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Understood. I think there may be truth in that and that is one of the things I mentioned (perhaps in passing) as potential problems with any new approach, but I also think there are potential advantages to a different system that we may not even realize until trying it out to some reasonable extent. It takes those willing to attempt it to find out if it is better or not. I'm not claiming to know the answer, just advocating the pursuit.

Kenny, I'm just wondering if business at the art gallery has been slow today?

I am having a day off myself.

Not that I have much to show for it.

Chris, I'm not understanding what you are getting at with this. Why change what is there. There is no need to rename the notes. It's not like new notes have been created or deleted, we are still working with the same chromatic scale and there is no difference in C# and Db (they are the same note, the same key on the piano not different ones) other than in usage.

It's good Friday man! Why not enjoy it.

Okay, I'll give you that! Come next Monday this thread's going to be about 50 pages.

Great that you ask this, Chris. The Hao Staff does away with the SIGNS of sharps and flats, not the CONCEPTS. The sharps and flats still exist on the Hao Staff, not as #, b, but as the grey stripes representing the corresponding black keys on the piano.

Nothing is lost!

As long as the world continues to embrace CDEFGAB for the C major diatonic scale, I will name all my notes (pitches actually) the same way you name it. I am not changing the pitch naming system. The words sharps and flats will still exist if one learns music theory, even in the Hao Staff world. But ...

Please don't ask the staff itself to teach music theory. Let music theory teach music theory.

As to the need to understand the music one is playing, I have the key signatures. But they are like 1=C, 1=D ... for major keys, and 6=A, 6=B ... for minor keys. I don't need the "circle of 5th" to memorise the monstrous key signatures (please don't take offence for these things that are not created by you). As to the knowledge of which black keys are regularly involved in a piece because it is written in certain Key, the playing-for-fun-using-Hao-Staff beginners do not have to understand it because they are following the score. But there is nothing to stop anyone from going on to study the music theory as it is and the "circle of 5th" to help him/herself understand better why certain black keys are involved. I know that helps with memorising the music and improvisation. AND TEACHING !

Well I was thinking that sharps and flats seem to be causing all the grief. If we do away with them on the staff then why keep them at all?

I suppose they can stay then. But I still think the current system is better for showing the difference between the two.

If there is a better way of doing it then I am sure that 40000 PW members will find it.

In the interest of full disclosure (or at least not propagating rumors) I'm actually a software architect and yeah, it's a bit slow today. But I am interested in art and particularly life's imitation of it.

What we have is a SYSTEM, and systems have interrelated parts. The keyboard and written music were both invented in the time period when Western music rested on a particular structure. That is to say, major and minor keys, and everything around that. Essentially there are 7 notes with the 8th completing the octave. The major scale is the one mode that remained, and the minor scale has variations of the other mode. The seven notes have a fixed sequence of intervals between them that span an octave, and that chain of notes can be started on any given pitch - our keys.

For a couple of centuries Western music was locked into that system. Folk songs, lullabies, popular music all tend to also be structured accordingly. It is "natural" to us.

Perhaps it would be good to think of the systems in terms of language: grammar and syntax.


Chris, you are actually arguing against your own point. The alphabet is like letter names, and you are bringing us into the chromatic staff and keyboard you're trying to avoid. If you read the word "sault" will you pronounce it as "so"? No, you cannot speak the words - both their pronunciation and their meaning as well as their place in syntax will be obscured. You're missing the underlying structure of the language system.

As long as we stay within commonly written music, which when starting to play music we would do anyway, we're dealing with music that is written within that system. The keyboard and notation both belong to it. The system, in turn, is based on matters of physics and mathematical properties - it's not arbitrary. So if you keep the notation system as it is, keep the piano keys as they are, the two of them will work together hand in hand. There is a way of learning these which makes it crystal clear.

If you go chromatic, you're typing out one note at a time, a bit like Chris' proposal for reading French. You will get the piece that way, a bit like touch typing a foreign language, or your mother tongue in a foreign script. But it remains unpredictable. When you start picking up the patterns, music is very predictable and intuitive, and that part gets lost.

Music outside the system is more awkward to write. The blues scale is not such an uncommon thing - there are two ways of writing the 4th degree note. Debussy used different modes and scales: he is also not an obscure unknown composer. When you learn to write these "modern scales", that's when you realize that our notation system is tied to a particular but very common type of music. But if we start with it, we have a reference point and a first framework. Would that be the main thing you are getting at, Chris?

Postscript edit: Oh great, while I was writing this, about 10 new posts hava appeared. Instant before-the-fact redundancy.

Interesting thread, though "flogging a dead horse" is starting to come to mind. =)

I just wanted to respond to one item:



This is a specious myth frequently employed to discredit formal schooling, that I'm frankly surprised you, as an engineer, are perpetuating. Einstein was a somewhat careless early student, but mostly did very well - particularly in the sciences, with the notable exception of a reprimand for being less than diligent in an experimental physics lab. He learned calculus at an age well ahead of his peers, applied to a presitigious college in Zurich at 16, where he got in on his second attempt after having brushed up on his languages.

