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http://musicnotation.org/

The above site is dedicated to those who recognize that the notation (GS) currently in use could be improved. Who knows. Certainly if it ever happens, Piano World will be instrumental in the adoption.

James

Hi, Kenny.

Your point about compactness and information conveyed (per cm of width) is true. But remember, whatever concentrated information conveyed must still be deciphered to fit the "uncompact" keyboard itself. And that ability takes training. So why don't we use the same pattern from keyboard to score and vice versa? That would save all the compacting and decompacting effort.

Your earlier point about teachers is enlightening. Of course, teaching the students about compacting and decompacting (keyboardklutz calls it "child's play") will mean a few extra hours of lessons. But perhaps one should realise ... many students get discouraged quickly at the boring routines of learning the lines, spaces, key signatures, accidentals, and gets turned off and never calls again. Perhaps it is better to let them touch real music as fast as possible. It could be the Suzuki method (showing by hand how to play). But not everyone can afford that luxury.

Many thanks, James. The Hao Staff belongs to sites like this one. In fact, it is featured and highly regarded in one of the similar sites in Chinese.

The problem with these sites are ... the people that matters (i.e. the music teachers and students) don't really have an interest to pay attention to it. It is usually the innovators talking to themselves.

So I am bringing my baby to the Piano World to face the music !

We have all been taught to read the familiar format of an x/y 2 factors diagram such as the fluctuating oil price over the past month up to April 3, 2009 as shown below

A quick glance at this format allows us in an instant to decide whether to:

http://www.pianoworld.com/Uploads/files/clfclose.JPG


1. Buy a car now ... or wait till the market is more stable
2. Buy shares in Ford
3. Think of buying a smaller car
4. Sell the gas-guzzler and set aside the cash for a rainy day
5. Invest in oil
6. Restrict purchases to absolute essentials

The point being made is that the diagram can be understood and digested in a split second freeing snappy optimum decision-making ... why doesn’t music use the same format ...
an accurate picture of pitch and time ... as so succinctly said by Thorium

"I'd rather have a system where the distance between the notes on paper is proportional to the distance in pitch, so that the sheet essentially becomes a GRAPHICAL REPRESENTATION OF A FUNCTION OF ABSOLUTE PITCH AND TIME."

If you follow my earlier bleat of "logical" precepts ... and convert traditional scores into a linear diagram ... those bulky old fashioned neumes (once converted into a simple locating "+") will transcribe into a compact linear format ... rests totally disappear as do sharps and flats ... twice the volume of music can now be viewed on a new 6 octave grand stave ... and any masterpiece (once transcribed) played off-the-cuff ... like reading a book.

A case of ... what you see, is what you hear.

I got the impression my objections were not shared by the larger community, so I buried the hatchet. =)




And the coolest thing about this format would be its ability to handle continuous changes in pitch, such as glissandos on unfretted stringed instruments, bent notes, etc. You could even write down complex synthesized music, or even a sine wave should you so choose. Sounded notes would be lines; the volume of the sound indicated by the thickness of the line. To make it easier for musicians to distinguish the discrete pitches of e.g. equal-temperament music, one could let the line assume certain colors when indicating such notes, so that all Cs, Ds, Es, etc, have the same color, respectively.

Two immediate problems with this system are: the (slight, perhaps) difficulty of actually writing down music, as you'd ideally need specialized software for it; and its excessive precision, leaving little room for interpretations, such as are possible within the somewhat looser framework of music on the GS. *shrug* To be honest, I rather like the additional layer of abstraction that our current system of notation applies, and I think learning to work with such things improves mental celerity.

Thor

For alternatives, I find the piano tab version of Fur Elise to be easier all around. Its both a one to one system and it's compact enough to read quickly. There are even tools to convert GS to tab and back for free. Heck, even the dance dance revolution-like Synthesia plays nicer.

