Clairnote: An alternative music notation system

To me, this notation fixes a number of annoying bugs of the traditional notation. They clearly show each fix. Each fix clearly makes sense.

(I wish this notation were adopted since Bach's WTK was published. Alas.)

Very cool. Every domain is always in need of fresh ideas. Even if they don't directly take off, they still provide valuable perspective and help bolster the process of slow, constant improvement.

It would be interesting to see how this, or a similar system, could be extended for any X-TET system, not just 12-TET.

That does appear to be its origin. And if you take 12 equal divisions of the octave as a given, Clairnote seems more natural. OTOH once you're thinking in terms of a 7-tone subset, maybe traditional notation is more natural. (It certainly is to me, but I haven't given Clairnote a try.)

Traditional notation uses the scale degree as the fundamental unit, whereas this uses the 12-edo chromatic tone as the fundamental unit. While it's not a big deal to most musicians, there are a lot of microtonal variations of traditional notation (my favorite is HEWM[1]). A 12-edo notation like CLairnote could be similarly modified, but it seems awkward, because (most) microtonal systems don't start from 12 equal divisions of the octave.

I don't think the sitting/hanging notes are indistinguishable. But they do need to be distinguished, which means it's more work than looking at a traditional between-two-lines note. I find it difficult.

Clairnote does make key signatures available. Surely any real composer would include them, or something equally or more informative (e.g. the text "G dorian").

[1] http://www.tonalsoft.com/enc/h/hewm.aspx

I don’t like it!

I like the idea with the octaves. I'm not as sure about the chromatic stuff; the key signatures are there for a reason and I'm not sure it reduces the cognitive load in an expert. It would in an novice, sure. Possibly said novice would then move on to prefer it as they become an expert, so it's hard to tell. On-the-fly transposition would probably be a bit harder, but perhaps that's a skill level already so high that it's hardly worth optimizing for in the notation anyhow.

But definitely there's too much dependency on where note heads are versus the staff. Even in the typography used in the example, the note heads seem to noticeably hang below the line. I'm not sure the vaguely elliptical blobs really work with this system and I'd consider pushing another step away from conventional notation and distinguishing with something more visually clear, e.g., normal heads on the lines, squared-off heads if they are a half step away or something. Something that makes it completely unambiguous whether a note is on or in the line. ("Unfortunately" conventional notation that this is trying to be compatible with has already consumed whether the head is hollow.)

I would also like to see something less trivial on the intro page. In HN terms, visual programming always looks awesome as long as you're demonstrating something drop-dead simple like simply traversing a linked list or something. Show something with a bit more crunch in it, like even something as simple as a quicksort, and the vast majority of visual programming pitches suddenly look a lot less compelling. All the PDFs on the bottom of the page 404'd for me, but I'd like to see something inline.

Still, some interesting ideas here. The standard system is definitely a bit wrapped around a piano. I could see how this could simplify teaching any instrument that makes one tone at a time; all the rules for reading music become "this note -> this fingering/position/valves/etc", which would smooth over the first couple of years nicely.

One of the tensions of the current system is the learning novice vs. the expert. The current system is heavily tilted towards an expert. At the time it was written, that was appropriate. Building some more novice-friendly features in might be more appropriate in a more democratized era. (Though how one gets past the switching costs here for any alternate notation I have no idea.)