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I would judge your Hanon to be the more elegant, though it takes up so much room! As Chris kinda says though, no one's going to bother reading it in the first place. And by the way, I thought this was the "Hao Staff Forum"!

I dunno, Jeff. I noticed that you had linked to this discussion from your forum, and I wasn't sure that was what I would do if I actually wanted people who are new to notation, or those who have had difficulty with the conventional notation, to buy music written on the Hao staff. Do you really think that someone who just wants to get started playing pieces they like would wade thru this and get something from it? I mean, yeah, us geeks. It does seem to me that if you are just getting started the geekiness would also have to be a large factor for this discussion to be fascinating. Could it be you really just mean to see if you can find enough places on the internet to link to that you can give the impression that your notation is being seriously discussed as a stand-in, for beginners, for conventional notation and people won't actually click on the links? Or maybe I'm just overly cynical because my daddy sold used cars, and the vast majority of your posts have been in this thread .

Not to say, of course, that I don't find the discussion of alternative notations interesting, because I do. But I do find Jeff's staff as busy as I find the conventional staff. Frankly, the fact that the gray and white spaces are grouped the same way the black and white keys on a keyboard are was not immediately obvious to me Without some words, either written or spoken, it is not obvious, at least to me, which specific set of black/white physical keys are represented by the gray/white sets on Jeff's staff (which is not a different problem than one has with conventional notation). The fact that actual pitches/sounds are represented in one orientation on Jeff's staff and another on the physical keyboard is still a first barrier to some people, as it is with the conventional staff (that's hard to describe in words - but what I sometimes do, as do others, is to turn the sheet music 90 degrees with the clef signs at the top, so that the lines/spaces on the left correspond to physical keys on the left. For some people that helps it *click*).

And of course, Jeff's notation, as has been said, is piano-centric because of the layout, which is fine if his target audience is only potential piano players who, for whatever reason, have difficulty with the conventional staff notation.

But it seems to me, and I'm sure others will have different experience with this, that those who truly have trouble with the conventional notation for reasons other than unfamiliarity, and there are definitely folks who do, may not be able to use Jeff's staff with any less work than it would take to read the conventional staff. I had a student in a math class that used a particular color combination of paper and ink so that the numbers quit dancing around on the page, and there is a really interesting discussion in the teacher's forum right now about some of those kinds of issues. And it seems to me that the difficulties that people have which are not attributable to unfamiliarity are probably diverse enough that any one alternative staff isn't likely to address them. But I could be wrong. Those folks who are contributing here who are newer to reading notation might have a different take on it.

So I've rambled some and may appear incoherent, and goodness knows how many posts have been made while I've been composing my post and the discussion may be on something completely different by now, but there you go

Cathy

I have a book that has been helpful for me and it addresses some of the points brought out here.

You will guess from the title that the authors have considerable concern for the student who just "didn't get it".

It is: How to Play the Piano Despite Years of lessons. It is subtitled: What music is and how to make it at home.

It covers a means and method of doing just that. It was written fifty years (or more) ago. This discussion clearly demonstrates the need for their work.

I got mine on Ebay. I don't know if it is available new.

I will most certainly continue to follow this thread but I don't have much to contribute.

On my keyboard;

Kenny suggests the posibility of a different key shape. You provided me with much food for thought as I drove the 500 miles to celebrate with my wife. I flipantly suggested the feminine form. Naaa. I think a petal shape or sort of a teardrop might be useful on the blacks. Matching the round ends on the whites. I will do a model with a few white and black keys and think about it.

And Chris H comments "Even though I obviously don't agree with the idea I must admit I would like to have a go on it!" Well, nothing would please me more if you approached it with an open mind. It is but an additional hand form of the 12 you already know if you can transpose to all keys. And I dare say that you would find it down right comfy.

I had NOT prior to the posts here thought of an alternative staff. The configuration would dictate a six line staff and beg for color somewhere.

Thanks All It is great fun for me.
James

Hope you had a good celebration and I do expect you to keep me informed of your progress on your keyboard!

I did indeed!

Also, I'll send you a CD as soon as I can get the bugs out. I won't post to Utube till I get the whites cleaned up a bit.

James

Cathy (jotur), I still owe you a big thanks for looking into my "click" on "circle of fourth" and endorsing it ...

