How I’d redesign piano sheet music • Hacker News Board

Re: How I’d redesign piano sheet music

#41

Post by bmj » Sat, Jul 04, 2015, 5:34 PM UTC

the_cat_kittles wrote: post #19

joshvm wrote: post #17

I like playing the piano because the staves correspond more or less directly to the physical layout of the keyboard. If you flip a score 90 degrees, you end up with this, with the notes laid out over the keys. Compared to almost all other instruments pianos are ideally suited to sheet music. Manuscript notation is also (necessarily) very information dense. It's an interesting approach; there are apps that will do som…

guitar is also difficult because the same note can be played in as many as 5 different places. sometimes its hard to tell which string to actually play it on, since a choice has fingering and possibly picking ramifications later.

How many guitarists (and I'm thinking classical or, perhaps, jazz guitarists) can just sit down and sight-read a piece? I suspect part of the craft is learning a piece, and learning the most efficient fingerings/patterns for the piece.

Re: How I’d redesign piano sheet music

#42

Post by tacos » Sat, Jul 04, 2015, 5:40 PM UTC

amsilprotag wrote: post #28

bbx wrote: post #21

What happens if you rotate that first image 90° counter-clockwise? http://i.imgur.com/i2V57On.png You get a traditional sheet music with simpler graphics. What about the new features? - Easily printable: traditional scores already are - Screen and scroll-friendly: you can stack traditional score pages vertically - Chord names: already exist on traditional scores - Lyrics: same thing - Foot pedal arrows: same thing Th…

I challenge "easily printable." This way of writing sheet music is vastly more space inefficient. Each beat requires an entire row of space, whereas a beat in sheet music might require 3 square inches at most. Having many pages of sheet music, like in coding, makes it much harder to understand the song as a whole and navigate repeats. I do like the fact that — unlike with sheet music - the 12 semi-tones are spaced ev…

This is exactly what standard sheet music does. A "C" chord can be C-E-G, which makes one shape on a piano keyboard. It can also be "inverted" to E-G-C or G-C-E. These form distinct shapes and it takes about a week to learn to spot the patterns and play them. Organists even do it with both hands while playing notes with their feet.

I remain firm in my belief that if you can touch type you can sight read music. I've seen five year olds learn to do it and I've seen 90 year old people learn to do it.

Re: How I’d redesign piano sheet music

#43

Post by the_cat_kittles » Sat, Jul 04, 2015, 5:45 PM UTC

bmj wrote: post #41

the_cat_kittles wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

guitar is also difficult because the same note can be played in as many as 5 different places. sometimes its hard to tell which string to actually play it on, since a choice has fingering and possibly picking ramifications later.

How many guitarists (and I'm thinking classical or, perhaps, jazz guitarists) can just sit down and sight-read a piece? I suspect part of the craft is learning a piece, and learning the most efficient fingerings/patterns for the piece.

sight reading charts is a must for journeymen pros in jazz, though some of the greats didn't read.

Re: How I’d redesign piano sheet music

#44

Post by Angostura » Sat, Jul 04, 2015, 5:45 PM UTC

tacos wrote: post #35

mattbasta wrote: post #4

I really love this. When I was young, I was really excited to learn to play the piano. The biggest problem I had was being able to read the sheet music. It was incredibly difficult for me to read and understand the notes for both hands at the same time. A big part of this was that when individual notes were off the normal staff (e.g., C is below the staff), you either had to have an innate sense of how far from the s…

So does a deck of flash cards. If you learned multiplication tables you can learn to read music. And if you can play video games you can play piano. And it's NEVER too late to learn.

My dad decided to learn in his late 70s. Now in his early 90s, he's not good, but he gets s lot of pleasure from it.

Re: How I’d redesign piano sheet music

#45

Post by legohead » Sat, Jul 04, 2015, 5:46 PM UTC

Does the author actually play piano? I didn't see him explicitly say it. I play violin, and reading sheet music was never a limiting factor. It was not a challenge to learn, and you don't learn all the symbols in the beginning. As you get more proficient and read harder music, only then do you learn new symbols.

Maybe sheet music can be improved upon, but the real question is should it? Sheet music is easy enough to learn, and once you learn it, all music opens up to you.

Re: How I’d redesign piano sheet music

#46

Post by return0 » Sat, Jul 04, 2015, 5:47 PM UTC

I don't understand why insist in "little dots" notation in music if you plan to redesign how it's written. There are common patterns in music that standard notation does not take into account, e.g. a chord is much easier to read and recognize by its name rather than figuring out the dots. There are many more rules that would allow such groupings of notes in a way that's much faster and easier perform. Why not take that approach and make it as easy as reading texts?

Re: How I’d redesign piano sheet music

#47

Post by ScootyPuff2000 » Sat, Jul 04, 2015, 5:50 PM UTC

This is the dumbest thing I've ever seen.

It takes a very concise notation and makes it orders of magnitude more verbose. And all of the structure of the music is lost.

Re: How I’d redesign piano sheet music

#48

Post by smortaz » Sat, Jul 04, 2015, 5:56 PM UTC

very nice! my 2c for improving notation are more evolutionary. i see two main issues with sight reading:

1. treble/bass clefs are not consistent: one is EGBDF, the other GBDFA. eg instead of the third line always being a B, it's a B in one & a D in the other!

2. having to remember sharps & flats. ie, despite the note being F, you have to remember that it's not really an F, but in this case an F# or Fb.

the proposal:

1. make the clefs consistent: make them both 6 lines, and both EGDBFA. this means adding an E to bass at the bottom, and an A to the treble on the top. now a student has to remember only one format and note positions are consistent. the third note is always a B regardless of the treble or bass clef.

2. to resolve flat/sharp issue, especially for complex keys with many sharps/flats, use the note's head shape to distinguish. ie, instead of just an oval head to represent a note's pitch, use for example a round note head for a normal G, a square note head for G# and a triangle note head for Gb. that way no matter what the key, your eye can easy and immediately recognize that that G is not in fact a G, but a G# or Gb. after all we already use note shape (solid/hollowness) to indicate duration. why not go a step further and make realtime parsing easier by making the notehead shape indicate sharp/flatness?

Re: How I’d redesign piano sheet music

#49

Post by PepeGomez » Sat, Jul 04, 2015, 5:57 PM UTC

How is it anything else than sheet music turned by 90°?

Re: How I’d redesign piano sheet music

#50

Post by avita1 » Sat, Jul 04, 2015, 5:58 PM UTC

legohead wrote: post #45

Does the author actually play piano? I didn't see him explicitly say it. I play violin, and reading sheet music was never a limiting factor. It was not a challenge to learn, and you don't learn all the symbols in the beginning. As you get more proficient and read harder music, only then do you learn new symbols. Maybe sheet music can be improved upon, but the real question is should it? Sheet music is easy enough to…

I play both piano and trumpet and I think two hands make reading music at least a little bit more difficult. I've never struggled with reading trumpet music, but lots of piano sheet music still gives a hard time at tempo.