The GS is still best, creating a separate notation that only works with piano, instead of a notation that works will instruments that have a separate Bb and A# doesn't make sense to me. Nor does it make sense to make theory harder to understand by combining the two.

Mr. Hao,

The efficiency of the Grand Staff which has been in use is fine as it stands.

Using only white keyts of the piano: The grand staff designates the 88 keys of the keyboard in a very understandable way by first learning the orientation to Major (no #'s or b's). All 8 C's can easily and clearly be shown with the use of 5 C's and the 8va and 15 va.

There are 8 A's, 8 B's, 8 C's, on the piano, and then 7 D's, 7 E's, 7 F's, 7 G's = 52 white keys

Then the addition of of 7#'s, and 7b's (because there are 7 alphabet letters to accomodate). This uses the black key groups as well as white notes which can be spelled enharmonically - killing two birds with one stone.

On the grand staff reading of accidentals accumulates by first doing Key of C, then following the Circle of 5th - clockwise, the # keys, and counterwise the b keys. By doing octaves, one has accounted for every possibility of sound on the piano as far as designating one keyboard note to any one location on the grand staff.

The grand staff is a combination of treble notes and bass notes separated by a 3 note area between clefs named B-Middle C- D.

So essentially, within any one octave (8 white notes/5 black notes) all 12 half steps can be demonstrated.

Accidentals are alteration used as needed, or written within understandable key signatures. To truly unjder stand the theory behind scales, tetrachords, accidentals, key signatures, circle of 5th, one has to be willing to sit at the piano and be guided through the consistency of factual understanding combining sound with staff (ladder) designations. The staff system is static in that notes don't move - they are constant location.

What changes is the note value counting of duration symbols. Symbols for sound and symbols for silence.

As I was saying (over and over) this clearly exists that a pianist can put 9 fingers (LH 5-4-3-2-(1 will share the middle line note with RH 1) -2-3-4-5) and have a finger placed on the keyboard to show all 9 possibilities of what the staff represents within the capacity of the musicians hands.

LH5-3-1 and RH 1-3-5 show line notes whether the thumbs are located at Middle C (the center of the grand staff) or Middle B (the center of the treble clef), and Middle D (the center of the bass clef.

Even the additions of leger lines at the top and the bottow of the staff make tremendous sense.

Everything is in perfect proportions from the grand staff to the keyboard.

The way music is written for piano is as succinct and understandable as it gets.

When someone does not understand the grand staff/nor do they understand the keyboard locations there is no hope for combining the information so that it makes sense, much less the pianists accessibility to the entire system. It can not be understood without the structure of knowing theory. Theory is a wonderful process of thinking. It is not something to fear.

If you are using simply your eyes and your ears to link the purpose of the alphabet system (or Do-Re-Mi solfeggio), you don't get very far without adding your hands to the keyboard to "measure" the relationships of notes to another.

There is a vocabulary and learning systems within the subject we are talking about, and instead of learning the system, we are looking at two graphics (one a grand staff graphic and the other a keyboard graphic.) Just looking and comparing does not work. There is further understanding to be made.

You don't own the grandstaff and the keyboard graphics until you have learned to use them to understand them. Using them is visual, aural, and tactile, and a sense of direction and distance.

So, I think it's possible to do as you have done and invent a new system that covers part of the learning process of what a grand staff represents, but it does not cover all the other facts in theory at the same line.

There is another topic going about the reconstruction of the keyboard - blacks and white. And, while interesting, neither yours nor his works as efficiently and universally understood as the present model in use.

Guido 'd Arezzo was not a dumb man. Before reinventing the wheel, it would be a good idea to know the story of written music. It would be a good idea to be at your full capacity as your best musician possible - then I believe you would see that your invention works for some of the people some of the time, but not for all of the people all of the time.

For many reasons it does not work completely. I don't have time or energy to list them nor reason to. Each person needs to decide for themselves, from their own musicianship, if it is worth the time and effort to examine a new notation system.