On you post above, let me just say all of them are unbiased. The Hao Staff tries to make one part of learning to play piano easier FOR SOME PEOPLE. It has its limitations, which you and many have rightly pointed out. I don't mind that at all.

I don't mean to over-defend it. I only mean to defend it from over-reaction. It is what it is.



Completely fair. And for the orientation click, yes, I do exactly that to explain to my friends. I am sure you will appreciate that it clicks better when you sit in front of a piano holding a Hao Staff turned 90 degrees.

About the "not obvious without some words ...". Definitely. That's why I claim "read music in 10 mins", and not 0 minute. And if the teachers can help students get into it, WOW. But I realise that I may never get teachers on my side voluntarily ... maybe I can employ some ... open my own piano teaching centre (with HS as an OPTIONAL choice for students) ...

I agree to disagree with the unconvinced. For the attention you have paid to my work, I solute you.

Jeff
p.s. on the linking, Cathy, I don't have a linking strategy related to sale numbers. I just thought that there are a lot of good discussions here (more than anywhere else), and my customers may want to be informed of both sides of the argument.

Jeff, this morning you launched a question which was inspired by the musical excerpt I presented before. Especially since that was in fact my sight reading piece from last week, I'd like to use to to show some of my perceptions on reading. It is to share, not to convince.

First you should know that I started to learn to sight read 14 months ago and have had a piano for about 1.5 years. 30+ years before I played self-taught as a teen.

This is the whole piece:
The piece
The first thing about being able to read music is that it helps if you understand some aspects of music. It makes the music more predictable so we can anticipate where it goes. Before learning to read words we learn how to talk. In reading words, we are decoding a symbolic representation of something familiar.

Reading this piece begins with scanning it with the eyes for general impressions. One sharp + some clues: G major. I anticipate what it will sound like, and that one sharp by the tonic. Near the bottom there is a flurry of flats. I would expect a modulation around there, maybe into a minor (this is just glancing for sight reading) - and below some naturals: probably modulates back to G major - the final note being G, it does).

After getting a general impression of the piece, I'd start to play - s-l-o-w-l-y from beat to beat as one does. This piece is at the limit of my abilities to sight read presently. Among other things, different rhythms are going on.

The important thing is that the key signature and the accidentals give me cues about where the music is going - in a certain key, modulating. It's like seeing 5 dots on a rolled dice, or seeing the speaker straighten and taking a deep breath and you know he's about to start. These things give you context and orient you. Sight reading is not totally playing note after note after note: it is more like language with phrases with things you can anticipate.

Most music has very predictable formal shapes. If you go chromatic, we lose all the cues. It's like removing stop signs, street signs, and house numbers in order to make the town less cluttered. And learning to recognize those stop signs and street signs is something we do in activities outside of reading music, that will help us with reading.

That's the perspective I'd like to share. I don't know if anything intelligent has come out of this post.

Good thoughts, well-stated I think.

Cathy

I have a copy though I don't have it at hand. I can't remember any passages about how to mash up your keyboard though. Maybe you should write a sequel?

A sequel would be altogether redundant. They cover it all. Arthur Reblitz does however cover how to open a piano and make whatever adjustments you might want to make in the normal spectrum of rebuilding.

Neither book mentions reassembling the keys. They are traditionalist. One can find internet reference to the posibility of changing the order of keys but I can find no information as to anyone ever doing it before.

I did it. It works. I like it. But I also like my Mason Hamlin without changes.

Also note that I seperate my comments regarding the chromatic keyboard from the other on reading music and note as well that I said I have little to contribute on that. The book I mention is somewhat inclusive but no book can cover everyones needs. As they note, "a book for everyone is a book for no one"

James

Just a word on Forum etiquette ... moderator BB Player has seen fit to remind the motley
(and reading between the lines, to cut the bitching)
“Let’s keep the discussion on music notation please”.

Fresh newcomers might need a bit of time to cotton onto the importance of a helpful approach (avoid at all costs personal criticism) ... with 40,000 ever-friendly members, all with a highly individual take on keyboard music ... it goes without saying that threads may, and do, raise some way-out opinions.

These opinions should not be seen to be cast in stone ... but for what they are worth, however ... they spice the remarkable Forum input (bubble, bubble, toil and trouble!).

