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Clairnote: An alternative music notation system

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Re: Clairnote: An alternative music notation system

#161

Post by iainmerrick »

Jeff_Brown wrote: post #127
jhasse wrote: post #119

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Yeah, if the original score is digitally encoded such that everything really is a first-class citizen (and not, say, a GIF of some scribbles) -- a very big if -- but if so, it's not obvious that any information has to be lost in translation to Clarinote, nor that Clairnote would impose any additional information. If you want to know the scale you could encode the key signature, which Clairnote seems to make possible,…

From the earlier reply:

distinguished voices (stem up v down)

That's a very important one that might not survive across re-transcription. Although in this case, Clairnote is similar enough that it might generally be possible to retain all the stem directions.

Re: Clairnote: An alternative music notation system

#162

Post by vintermann »

_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,…

There are solutions that have been tried and found to work very well. The American shape note system made 3 and 4 part harmony singing something the whole congregation could take part in, rather than just an elite choir. Lars Roverud's digit notation system (and the system to teach it) did a similar thing for singing in Scandinavia. They fell out of favour not because they didn't work, but because professional musicians and teachers saw it as a crutch instead of a system in its own right, and kept pushing for graduating to "real" notation.

Re: Clairnote: An alternative music notation system

#163

Post by vintermann »

MandieD wrote: post #128
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?”

I can only give advice for “one note at a time” instruments like the flute or trumpet: practice sight reading children’s songs you know (and therefore can tell if you’ve made a huge mistake) - sight reading, not memorizing! As you get more proficient at reading those, slowly choose harder things - melody lines from a familiar church hymnal are ideal for this. If you make mistakes, finish the phrase, then repeat it, b…

It really isn't. You highlight something important: musicians don't usually learn to convert notation to music in their heads. Instead, they learn to associate notation with how to make the sound, e.g. finger positions.

I remember in ear training class in high school all the brass kids playing imaginary valves with their fingers when trying to sight-sing.

It's harder for singers, and quadratically harder for instruments where you have more positions and play more notes at once.

Re: Clairnote: An alternative music notation system

#164

Post by vintermann »

chrismorgan wrote: post #154
phkahler wrote: post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not sure it's possible to say it's worse. You suffer from having learned the traditional notation, so some of this is going to look weird regardless. I'm not good at reading music and agree with some of the issues it has, but looking at this does seem like a different set of issues to me as well. I think the only fair comparison could be done by someone with a lot of experience using both. I think it's fair to sa…

Certainly I’m biased, but on the vertical alignment thing I think I can be objective: relying on sub-millimetre positioning is a bad idea.

It certainly is, but there are similar obvious bad ideas in regular notation.

If you've typeset music manually, or written out nice parts by hand, you know that you need to take stem direction into account when spacing note heads. Notes with opposite stem direction will seem closer, or further apart, than they actually are. Optical illusions aren't a great feature of a notation system.

Five lines is also a bad optical choice, because it's actually very difficult to count 5 or higher parallel lines at a glance. I remember my piano teacher, who was a very strong sight reader, played a Bach fugue for me. However, the score had been annotated with a line showing the figure part ("dux", "comes" etc.) and as it happened that line was spaced exactly like a staff line. He'd played three measures before going, "wait, that doesn't sound right" and realizing he'd been playing on a six-line staff!

Re: Clairnote: An alternative music notation system

#165

Post by vintermann »

Aidevah wrote: post #98
blagie wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The vast majority of users of music notation are amateurs, and being more friendly to amateurs would mean even more users. The vast majority of decision-makers are experienced users with a vested interest in the status quo. The issue is very similar to why corporate systems have such horrible user interfaces. The people making the decisions in IT aren't the normal users of the system. IT cares about features, integra…

Many people seem to not realise that there is already an alternative to staff notation; it is called the piano roll. It has all the advantages that alternative notations propose (proportional intervals and note lengths), is already in widespread use, is available in all professional music software, and is by far simpler and easier to learn. For many professional musicians the piano roll may be the only type of notati…

Piano roll is certainly better than traditional notation for writing down music that will be played by a computer anyway. It's not great for live play.

