How I’d redesign piano sheet music

I think the point is that the standard clefs would be better aligned if there were 6 lines instead of 5, so both bass and treble could be EGBDFA. It would put the low C one below the bass clef and the high C one above the treble clef, instead of two below and two above but only one in between.

This is a neat idea, and I can see a place for a different notation for all instruments to make music easier to read for them. However, of course, this means that music for one instrument is not readable for another, this is no universal system. If perhaps this were also tied to a universal ur-system which ties together the formats for all instruments in a way whereby someone who knows one format can read other instruments' musical notation, either by reading an abstracted central version, or have an automagic system for transcribing the musics to their familiar notation, then this might be the sort of thing to be useful. However, for general musical use, a universal system is likely to be nevessary for musicians, because it makes it much easier to read anything that's lying around.

tl;dr don't cripple yourself with substandard notation when it takes 2 weeks to learn it.

You shouldn't be counting.

Any decent pedagogical training is going to introduce the lower and higher notes one at a time. And 'decent' can include self learning. Have some patience and don't try to jump into advanced things right off. You will just learn bad habits.

Say you know by sight all the notes g below middle c. The next exercise should introduce the f below middle c. When you see it it will be the one and only note you haven't trained on, and before you know it it will be trained into your muscle memory. Soon you will just see all the notes and know what it is. No counting required.

We are talking a couple of weeks here. A note a day, say, will get you pretty far - scores almost always change clefs before going 14 semitones above/below the staff.

Some people will do anything to avoid learning in a disciplined manner, and then spend years never advancing or fighting their bad technique. Take a bit of time, and the world of music is opened up to you.

Analogy - imagine somebody asks you to teach them how to pitch (baseball). You ask to see their current throw and it is some weird, lurchy, shot put type of throw. You show them a standard over shoulder release. They say no, they want to keep their current style, and maybe, just maybe, over many months, first remove some part of the weird lurch. In six months, then maybe they'll raise their hand a few inches. After that is working over several months, then maybe they'll start moving their hand behind their shoulder just a bit. Why, in just 10 years they'll be able to throw a ball!

It's crazy. If you want to pitch a baseball, just learn the movement that is required. If you want to play piano, learn how to hold your hands, and learn to read the music on sight. If you want to play guitar, learn the correct way to hold the strings with the left hand, and learn the proper plucking/fingering of the strings with the right hand. Etc. It's a few weeks of boredom, followed by a life time of being able to play.

actually I find it very zen, and love to go back to the beginning exercises, seeking absolute, unthinking perfection, letting each note ring for several seconds. Learned that from reading about Horowitz, and it works. But it is a bit much to expect 'zen' from a beginner that just wants to play some Billy Joel tune. To them I say Billy Joel did this to get the skill to play his songs, and you are probably not more a natural genius than he is, so you probably can't skip over what he had to do.

This is absolutely true. I find it quite difficult to play music in C without looking at my hands if I'm moving around a lot - if I'm in a key with a couple sharps or flats, it's much easier for me.

I agree. The value of SN is that it's abstract. It assumes a certain structure (the one that western music uses) and describes melody in terms of that structure. It doesn't concern itself with the actual sounds involved (eg. frequencies and durations) or the mechanics of producing them (eg. tablature).

SN is difficult for beginners because music is difficult for beginners. Notations that focus on the mechanics of the instrument are easier to start with, because they don't require any theoretical background in music. That's fine, but they won't be able to replace SN.

I'm very interested in this sort of cognitive technology, but I have yet to see a proposal for improving on SN in its own terms. Is there some notation out there that is simpler than SN, but just as expressive? Something that could be approachable for beginners, but still useful for experts?