From a chappie who signed on with the membership on a mere 5000 ... who greatly enjoys and respects the motley company, might I suggest

"Play the ball ... not the player" ... all tirribly, tirribly British and all that rot, don’t you know!

PS Not forgetting the prime Forum no-no ... please chaps ... don’t try to SELL!!!

James, I've seen that book, it is available, but I have not read it.

The book id number is ISBN:0-385-14263-3

It is very enlightning.

James

At Amazon:

http://www.amazon.com/Play-Piano-Despite-Years-Lessons/dp/0385142633

Thanks, keystring, for sharing that. We have very similar piano experience (adult self-taught). Because of sheer determination, I have at one stage managed to play Chopin's Nocturn Op.9 No.2. fluently. To play such a piece, I had the same experience as you ... that I needed to anticipate. That I did by analyzing the structure of the music. Very much like a modern pop song: verse 1, verse 2, chorus, verse 3, verse 4, chorus, outro, etc.

It has been some time since I last played it. If I do it now, I will also study its Key and chords, because I am more knowledgeable now than before in this area.

That is not to say that I don't appreciate the road signs that you are watching out for. I am sure they have helped you a lot.

But please don't take the following as a defensive stance:

Those pointers also exist in the Hao Staff. I have no advanced players brought up with the Hao Staff to substantiate that. But logically, there should be. Take a look at the Hanon piece I posted above. You immediately get the big clue: parallel, minor 3rd. You then just need to know where to start and where to finish.

Some of the clues/signs are best "seen" on the keyboard itself, when you practice it for the first few times. You remember which keys (notes) are the landmark notes. That you can see from the Hao Staff, if you are used to it.

Mind you, the sharps and flats do not disappear in the Hao Staff. They become black (grey) pitch stripes, just like how they will look on the keyboard. You can still analyze and understand the music structure before you get down to play it, which I think is a great discipline to have.

Also, you see road signs because it comes with your build-up of music theory (e.g. you know the difference between major and minor Keys). That should happen with the Hao Staff, too, because it has major/minor key signatures where ever necessary. E.g. 1=F, 6=D, etc. It is also set against a Grand Staff grid (note that the Grand Staff lines are not just for decoration. They point at the correct pitch stripe). It is a good tool to introduce people to the concept of the Grand Staff.

But I need to qualify myself again: nothing replaces interest, attitude, teacher's instruction, music theory, and practice. A lot of your "sign-reading capabilities" come from those, rather than the signs themselves. Different people will be looking out for different signs. I think you would agree with that.

Cheers,
Jeff

Jeff,

I have to disagree with you in that in my opinion the "grammar" (or what you are calling roadsigns) is not completely there in the Hao Staff.

For example, there is no way that I can tell to determine from the Hao Staff that you are playing minor thirds vs augmented seconds. The keys you press on a piano are the same, but the musical purpose or meaning is different.

I can describe an example of how a piece might modulate and explain why it is clearer in standard notation. (Unfortunately, I do not have an example of a piece that performs this modulation. Maybe Chris or someone else can provide us with an example.)

Take a piece that is written in 7 sharps (C# major). A couple of measures start showing music with F double sharp. What has happened is that the music has modulated into the (admittedly artificial if you only consider keys with up to seven sharps) key of G# Major. After a couple of measures with the accidentals written out, the composer changes to the enharmonic key of Ab Major. Have you really changed keys with this last step? - not really, the composer has made it clear what he has done and then notated it in a more convenient key for the player.

My point with the above is that keeping the correct letter name for each note tell you important information about the key that you are currently in and what notes you should be anticipating. When everything is written chromatically, these tonal harmony clues are missing. It's like communicating with someone who is not using correct grammar. They can be understood, and sometimes it takes a lot of thought and translation, but some of the meaning and ease of understanding can be lost on a fluent speaker.

Rich

Hi Jeff,
I have no interest in converting you, but I would like to plant a seed for a concept that might serve you (or others) at another time. It took me time to catch on to this myself. I did read the story of your journey and understand your present position. You do have a musical system, and those wishing to use it will have to learn to use it like any other system. Please do take the time to try to understand the concepts that I'm about to present, just so you know OF them. It's partly abstract in terms of how we learn. I'm a student and I'm also a trained teacher who has looked at various ways of learning: music learning interests me keenly.

