Clairnote: An alternative music notation system • Hacker News Board

Re: Clairnote: An alternative music notation system

#111

Post by mkr-hn » Wed, May 04, 2022, 8:45 PM UTC

InitialLastName wrote: post #7

At a glance, this is a neat concept, but doesn't seem to come at the problem from the perspective of the most common users of music notation (experienced musicians); rather, it appears to have been written by somebody who was frustrated by trying to learn to read music. For experienced musicians, the priorities are a) legibility for sight-reading and transcription (which this system, with indistinguishable sitting/ha…

You see the same with people suggesting MIDI is a replacement for notation. I program MIDI in a MIDI roll and still appreciate notation. MIDI is to notation as a play is to a script. Notation is more like a script. It's there to guide the performance. Notation has persisted and evolved for centuries for a reason!

Re: Clairnote: An alternative music notation system

#112

Post by danachow » Wed, May 04, 2022, 8:49 PM UTC

blagie wrote: post #86

dehrmann wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's a bit like the Dvorak keyboard problem. It's slightly better, but too much of a hassle to bother with. You need something between 2x and 10x better to displace an entrenched incumbent.

I think a better music notation system would easily be at least 2x better for beginners. A rationalized system could mean 100% of kids learn to read and write music, and anyone could understand how to play an instrument like a piano from music (even if not able to do it at full speed). My point was that it could be 10x better, and it wouldn't lead to a switch. The decision-makers aren't the same as the people whom it…

> A rationalized system could mean 100% of kids learn to read and write music, and anyone could understand how to play an instrument like a piano from music (even if not able to do it at full speed).

I played in school bands and marching band - very very few of my classmates took up music seriously beyond high school, but music reading just was a complete non-issue for everyone involved. I don’t see how the current system is limiting anyone.

> My point was that it could be 10x better, and it wouldn't lead to a switch. The decision-makers aren't the same as the people whom it would benefit.

Who are these “decision makers” you keep speaking of. There is no global cabal of music notation protectionists. I don’t think the forces that lead to internal corporate IT decision making really have anything to do with a music notation system.

There are already simplified notation systems like tabs and piano rolls and annotated staves. Your argument seems to assume there is a notation system that really is 2 to 10 times better (which obviously is mostly subjective) - but you haven’t even given an existence proof of this, so it is all hypothetical.

> Coincidentally, there are a lot of scientific fields where jargon could be dramatically simplified, to where anyone could learn them too. Same entrenched walled garden problem.

Example?

Re: Clairnote: An alternative music notation system

#113

Post by abhorrence » Wed, May 04, 2022, 8:50 PM UTC

Toutouxc wrote: post #40

harry-wood wrote: post #35

Top search result for "alternative music notation" is https://www.dodekamusic.com which looks like it has the same ideas, plus a rectangular rhythm design which makes it all _look_ different at a glance (for better or worse)

What I like about Dodeka is not their notation, but the Dodeka keyboard. I'm learning to play the piano now and the amount of stupid unnecessary complexity stemming from the fact that we've designed the keyboard to make playing in a single specific key easier and fuck everything else, is hurting my programmer brain. That, and the fact that small-handed male players like me (and like 80 % of women) are gate-kept forev…

I’m curious, which key do you think is the easiest to play on piano?

I’ve found that newer folks tend to prefer keys with fewer accidental: C, G, F, D and Bb

Whereas there is a tendency for more experienced players to prefer keys with many flats: Db, Ab, and so on…

And (appropriately for the submissions topic), I think lot of this preference comes down to the fact that we tend to learn keys like C first, because the notation is simpler and it’s easier to remember the spacing. However most of the pianists I’ve talked to who prefer the flat keys will prefer them because of “how they fit under the hand”.

Re: Clairnote: An alternative music notation system

#114

Post by mkr-hn » Wed, May 04, 2022, 8:50 PM UTC

wolverine876 wrote: post #107

_moof wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> They have a habit of solving problems that just aren’t problems for experienced readers, while causing problems for experienced readers. If I had a dollar for every "new way of doing XYZ" made by someone inexperienced who just doesn't want to learn the way we're all doing XYZ just fine...

Isn't that the reactionary response to all innovation, such as in tech? 'That's not the way we do it.'

There's a gradient between "there's a reason we do things this way and you should understand it before you try to change it" and "don't roll your own notation."

Re: Clairnote: An alternative music notation system

#115

Post by code_runner » Wed, May 04, 2022, 8:54 PM UTC

I get the same feelings whenever somebody comes up with a "better" flavor of SQL that is "more logical" or "more expressive".... I know SQL well, it does what I want, and I think its great. When people "solve problems" with it, they're complaining about things they never tried to understand.

This is a lot like that. I wish I was better at music.... I wish I had more skill etc... but the barrier is not my ability to read music....

a multi-note instrument like guitar/piano is much harder (in my personal experience) than a single note like trumpet/saxophone... and guitar tabulature exists for that reason... but its guitar specific and is probably a bridge for most in the beginning of their learning (not unlike a saxophone fingering chart).... but I don't see general use music notation being revolutionized anytime soon.... mostly because it does not need to be.

