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Clairnote: An alternative music notation system

clairnote.org

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Re: Clairnote: An alternative music notation system

#141

Post by scrozier »

Jeff_Brown wrote: post #21
iainmerrick wrote: post #8

I hate to be too much of a downer as there are some nice ideas here, but I can see at least three problems with this: 1) First and foremost, of course, the massive entrenched investment in traditional notation. It's like trying to replace the QWERTY keyboard. 2) More risk of transcription errors in written music. The difference between "sitting just above the line" and "sitting on the line" is quite subtle. 3) This i…

> 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…

That's an excellent point that I hadn't thought of. If one could just pick one's favorite notation, that would make the "competition" between traditional notation and others more fair. And more and more music is being notated digitally, so this isn't completely a pipe dream.

Re: Clairnote: An alternative music notation system

#142

Post by analog31 »

jnovek wrote: post #85
chrismorgan wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’ve gained that impression from every single alternative notation system that’s come up here (a new one comes up every year or two). They have a habit of solving problems that just aren’t problems for experienced readers, while causing problems for experienced readers. (They may also solve some real problems, but when they do, they always involve compromises. Inconsistent octave positioning on the staff is a problem…

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…

Start with realistic expectations. It will take longer for you, than for someone who's 9 years old. Find sources of large amounts of written material that is nonetheless fairly simplistic, but at the same time not children's songs. There's a lot of sheet music at IMSLP.

An example is the Mikrokosmos collection by Bartok, written as a method book for kids, but is nonetheless serious music.

Don't focus exclusively on reading. When you've worn out a piece from the standpoint of reading, continue practicing it to build technique and musicianship. All of those things develop together. Good luck!

Re: Clairnote: An alternative music notation system

#143

Post by wolverine876 »

_moof wrote: post #124
wolverine876 wrote: post #107

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

It rhymes with it, sure. The key difference is that the phenomenon I'm talking about comes from people who haven't taken the time to understand the problem, or they come up with "solutions" that have already been tried and found not to work. The reactionary, conversely, is simply afraid: of change, that they won't be able to learn the new thing, of not being important because they aren't the one who came up with it,…

> The key difference is that the phenomenon I'm talking about comes from people who haven't taken the time to understand the problem, or they come up with "solutions" that have already been tried and found not to work.

IME, that is a common 'reactionary' response. Often the problem has changed.

Re: Clairnote: An alternative music notation system

#144

Post by danbmil99 »

I suspect the younger generation of (self-taught) composers rely heavily on the grid or matrix modes in popular DAW's -- they visually represent the 12-tone chromatic scale in an intuitive and accessible way that reflects both how we hear music, and how the notes lie on a fretboard or keyboard.

Re: Clairnote: An alternative music notation system

#145

Post by shannifin »

While standard notation already seems optimal to me for performing music, it does leave something to be desired for analyzing harmony and composing, mainly because things like major and minor thirds look exactly the same. So I would love a notation system that made harmonic relations easier to see. I'm not sure yet if this is it, but I definitely like the idea!

Re: Clairnote: An alternative music notation system

#147

Post by yesenadam »

jnovek wrote: post #118
john61 wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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?”

Pianist here, regularly won sight-reading competitions in my youth etc. GP's answer seemed a good answer to me. Your first sentence seemed rude, disrespectful.

What kind of music do you want to be able to read? Presumably the music you like and want to play. So read that. You will always be reading new stuff you don't know, not the same thing over and over, so I'm not sure how never making any progress is a possibility. Sight reading/playing difficult music is not easy, sounds like you want a quick way of learning the skill, which doesn't exist.

    A fellow went to a Zen master and said, “If I work very hard, how soon can I be enlightened?”
    The Zen master looked him up and down and said, “Ten years.”
    The fellow said, “No, listen, I mean if I really work at it, how long—”
    The Zen master cut him off. “I’m sorry. I misjudged. Twenty years.”
    ”Wait!” Said the young man, “You don’t understand! I’m—”
    “Thirty years,” said the Zen master.

Re: Clairnote: An alternative music notation system

#148

Post by jnovek »

yesenadam wrote: post #147
jnovek wrote: post #118

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?”

