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Well, which is it? Are you in it for money, or are you just trying to get everyone to see it your way? Afraid to answer?

Hi Damon,

Your reference to MIDI format merely in terms of numbers ...
has me wondering whether the critical aspect ...
namely the SHAPE of music has filtered through ...
the advantage of the MIDI format is reading the score
in terms of OVERALL note patterns (not individual notes) .

The Toccata (opening 32 measures) is mostly a parallel octave
passage by the two hands ... at m28 the LH hammers out a
percussive A, alternating with a merry RH ascent and descent ...
having just played this stretch on my Grotrian Steinweg ... the
tricky bit was maintaining the flow at m31 where the motif
overlaps the percussive A (need to sharpen up that bit).

PS This piece is an excellent study for parallel hands.

Put a sock in it david,

You sport the typical materialistic know-it-all ... some of us have found Nirvana without the need to sell anything or play the Pied Piper ... I’ve got it all old chap!!

Your problem is that you have lost the challenge of adventure ... and from your high horse, prefer rather to snipe at outsiders.

Thus the bruised mind tag ... the chappie just can’t think outside the box.

PS Forgive me for looking back at those presently struggling to
read and play their keyboard music ... I’m fortunate to be able
to play any masterpiece (once transcribed like the Toccata)
prima vista ... some 1000 posted on my computer for instant
print and play.

..... I’m fortunate to be able to play any masterpiece (once transcribed like the Toccata) prima vista ... some 1000 posted on my computer for instant print and play.

I realize your previous post was not directed to me, but it would be interesting to not only read the posts but hear from the posters as well.

I try my best to try and figure out which opinions have weight and which opinions should be ignored, but when profiles are empty, and there's a plethora of empty profiles, it makes it difficult to form any opinion based on any musical credentials. Am I conversing with a retired concert pianist who taught theory\comp at the local university or am I conversing with a 33 year old unemployed [fill in blank] who lives in the basement of mom and dad. You see what I mean?

Getting back to notation, it has been perfected over the last several centuries and I agree that any newly introduced system is a great way to separate money from the uninformed. I would even go further and state that those who develop those new systems haven't mastered the old system.

Sorry to intrude on a private\public spate. As you were.

Please read the profiles Dave .

Been thinking about this simplified notation and here are my thoughts for what they may be worth. I cannot find the previous threads on this topic via the search box, so perhaps all this has been said before.

Current conventional notation has evolved over several hundred years, with not much change in the last 300 or so. It's difficult to conceive of a more compact notation to capture all the attributes of a note to be performed, such as: key signature, time signature, duration, relationship to adjacent notes, accidentals, articulation, phrasing and dynamics, also instrument-specific attributes like fingering, pedalling, bowing, tongueing and so on.

All these attributes need to be very quickly assimilated in a performance context - in the space of tens of milliseconds per note perhaps for say masses of semiquavers in a Presto movement of a Baroque concerto like a Brandenburg. (Of course they will have been learnt before in practice and rehearsal).

The more complicated a single symbol is, the more brain activity is required to comprehend its meaning.

This new simplied notation removes only the separate accidental symbol by combining the accidental with the note-head that already represents duration. Thus the reader has to interpret two aspects of the note from the one symbol, whereas in conventional notation the accidental sign and duration shape are distinct symbols on the page. The information content of the simplified note and its equivalent conventionally notated form is the same. However, with two symbols as in conventional notation, the brain (so I think) has an easier job to do to assimilate the information and make the required actions to perform the note, especially at speed.

In chords and or clusters for keyboard players, I think this simplified notation makes for a fussier notation that is easier to mis-read and so is more liable to produce errors (thinking of the inner parts in say Brahms' piano works where there is often chromatic variation in the repetitions of a passage).

Thus I have come to the conclusion that the simplified notation actually is harder to read at speed or in bulk chords or both. Of course, familiarity gained through practice will iron out most difficulties anyway.

For single-note instruments there is probably not much difference - but not much of a gain either, so why bother?.

Non-playing readers such as students of theory wanting to determine the original spelling of a note from the "history" symbol have an extra step to work this out, so they certainly lose in this notation.

Perhaps a reader more knowledgeable in the psychology of the mental processes used in seeing and assimilating symbols could add some insights into these ideas.

The profiles I've seen say nothing of any substance.

No one uses their real name, there's no real e-mail address given, there's no web site, there's no link to any videos or performances of the individuals, .... but other than that, it's extremely informative.

i LOVE standard notation, but think I could get used to reading music in this format. It's easy to understand... totally

That was my introduction to the format. Several software upgrades later brought a sideways piano roll style editor similar to the one you print up (a little prettier, though ). I became quite familiar with it but wouldn't want to learn a piece reading that way.