Once engrained with something that works, there is no need to make a change. If someone has not learned to use and understand the present system and they find it aggravating and frustrating, they have not been schooled in the associations and relationship of what the grand staff and keyboard are all about.

You get this information by working at the keyboard - you don't get it from reading a method book. The most accessible way is to be able to do it first, and then the information (theory) tacks itself to your brain.

The work of theory does not lay someplace else in a book or a website, it lays in your brain ready to put into use.

Betty Patnude

ChromaticKeys posted this site: http://musicnotation.org/

Let me bring to your attention, that an octave gets totally out of whack size wise when the hand opens to play and octave with fingers 1 and 5 on the keyboard, but the schematic of the grand staff is much more greatly distanced apart on the written page. An octave on the keyboard represents a major scale - note to note with 8 white keys and 5 black keys residing within. The diagram represents 13 locations. What is the sense of that? Excessive distance on the paper has been used. This no longer complies with a compatible size between the two graphics: 1)keyboard distances and intervals, and 2) music staff madness.

Octo" represents 8 notes, 8 piano keys, when it takes C-C-A to represent 12 half steps, you can "see" it is not working. There are not 12 big steps to find an octave on a piano keyboard, it is the expansion of an adult hand shape.

By comparison, the grandstaff notation of the 12 notes (7 white/5 black) takes a huge area for it to be laid out.

It does not fit the human body at all.

Go back to my Middle Line teaching ideas, and she how magnificently it works. I do realize that not everyone is getting my version of notation to keyboard. That is because you are not using your hands at the keyboard to understand the staff.

The effort requires a music page/manuscript paper, a keyboard, and one person willing to stick with it until it makes sense.

It so makes sense! It's valid! It's legitimate! It being my middle line teaching device, and it being my comments in response to the "new" non-functional substitutes. Their biggest problem is that they don't hold true across the broad board of thinking in music theory. You cannot do that.

Betty Patnude

My thoughts on the grand staff and notation system:

This system came into its present form at a time when our music was based on the major and minor scales we commonly know now. If you think within that context, and if the music is also within that context (traditional type) then it works superbly well and maybe intuitively.

The sharps and flats, first of all, are part of a key signature. They reflect a consistent pattern of whole steps and half steps which is always the same. The major scale is familiar to everybody: it starts and ends on the same note within an octave. Traditional music tends to hover around that note. Se we get a feel for it as music. Of course this "key note" (tonic) where the scale starts and ends can be any starting point, so that we end up with the key of C major, G major, D major etc. and those sharps or flats. But these sharps and flats are in a predictable order, and it's always SAME ORDER + one more. Gmaj: F#, Dmaj: F#,C#: Amaj: F#C#G# etc. On a playing level, it becomes automatic to always play that black key called F#. That is your context of a piece in G major - it's consistent. And if you flub it, your ear tells you "this sounds wrong". So you get used to playing a piece in A major with its three sharps, and your hand and ear simply get used to them being there. You do not *think* about every G# that comes up, because you are playing inside the musical context of A major.

I wonder if that context sometimes goes missing, and people try to play note after note after note. That's what bothers me about these alternate notations, btw. I lose the context and am in fact forced to play note after note.

The grand staff itself has little "labels" like place markers, as it were. The bass clef is called "F clef" in many languages, because the two dots surround the F below middle C, with the fat starting point being on that F. The treble clef is often called "G clef" because it circles G above middle C. Then we have middle C, C5 and C4 in the spaces (if you get lost, you can always use your F and G markers to find your way back). It's quite easy to orient yourself, especially if you systematically acquire familiarity of each "region" of notes until you know them "like the back of your hand".

By having these approaches in place, I have learned not only to read the bass and treble clefs, but also music including the C clefs (alto, tenor). It seems to be a matter of approach.