Re: Clairnote: An alternative music notation system

#166

Post by vintermann »

MandieD wrote: post #131
blagie wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Over a third of the students at my middle school were in band, and lots of them had academic problems. By eighth grade, they were all ok enough at reading music to get through multi-page pieces together. Only a few of us could have told you what a major third or the circle of fifths was, but frankly, even that meager level of theory was useless for the immediate task of playing the same note at the same time as all t…

Band players don't really learn to read music as such, they learn to read finger/hand positions. This is much easier. Sheet music is really a lot like instrument-independent tabulature, but it's a bad for singing or any instrument with lots of positions or where you play many notes at once (e.g. piano)

Re: Clairnote: An alternative music notation system

#167

Post by mkr-hn »

wolverine876 wrote: post #143
_moof wrote: post #124

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Notation has changed, adapted, expanded, contracted, and even spun off for different and new aspects of the problem.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Musical_notation#Variations_on...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Musical_notation#Other_systems...

There are some grognards out there who hate even this, and they're way too influential in traditional music education, but notation hasn't been static and unchanging all these centuries. A lot of that resistance is from people who believe their idealized notion of their culture is superior and resist any exposure to new ideas: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Kr3quGh7pJA

Re: Clairnote: An alternative music notation system

#168

Post by jnovek »

djhn wrote: post #156
jnovek wrote: post #148

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

I don't think your question was rude at all. I feel similarly. I've performed the Chopin/Liszt etudes and Bach's sinfonias as a kid (which I guess translate to intermediate classical piano skill) but would struggle to sight read even the two-part inventions at 1/2 or even 1/4 speed. I'd be quite keen to use some method to upgrade my sight reading to where I find learning new music rewarding, as long as it's known to…

I appreciate your response! It’s honestly helpful to hear that people who are more accomplished than I am can also struggle with sight reading.

One piece of advice that I received elsewhere in this thread that may also apply to you is to sight read as many pieces as you can at an easier skill level than your current proficiency and accept that you’ll make tons of mistakes.

Personally, I’m going to buy a few thrift store “learning piano” books to try this out.

Re: Clairnote: An alternative music notation system

#169

Post by scrozier »

vintermann wrote: post #160
munificent wrote: post #135

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It so hard for an outsider to tell the difference between: 1. It is this way for logical but obscure reasons that will become clearer later when you have deeper understanding. 2. It is this way only because of path dependence and historical baggage and it's arbitrarily annoying for a new person to learn but we don't switch because we all learned it the old hard way. It's valuable for inexperienced people to question…

Well, it's even harder for insiders. What makes you think the would-be be reformers are outsiders anyway? Further down this thread, someone brought up their sight reading tutor program. That's a very classic "solution" to the problem. Also very classic is that when the well meaning "insider" who approves of classical notation finds out that his tutor program didn't really help matters, he'll come up with a reform pro…

You bring up interesting examples. The only one I know anything about is shape note singing. I guess your point is that shape note singing can be taught much more easily to beginners, and get them to a point of being able to enjoy making music (usually with others) more quickly?

If so, point taken!

And I guess that those shape note singers who feel the pull to perform/compose more complex music can then simply learn traditional notation. Self-selection, with a satisfying "intro" notation for those who are happy at that level.

Following that path, I'm still not sure that the original article here provides anything useful. It's simply an alternative to traditional notation. It doesn't seem easier to learn to me. I could be wrong, but I doubt that I'm an order of magnitude wrong. In fact, if this new notation were proposed as an alternative to shape note singers, it would seem to undo the very reason for shape note singing in the first place: easy entry point to music making.

Re: Clairnote: An alternative music notation system

#170

Post by scrozier »

vintermann wrote: post #162
_moof wrote: post #124

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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,…

There are solutions that have been tried and found to work very well. The American shape note system made 3 and 4 part harmony singing something the whole congregation could take part in, rather than just an elite choir. Lars Roverud's digit notation system (and the system to teach it) did a similar thing for singing in Scandinavia. They fell out of favour not because they didn't work, but because professional musici…

Shape note notation doesn't, and doesn't try to, replace traditional notation, which is what Clairnote is trying to do.
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