Actually I got that mixed up with Cubase. The graphic styled editor I originally used looked like this:


The vertical stems represented volume. (those were the days) The track on the bottom shows midi controllers that could be drawn. The three pedals in the case of piano, for instance.

Just as a side note for anyone who is learning this and wants to play it like the composer, he groups the E and B in the left hand. For practical folks that actually want to play this in a band, learn it with one hand so you can play the string part in the break before the last chorus, with your other hand.

btb,
I am VERY interested in the graph you posted, having been a computer programmer for
most of my 40 years working life. In addition to what you mention, I would consider
it interesting in terms comparing performances. For example, how I play a certain
phrase vs some concert pianist who may play it with a beautiful, singing tone.
What does physically make the difference (note lengths, slightly different dynamic
on some of the notes, etc)?

How do you create the graph? Is it off-the-shelf software or did you program it yourself?

Hi Jose,

Your experiences as a computer programmer will have underlined the advantages of a graphic format ... however, it should be made clear that all that “beautiful singing tone” to which you allude is entirely in the hands of the pianist ... the rubato which Ashkenazy effects to a Chopin Nocturne will only effect the duration of notes (the horizontal component) ... the note pitch remains constant ... interestingly Bach WTC contains little rubato and both note pitch and duration remain constant.

Transcribing keyboard music into the MIDI format has been a labour of love over some 50 years ... the INTERNET era has provided a speeding up in transcription ... drawing tools prepare the framework (Grand Stave) upon which the notes are applied and linked to produce the SHAPE of music ... with the help of a sophisticated drawing programme called Caddie.

Hoping the info is of service to you.

Hi apple,
Glad to hear that you see some value in the MIDI of Bach’s Toccata and Fugue in D minor.

btb I always enjoy looking at your midi scores. It's very cool to see familiar music this way. I've hinted before that you should do a quiz thread where you post a few of these without naming and ppl have to guess the piece by shape - that would be fun

Is your source material a sound recording, or sheet music? From your post above i'm guessing sound recording?
Is it possible to read a piece that you haven't heard first, or is the rhythm too hard to guess unless it is rather simple or straight. Would love to hear your answers, thank you

Regarding the triangles for sharps etc, I quite like the idea myself but see that culture and history have too much weight for change to be likely, and it's pretty difficult to judge well when one has all the familiarity of a first language with traditional notation. I suspect a colour for flats and sharps system would be the easiest for a beginner to learn and these days this would be possible. Pretty sure I've seen this mentioned somewhere.

Some of my little students have come up with amazing possibilities for notating their first compositions. Sadly I am rather better at teaching reading these days so doesn't happen anymore. Their solutions for the problem of time are wonderful.

I liked your post Toastburn. Not so sure about ease and speed of reading, and impossible to really know because of years with old notation, but I suspect that I would be faster at seeing and understanding two aspects of one symbol than combining the info from 2 separate symbols.

Sometimes I have to stare quite hard at a chord to see how the sharps line up, and sometimes I mis-read it. I never got good at reading sharps and flats as a child - poor reader - so that may explain it.

I am also amazed at the density and complexity of trad. score notation. They are a truly amazing development that allowed symphonies to happen, and piano concerti. A miracle.

I agree. Particularly for those who play several hours a day it is a terrible strain on the eyes. I think such "simplified" notation should be printed in large print.

Hi Canonie,

To answer your queries and at the same time give you a MIDI puzzle to identify the composer and keyboard masterpiece ... here goes.

Once in MIDI format, any newly transcribed music becomes playable right away ... lots of the stuff downloaded from IMSLP for transcription doesn’t feature in my CD library ... it obviously helps the anticipation if one can recognize the “tune”... just played through this passage to get the feel ... the un poco mosso change of tempo (quick) at m14 takes
some adroit fingering, but provides a stunning contrast to the languid impressionism of the opening measures.

If you have not as yet tackled this gem, then you’re in for a treat.

I think you made it TOO easy, btb.

Debussy's Clair de lune, from Suite bergamasque.

Oh Darn it, saw ^ then went back and noticed the big clues. Somehow assumed it'd be something I don't know, but I could've got this one. Thanks for posting it btb.

Still don't understand whether the source material you feed in to get this graph is sound or trad notation?

For something you've never heard, how do you know the time signature? I'm assuming the vertical lines are barlines so maybe you don't need it?

Still think you should start a thread with a bunch of examples to guess with combination of easy and hard. If you would like to

Jose has an eye for the graphic ... so the Clair de Lune proved too easy ... the MIDI is the conversion from traditional notation ... a proportional representation of pitch and note duration.