Just wanted to clear that up. =)

Jeff, I have another problem.

You say that the play for fun Hao staff users have no need for this knowledge.

I have encountered this kind of thing a lot in teaching. People believe that limiting information to certain students is a good thing. Here are a couple of examples:

In the UK we don't use the fractional time names of the notes (I do however). We have silly names for them like semibreve, minim, crotchet etc. Purists go mad if anyone tries to mess with this! Most music teachers will teach that a crotchet is worth one beat. That's because it is at a very basic level whilst the lower number of the time signature is 4 (I am sure you know this already). But it doesn't explain that a crotchet is 1/4 of a semibreve and that is where that lower number comes from. And it doesn't explain that when that lower number changes the crotchet is no longer worth one beat. This information is not given because it is felt that the beginner student does not need to know. Other than that it's because most people don't know how to teach it properly using the fractional time names.

Another one which happens a lot. When the staff is introduced a lot of teachers will give just the 5 lines of the treble clef. They feel that this is already enough for most students to cope with. They don't explain that the treble clef is also known as the G clef and gives the position of the note G on the staff. Also, when the bass(F) clef is finaly introduced it is difficult for people to learn because they have been told that Every Good Boy Deserves Food. When you look at the grand staff you see the patterns the Betty was talking about. The positions of the 5 C's reflected as a mirror image from the middle. You have landmarks in the clefs. If you do this from the start it all makes perfect sense. There is none of this trying to convert from one clef to another rubbish.

Do you see what I am saying?

Well, Chris, the answer is right in front of your eyes. Hint: how does the piano show you the sharps and flats? Never mind the other instruments first, if you are a pianist, why don't you trust the way piano shows the sharps and flats?

There should be no mystery about the layout of the keyboard which we have inherited .

In the early days of the virginal (Queen Bess and all those jolly tinklers) ... the posh ladies must have bored the motley stiff with all the ditties played in the same key ... presumably that of C ... until some joker decided to add a black key (understood to be Bb) to provide variety ... however, as the 4-octave virginal had been manufactured to suit the octave hand span ... there was nothing for it but to squeeze the extra black note between the white notes ... the black note couldn’t be placed forward for fear of mucking up the width of the familiar white keys ... and so clever-Dick shoved the first black note to the back of the keyboard ...well clear of the front white notes.

Perhaps the thinking at the time was ... if any nut wants to use the extra note ... he will have to make the extra effort to stretch a finger to the back of the keyboard.

It took a bright codger to come up with the ultimate in variety ... the well-tempered division of notes into 12 identical semitone intervals ... and with it squeezing between the white notes the 5 extra black notes in sets of 2 and 3 ... to complete our familiar keyboard.

JS Bach’s monumental WTC has vindicated the fractional tweak to the purity of notes ... a necessary license to which pianists have grown used ... the extra black notes gave us the ability to modulate into 24 different keys (major and minor).

But,by not adjusting the old 5-line stave at that time ... and upgrading to a stave for 12 evenly spaced notes ... we thereby inherited SHARPS AND FLATS.

Chris, I see what you are saying. There are better ways of teaching to make the current system easier. And I honestly believe the students following yourself and Betty are the lucky ones.

But that does not mean that all music students can succeed in learning the current system even if the BEST teaching is available to them. The world works in percentages. What do you say to the X% of the drop-outs from the current system? You don't deserve it?

Jeff

Yes I think so. But we have to have one universal staff which can be used for all types of music and read by musicians on all instruments. There will always be a few problems to overcome if you want to write, read or play music which bucks the trend.

And you are right, I can't read French. I once took a 10 week course in conversational French for beginners. They didn't teach us how to read or write. I do know how to ask where the toilet is though.

Jeff, everyone deserves the chance to be musically literate.

Now how does my piano show me sharps and flats?

Is this the one you deleted Monica? You are not preserving harmony, nor are you creating it. I get these posts at my home because I have "watch" on certain topics.

You can be really pointed with me, Monica. So I thought I'd point back at you.

Deleting is taking the easy way out. I just wanted to make sure your "points" to me were recorded for history.


Originally Posted By: Betty Patnude
It is obvious to me that very few (the teachers here) are understanding my posts, probably because they are not taking the time to examine it step by step. Theory is a step by step process, one item building upon another item - interwoven.

If this were a classroom instead of a forum, I would be giving out a lot of "F's" and incompletes.

"How on earth could you possibly know that "very few" people understand your posts? Most people who have read this thread have not commented on it.

I find your comments here incredibly condescending and presumptuous. If you're not happy with AB forum, Betty, there is a very easy solution. Don't read it."

And, Monica, I consider that not commenting on it is equivalent of not having read it, or attempted to have read it but given up, or dismissed it.

Not nice of me to have put this back in the mix, but it wasn't very nice of you either.

Betty Patnude

Thank you for that wonderfully concise and seemingly correct and precise history!

Excellent. Thank you!

Kenny, please don't encourage him. We have had 2271 posts about the limitations of our current notation system!

Sorry. I did think it seemed a great summary of the information from the links I posted. Makes sense to me.