useless, but its scope of usefulness seems so limited that I'm not really sure it's worth it.

Re: How I’d redesign piano sheet music

#76

Post by topogios »

abecedarius wrote: post #56
bbx wrote: post #21

What happens if you rotate that first image 90° counter-clockwise? http://i.imgur.com/i2V57On.png You get a traditional sheet music with simpler graphics. What about the new features? - Easily printable: traditional scores already are - Screen and scroll-friendly: you can stack traditional score pages vertically - Chord names: already exist on traditional scores - Lyrics: same thing - Foot pedal arrows: same thing Th…

The 90° isn't the big problem with traditional notation. It's that the same note in different octaves looks different . It's as if in programming you wrote a for loop differently for every level of nesting. The new notation draws against the same pattern of staff lines for each octave; plus, you don't have to remember sharps and flats from the key. I've long wished for these two improvements, especially the first one…

Notes in different octaves are different and hence should look different. Even if you restrict to keyboard instruments, I am not sure you describe an existing problem with classical notation.

For the non-keyboard instruments I know how to play, tones in different octaves having different identifications is a must unless you want to add extra parts to the notation.

Re: How I’d redesign piano sheet music

#77

Post by arrrg »

jveld wrote: post #60
andrewliebchen wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's clearly stated that the solution is meant to be like guitar tabs for piano. It's a limited, instrument-centered approach and not intended as a complete or universal solution.

Yes, but since he frames it in the title as a "redesign," it's hard to get out of the frame of thinking about it as such. If he had titled it "A Simpler Notation for Piano Music" or something, his intent would've been clearer. But then again, probably wouldn't have gotten to the front page without the word "redesign"

Only the simple, combative, stupidly contrarian mind.

Albeit, such minds are much too common on HN.

Re: How I’d redesign piano sheet music

#78

Post by tacos »

ams6110 wrote: post #70
tacos wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So does a deck of flash cards. If you learned multiplication tables you can learn to read music. And if you can play video games you can play piano. And it's NEVER too late to learn.

I suppose one could also say "if you can learn to sight-read a novel you can learn to sight-read music" and it might be true but I think there is a certain natural ability prerequisite. I played in school concert bands for four years and could never manage to sight-read anything very complicated. Practicing was a chore and when we got new music I always had to sit and pick through it very slowly measure-by-measure un…

I chose "flash cards and multiplication tables" as an example for a reason and I find your response fascinating. Thank you.

I will state that group instruction via band class at certain ages is perhaps the worst possible way to develop a love for something ("practicing was a chore...")

I too started note by note, then measure by measure. I felt like a total idiot! Gradually it became "phrase by phrase" and then turned into this surreal feeling where my eyes wander a few bars ahead and somehow my hands catch up in time. I wish everyone could experience that. I was just SO clumsy at first and I started SO late. I'm SURE you could do it given practice.

Re: How I’d redesign piano sheet music

#79

Post by shiro »

ams6110 wrote: post #70
tacos wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So does a deck of flash cards. If you learned multiplication tables you can learn to read music. And if you can play video games you can play piano. And it's NEVER too late to learn.

I suppose one could also say "if you can learn to sight-read a novel you can learn to sight-read music" and it might be true but I think there is a certain natural ability prerequisite. I played in school concert bands for four years and could never manage to sight-read anything very complicated. Practicing was a chore and when we got new music I always had to sit and pick through it very slowly measure-by-measure un…

There are two factors - an individual difference and a general matter.

In general, musical sight reading requires specific practice most people are not exposed to. Even if you play instruments fairly well, sight-reading practice is not something you implicitly pick up. I play piano for hobby over 30 years, took lessons time to time, but it's only recently I consciously started practicing sight reading and the effect is remarkable. It's a very specific exercise, different from just practicing a piece.

And there is the individual difference. My son is very visually-oriented, that he can make sense complicated figure at one look, but he's having hard time reading long sentences. Some people may just not good at read music.

Re: How I’d redesign piano sheet music

#80

Post by rquantz »

legohead wrote: post #45

Does the author actually play piano? I didn't see him explicitly say it. I play violin, and reading sheet music was never a limiting factor. It was not a challenge to learn, and you don't learn all the symbols in the beginning. As you get more proficient and read harder music, only then do you learn new symbols. Maybe sheet music can be improved upon, but the real question is should it? Sheet music is easy enough to…

I'm a violist, and I used to teach violin and piano. With stringed instruments, as you say, just making a sound and holding the instrument right are so difficult for beginners, reading music pales in comparison. Piano is unique-ish as an instrument that you can sit down at and start making a sound essentially right away. I found that for my beginner piano students, learning to read was probably the biggest challenge starting out. However, not learning to read is even worse, as then you won't be able to learn music going forward.

And, all that being said, learning to read music is really not very difficult. There seem to be a lot of complaints from the HN crowd about music notation, but learning to read music is wayyy easier than learning a new programming language. Seriously, just get over it and learn the system that everybody else uses, and you will be able to play any piece in just about any repertoire on the planet.

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