One thing the grand staff is not well suited for is music that is not written in that traditional style that bases itself on major and minor scales. Modern music using whole tone, octatonic, blues, any of the modes - is immediately in trouble even when trying to write it down. Immediately you have choices. In a blues scale, you can write the fourth note as an aug4 or dim5 above the tonic, so it could be written as F# or Gb, and both are correct. You are back to reading such music note-by-note or by interval because you don't know what context you are in. That is when it really hits home, how intuitive the grand staff is for "traditional" music (I'm inventing a term) because suddenly all those contexts you take for granted fall away. It would seem also that our notation system does not work as well for music that lies outside of Common Practice music. (??)

I do wonder what notation system you would use for violin? What about flute? What about a piano trio? As a pianist I need to know what the other two instruments are playing at the same time, yet there's the issue of them having one system of notation and us another, not to mention the space factor: no room for them as your system takes up more space. Does someone who plays piano have to relearn how to read music to take cello lessons? A universal system seems better.

And in all instruments where the playing or singing depends on doing so "in tune", and A# is always higher than a B flat. There is a reason for this as well as for choosing the sound of different keys. It may not make sense to strictly equal-tempered pianists, but it is intuitive for vocalists and strings.

Hi, Betty.

You have my highest respect. Because it's past my bedtime, I will give a brief response first.

You are a great teacher teaching the Music Theory as it is. It will take a bit of "jumping out of yourself" to appreciate what I am going to say.

To me, the real music theory is not about how to read a certain notation system, be it the GS or anything else. The real music theory is about scales, intervals, chords, and what effect they have on human ears. The notation system is a "language tool" to express the real music theory.

If one picks up any music theory book today, a large proportion of it is devoted to explaining how GS works. Yes it works and it has all the beauty for anyone who has persevered to admire. But some people's goal maybe simply playing the music.

With the Hao Staff, the music theory book can be re-written (I am doing this), and rest assured that all of the "real music theory" will be explained just as well.

I am offering Hao Staff as an ALTERNATIVE for certain people and certain situation. It certainly will not solve all the problems in the world. But it will help a lot of people, if they know it. It will help many people to get acquainted with music first in a pleasant wayt (it takes 10 minute to understand and use, so what is lost anyway), and then go on to learn more about the music theory, about the Grand Staff, about other instruments, and become maestros, if they want.

What harm is there? Why can't the teachers just tell their students, look, there is this thing, and it's like this, its limitations are this, its advantages are this, do you want to use it to play music first and then learn the GS and theory later, or do you want to jump straight into the GS and theory because you will need them if you want to go a long way?

I don't know how many people have given up trying to play music because of the GS threshold. But there are.

My idea is to get anybody who is interested to touch music first, then he can decide what to do with it (serious study or just simple enjoyment).

I guess my take on this is that I'm not seeing a lot of blatent Advertisement here but more of discussion of the differences in approach to staff and notation, etc. I hope to learn something from it myself.

If instead the poster were directing readers to his website or asking them to buy his product, that's a bigger deal to me.

Wieck, Clara Schumann's dad, kept away from notation altogether for the first year teaching keyboard harmony/improvisation instead.

Or if one does not have a dad like Wieck, he/she can start with enjoying playing some favourite pieces made easy to read on some staff that corresponds to the keyboard key-by-key (real child's play)?

If he/she likes it bad enough, he/she can go on to learn the proper Grand Staff notation and the music theory?

Piano tab is that and more! More compact than Hao Staff. No tricky balls and sticks to trip up players. Easy English letters with a one to one symbols.

The best part is, one is not tied to a patent-encumbered staff system!f It's a public domain system anyone can use and convert between tab and GS with simply programs.

Oh wait, how the heck is either piano tab or Hao kitty staff going to help with improvisation and keyboard harmony, which was the point of that post you're responding to?

I did not say Hao Staff would help with improvisation and keyboard harmony. The point I am responding to is about keeping the student away from (traditional) notation for some time.

During that time, Wieck taught Clara about improvisation and keyboard harmony. But others can try playing actual music with the help of Hao Staff, or Piano Tabs if it does a better job to serve that purpose.