Pianist here, regularly won sight-reading competitions in my youth etc. GP's answer seemed a good answer to me. Your first sentence seemed rude, disrespectful. What kind of music do you want to be able to read? Presumably the music you like and want to play. So read that. You will always be reading new stuff you don't know, not the same thing over and over, so I'm not sure how never making any progress is a possibili…

> Your first sentence seemed rude, disrespectful.

Really? I genuinely trying to communicate that I was criticizing their opinion and not them personally. Did it come off as sarcastic? In any case, I apologize.

You are being awfully presumptuous. I am doing this because I enjoy it. I don’t have a destination or a timeline. I am not asking for a “quick fix”.

I’m asking how to focus studies in music because I struggled for many years with music when I was in school. I did practice quite a bit and always lagged behind.

Your response reminds me why I don’t ask people on the internet for help.

Re: Clairnote: An alternative music notation system

#149

Post by yesenadam »

jnovek wrote: post #148
yesenadam wrote: post #147

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Pianist here, regularly won sight-reading competitions in my youth etc. GP's answer seemed a good answer to me. Your first sentence seemed rude, disrespectful. What kind of music do you want to be able to read? Presumably the music you like and want to play. So read that. You will always be reading new stuff you don't know, not the same thing over and over, so I'm not sure how never making any progress is a possibili…

> Your first sentence seemed rude, disrespectful. Really? I genuinely trying to communicate that I was criticizing their opinion and not them personally. Did it come off as sarcastic? In any case, I apologize. You are being awfully presumptuous. I am doing this because I enjoy it. I don’t have a destination or a timeline. I am not asking for a “quick fix”. I’m asking how to focus studies in music because I struggled…

Ok, again you are rude, not a surprise this time. I spent time giving you a more useful answer and got multiple rude comments in return.

Re: Clairnote: An alternative music notation system

#150

Post by photojosh »

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…

I was a kid who learned enough music to be barely good enough to do music at church... Now a few decades later I'm learning the drums using Rock Band [0] (and similar, I have almost a complete collection); the video game using a "toy" drumkit on a 10 year old console. Back in the day I read that a motivation behind the drums implementation of the game was that if you can play the song in the game, you can play in real life. [1] It's perfect for doing in small doses and providing good motivation,and so I've reached the point now that I'm good enough now that I am buying a proper e-drumkit. Yes, guaranteed I will pick up some terrible habits, but I've always failed to learn things when the barriers to achieving each goal aren't as simple as possible, and I'll take some proper lessons later on.

Now... how's this relevant to OP? Well, the 'music notation' it uses is best explained via analogy to a road, imagine you are standing on a bridge looking up a highway. There are 4 lanes, each lane representing a drum, and coming towards you at a constant pace are symbols (gems) representing the hits (and bars across the whole road for the kick). There are horizontal markings for the bars as well. Song plays, hit the notes correctly and you'll hear them in the song. Get them wrong and you'll hear a clanging and the drums drop out of the song. Then you get feedback at the end of the song.

Just search YouTube for "rock band drums" or "guitar hero drums", and you'll quickly get the gist.

Now this "notation" can be via the application of some simple steps turned into the real thing. These don't necessarily have to be in order either, perhaps some different sequence is better to make the jump.

1. Rotate the 'highway' sideways, remove the perspective distortion, and it looks like a regular music staff

2. Scroll it at first... but then swap to stationary with a moving playhead

3. Remove the playhead so the player has to keep their place.

4. Make the changes to turn it into proper notation [3], but keep the colouring.

5. Get rid of the colour altogether and you're left with regular notation.

Now referring back to [1] again, this is the same idea covered there. A project idea I've had floating around is to actually implement the above steps in a game/app on a device that can take MIDI input and use the same charts format that the amazing CloneHero [4] developed.

And for regular tonal notation rather than percussive? While I haven't looked into it much... Rock Band 3 has the "ProKeys" mode which is meant to do the same thing with a 2-octave keyboard, and perhaps the same concept could be applied [5].

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rock_Band

[1] This wasn't the original article... but this one is even better, and deals with the notation discussion. I swear I only found it when I was adding references in at the end of writing this comment! https://www.destructoid.com/how-rock-band-can-teach-you-to-p...

[3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Percussion_notation

[4] https://clonehero.net

[5] https://www.gameinformer.com/blogs/editors/b/gijeffm_blog/ar...

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