Re: Clairnote: An alternative music notation system

#116

Post by code_runner » Wed, May 04, 2022, 9:00 PM UTC

TremendousJudge wrote: post #49

Jeff_Brown wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Huge numbers of young people learn traditional music notation all the time, yes, but I wouldn't say with little stress. Music notation evolved much like English, and much like English it's widely recognized to be full of kludges and unnatural constructions. And similarly, changing it would resemble switching to Esperanto.

To add to your point, many people already use other systems. Tablatures are very, very common for guitar. Lead sheets are used in jazz, and they do away with many of the problems of regular notation (notably, the legibility of chords, and different clefs) by only using it for melodies. In a way, traditional music notation is really only used in classical music. And they're never ever going to adopt another system. Th…

tabulature is really just used for starting out on guitar in my experience and it works because the alternative is SO approachable and SO instrument specific.

lead sheets are solving a whole different problem and almost ALWAYS have the melody in traditional notation in addition to the chords. some lead sheets assume you already know the melody and can transpose to whatever key is relevant.... but still a lead sheet is there to give you hooks in order to aide improvisation.

jazz musicians have not "split off", they have added some chord notation above the traditional stuff.

Re: Clairnote: An alternative music notation system

#117

Post by jnovek » Wed, May 04, 2022, 9:07 PM UTC

JasonFruit wrote: post #92

reikonomusha wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Learning to sight-read is different than just reading. Sight-reading takes an enormous amount of daily dedication and practice for years to get to even an intermediate level.

I don't recall it being that difficult to achieve. Probably the difference is in early teaching and expectations: if you learn to read music as an aid to remembering pieces that are perfected over a long time, sight-reading would be slow to develop, but if you learn it as a way to be able to play new music frequently, it will come more quickly. Probably like the difference between learning a foreign language by study…

This is a great perspective that I hadn’t considered before.

My previous experience, years ago in high school, was absolutely the former. I think it makes tons of sense to try playing a wide variety of pieces at my skill level.

Re: Clairnote: An alternative music notation system

#118

Post by jnovek » Wed, May 04, 2022, 9:11 PM UTC

john61 wrote: post #90

jnovek wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How does one learn to actually read music, then? I have been learning to play the keyboard for about a year and I find the layout of the keys to make a lot of sense for figuring out things like scales and chords. When I was in high school I never really learned to sight-read a staff, it was always a struggle for me and probably what turned me off to playing an instrument for so long. If simplified notations are essen…

> How does one learn to actually read music, then? The same way millions of musicions before you. By reading music, training, time and patience.

Please don’t take this personally, but this isn’t very helpful advice.

I’ve learned how to do many things in my life, and I’ve come to appreciate that it’s very easy to practice the wrong thing and never make any progress.

Another way to phrase my question might be, “What and how should I practice to develop my music reading skills?”

Re: Clairnote: An alternative music notation system

#119

Post by jhasse » Wed, May 04, 2022, 9:22 PM UTC

reikonomusha wrote: post #93

Jeff_Brown wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> the massive entrenched investment At first I thought it would be like switching from Facebook to Mastodon. But if there is automatic translation software, it wouldn't actually be as hard -- you can just wear your own Clairnote lenses when you want, without bothering the other musicians. > The difference between "sitting just above the line" and "sitting on the line" is quite subtle. Agreed. It seems worth using dif…

At least in Western classical music, there's a lot of emphasis put on Urtexts (scores that contain exactly the information the composer wrote and no more), composer intent, distinguished voices (stem up v down), diatonic scales (enharmonic choices matter), etc. This would make it nontrivial to simply switch notations. In some sense it's like saying "finally, I can read Don Quixote in whatever language I want because…

IMHO that's a very bad example because there's a big loss of information with Google Translate (you wouldn't get the Urtext when translating back), but there isn't with Clairnote.

Re: Clairnote: An alternative music notation system

#120

Post by chki » Wed, May 04, 2022, 9:22 PM UTC

scrozier wrote: post #50

olau wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, it says it fixes visual representation of intervals and huge inconsistencies between how similar notes are notated. Meaning new students would have a much easier time learning naming notes and where they are - in my experience the typical child that has taken lessons for a couple of years is still scarcely capable of naming notes outside perhaps the 6-10 they're most comfortably with. Accidentals do not help. A…

Good points. I haven't thought a lot about it, but I still don't see how this new system is radically easier to learn. Looks like I have to be concerned with notes partially on lines, an irregular staff, two notes occupying the same "space" on the staff, etc. Then there are clefs with numbers...now I have to remember what "number" octave I'm in. And for piano, you lose the white key/black key distinction, which is ob…

> you lose the white key/black key distinction

I'm not sure what I think about this new system but the "black key = accidental" association is probably not very helpful to anybody playing on/after an intermediate level as there are cases where accidentals mean white keys (for example f flat or g double sharp). It might be helpful if you're a beginner though.