Clairnote: An alternative music notation system • Hacker News Board

Re: Clairnote: An alternative music notation system

#171

Post by scrozier » Thu, May 05, 2022, 2:39 PM UTC

reikonomusha wrote: post #88

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…

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 think the distinction is one of degree, not of kind. "Sight reading" is just reading music and applying it to an instrument or voice, in real time. It's a natural outgrowth of learning to read music. I'm a very good sight reader, and it didn't take me anything like years of daily practice. (Which was a good thing, because I have no practice discipline.)

Re: Clairnote: An alternative music notation system

#172

Post by scrozier » Thu, May 05, 2022, 2:43 PM UTC

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…

This is fascinating to me! Although I'm moderately good at playing "by ear," I would never learn a piece the way you describe it. But maybe I should try! On the other hand, I'm a very good sight reader. Interesting how two people can get to the same destination by two very different routes.

Re: Clairnote: An alternative music notation system

#173

Post by scrozier » Thu, May 05, 2022, 2:47 PM UTC

vintermann wrote: post #163

MandieD wrote: post #128

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 instrume…

However, if you can sight sing, it makes playing music on a wind instrument much easier, as you have a target in your head for what the note should sound like as you play it. Sight singing is a very good skill for instrumentalists.

Re: Clairnote: An alternative music notation system

#174

Post by InitialLastName » Thu, May 05, 2022, 2:57 PM UTC

vintermann wrote: post #163

MandieD wrote: post #128

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 instrume…

It seems like there's a three-way connection that forms in a musician's head between the note on the page, the sound the note makes, and the muscle memory for playing the note. Each connection is strengthened by different types of practice, and supported by each other, but often with the way we teach music the kinetic is a proxy between the aural and the visual; this is especially true of people who learn mechanical instruments.

One way to boost the aural/visual connection (when you already have strong aural/kinetic and visual/kinetic connections) is to pick up instruments that are very different from the ones you already know; I would think this is the goal of music education programs requiring basic proficiency with piano and singing, regardless of the student's main instrument. Once you have to learn a new set of muscle memory associations to go from the same note on the page to the same note in your ear, it starts to break down the strength of the muscle memory associations.

Re: Clairnote: An alternative music notation system

#175

Post by munificent » Thu, May 05, 2022, 4:22 PM UTC

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…

Insiders can reform things too, but they tend to do so less often from a combination of:

1. Since they have already learned the old way, they are less personally incentivized to improve the path. It's in their past anyway, so it's a sunk cost. Also, they may have some (conscious or not) incentive to keep things the way they are in order to leverage their existing expertise in the current system.

2. Once you've internalized a system, it's much harder to even see it's flaws. Like navigating your living room, you just walk around the furniture completely on auto-pilot without even thinking, "Maybe I should move this chair out of the way." If you've ever done any UX research, it leaves a striking impression about how users often know and do things without consciously knowing they are doing them. Outsiders and new users to a system still see it for what it is.

The peak time to improve a system is when you understand it just well enough to see its flaws and how to fix them but not so well that you've forgotten the pain points. Any given user is in that liminal state for only a small amount of time, so it's precious and it's good to make the most of it.

Re: Clairnote: An alternative music notation system

#176

Post by acjohnson55 » Sat, May 07, 2022, 5:03 AM UTC

aidenn0 wrote: post #132

nine_k wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.)

The fixes are all about directness, consistency, and intuitiveness. Legibility is never mentioned Tonal music is arguably more suited to the original than this is, where small differences in distance from the lines can make for a different note. For example, I claim that the tonic scale will be more legible in traditional notation than in clarinote; portions of the tonic scale make up a significant fraction of music…

Good point that stepwise tonal motion is much more apparent in standard notation. Maybe there would be a way to augment the notation for that, perhaps at the cost of losing some of the commonalities they kept. For instance, if you're willing to play with the duration notation, maybe you can use filled-in notes for notes within the key and hollow notes for accidentals. Or something.

Or maybe they could have done the staff lines differently.