You can argue that the Hao Staff is another notation system. Well, because it is so plain and corresponds one-to-one with the keyboard, it is not a "system" any more, but something completely intuitive once it is explained (in not more than 10 minutes).

I agree its patent-encumberedness is a major disadvantage. It costs money.

I knew of Wieck just as a historical fact of lineage to Clara and Robert, but came across a link here in PW that provided his book.

I have read some of it but not all due to time constraints, but what I find most interesting, is that I use a lot of his music teaching ideas, so many it surprized me greatly.

I don't teach notation to learn the grand staff in the beginning either, I consider this kind of relating with the 2 graphics of keyboard to grandstaff difficult, and give lots of playing experience before tackling the complete accuracy of the grand staff.

I use, instead, teaching by land marks, distance and direction (intervals of half steps, and whole steps) C Major one octave scale, and 5 Finger Positions (12), and very importantly, the use of the hand and fingers as a measuring device on the piano. Teaching octaves and registers of 8'C's also. Then I use the Middle Line of each clef for 9 notes/9 fingers/5 lines and 4 spaces orientation.

The first thing taught was the alphabet first 7 letters forward and backward to organize the naming process, but not to work from the grand staff identifying every note.

I say that we can meet and carry on conversations with perfect strangers and leave the conversation feeling wonderful about having met, but sometimes these meetings are between 2 people, who did not even get their introductions made by name. However, the conversation flowed and was of interest to both of them.

This is how I see the grand staff - visually - as a spatial relationship of lines (spaces are "understood" to exist, but you primarily see the lines organization. We have to make sense of the movement of the notes and this we do with a response from our fingers - naming the note is an impediment to the process finding. It's a relationship on the grand staff we are pursuing, numerical in nature, stacked in melodic form, or in harmonic form which creates the responding hand shape in the air, not after you get to the keys.

I know I've left a "loophole" in explaining what I do and how I do it. It works great without naming every note.

I think this is why and how I devised the middle line reading to represent 9 fingers on the keyboard to respond to the keyboard location of D - C - B.

Bass Clef D generates: GABCDEFGA
Treble Clef B generated: EFGABCDEF
Middle C generates: FGABCDEFG

In each example, 5-3-1's of both hands are lines and 4-2's of both hands are spaces.

In each keyboard location, the thumbs share the middle line.

Let's learn to use what we already have, we know it's difficult for many people to understand. The truth is that it doesn't have to be. They show us the grand staff and then it is us who has to think it through and make something "magical" out of it.

www.e-musictheory.com
Use the keyboard trainer
Use the treble clef, bass clef, grand staff separately
For the purpose of learning to decode music as a preparation and teaching yourself exercise

Betty

"As a very new beginner, Ive been using http://www.emusictheory.com/practice.html (best drill site on the web IMHO)"

Thanks for the website; that was useful.

Interesting discussion.

To me, reading music is much the same as reading the newspaper. When you read the paper you recognise and understand the symbols printed on the page. You know how each letter, word and sentence will sound. You can hear the language in your head or you can reproduce it by speaking out loud. When you read music the same thing should happen. You can imagine how it will sound and/or you can reproduce it on your chosen instrument. Nobody is born with this ability any more than they are born able to read.

As for the chromatic stave I don't see anything new in particular. Every now and then someone pops up and claims to have invented it. I don't want to be rude but it's incredible that after so much research the best Jeff can come up with is doing away with all those sharps and flats. As if that's a good thing. Those of us who like to read and play diatonic music actually find them very useful. There is a danger that people who don't play will choose to go down this route in the hope that it will speed up the process (it won't). There are many reasons why piano students find sight reading difficult and none of them have anything to do with note recognition on the stave. If it's taught in the right way then it is really very easy to learn to read music. Then you can go and play whatever you like from the printed music which already exists rather than having to rely on an obscure system that nobody else uses.

I wonder if Jeff is a musician or a teacher?