Music study can appear to have the purpose of learning to produce a particular piece of music. Your goal becomes that of playing this or that piece. In this case you are working toward that goal in everything you do. If skills are needed, such as a certain touch to bring out a sound, or an ideal hand configuration, these will start coming to you to some degree, because the sound won't be right unless the shape is right. You'll keep wiggling and jiggling your way into something that is better. You will also start absorbing some of the patterns that exist in music. A couple of years after playing, if you start studying music theory, a lot of things will be familiar, and you'll say, "Wow - so that's what I've been doing!"

This is one approach to learning to play. It is common. Even when learning with a teacher, a "pieces-oriented" approach is often used, and they sneak in the theory and technique, because they know this is often our orientation. These are the things that are the most obvious to us, and we're the most likely to accept.

There is a second approach which presents a radical shift in thinking. In this approach you are getting at the physical skills and the essences of music (theory in a broad sense). It would seem that you are delaying things, but you are actually speeding things up. It's like Alice in the Looking Glass, where she keeps walking to the house and keeps finding the house far away. She is told to walk away from the house in order to reach the house - she finally does so and almost crashes into the front door. It is hard to accept such a premise.

I have tried to illustrate some principles through a concrete example, just as a door opener. I have learned to understand key signatures and the nature of major and minor scales. It is not a case of memorizing flats and sharps: it involves understanding those patterns, the intervals, the sense behind them. The understanding is physical as well as mental. You play a scale, you play chords, you go along the circle of fifths. You do a myriad of things that seem unrelated to the piece that you want to play. But all the time you are absorbing the underlying structures of music.

We have both written about anticipation. The goal, as you practise this way, is not anticipation. The goal, mentally, is no longer the piece in the manner you hear it. The ability to anticipate is the RESULT of these seemingly unrelated things you have done. This concept is elusive and hard to grasp. That is what I meant by Alice in the Look Glass who walks away from the house in order to get into the house.

Last year I did not set the goal of being able to sight read well. That is, yes, that was the ultimate goal. But in actually practising, my purpose shifted to such things as being able to glance at the music and anticipate its direction through the theoretical (experienced and studied) knowledge I had. I played chords in circles of fifths and wrote them out, and that exercise allowed me to anticipate what the music would do. It would take too long to list the various simple goals that I practised toward but perhaps you will get the idea.

You have invested yourself heavily into your system. It is unlikely that you will let go of that and thus not be able to reap the rewards of your labour (you can play music using this system, and would have to start from scratch without it).

The thing is that what I have described is part of the structure of the common Western music. both the keyboard and the notation system were designed for that music and they go hand in hand. If a student uses your system they will not be able to predict music at a glance as I am able to do, because the signposts are no longer there. Music teachers who have spent years studying this system, and decades teaching it, know its power. They are not being elitist or close-minded when they urge caution or are even alarmed. They know what is not there.

Are you able to see that perspective? Your system is geared toward the goal that wants to play the music right away. The immediate result is faster. But will it prevent absorbing the structures of music itself (how it is composed), so that ultimately tools are missing and in the long run we are slowed down? That is the place where concern would lie. It might be helpful to gain the perspective of experienced musicians both so you know where they are coming from, and in case there is something that you yourself can use. I find it heartening that some of the teachers have taken the time to seriously consider the chromatic approach both of yourself, and the gentleman who created a keyboard to that end.

Fwiw, as a violin student I work in half steps and whole steps by measuring them out in finger-thicknesses along an unmarked length of wire. A finger width gives a semitone, and just to make things interesting, the higher you go, the smaller the width becomes proportionally. One can conceivably play music without ever knowing the notes simply by keeping those proportions right. (Which is how it came to be that it took 3 years to discover I wasn't really reading music in any normal manner.)

It's been interesting!

KS

Dragonpianoplayer, would the piece that I posted as a link on this page help serve your purpose? I haven't actually studied it: It was part of my prima vista reading recently.

Keystring,

Yes and no. Yes, in that to some degree any example of modulation would work. We are both trying to say the same concepts in different ways. No, in that I am thinking of a very specific example I remember seeing recently that is an almost over the top example of modulation.

Rich

duplicate post - can't delete - see next one.