If anyone wants to mess around with “drawable” notation (along the lines of the “avant-garde” section), I made an iPad app called Composer’s Sketchpad[1] that lets you do just that. You can use it to sketch out complicated solos or mess around with microtonal music in a way that ordinary notation does not permit. I really need to give it a nice 2.0 makeover with full MIDI in/out, but making money on esoteric App Store software is hard!<p>[1]: <a href="http://composerssketchpad.com" rel="nofollow">http://composerssketchpad.com</a><p>Bonus devblog: <a href="http://archagon.net/2016/02/05/composers-sketchpad/" rel="nofollow">http://archagon.net/2016/02/05/composers-sketchpad/</a>
one improvement to the current piano music notation is making both staves start/end on the same notes. ie, EGBDF for both. right now a student learns the "right hand" / treble staff to be EGBDF... you'll mentally learn that the third line is a B note - maybe natural/sharp/flat, but it's a B. great. now you learn the bass clef and all the work you did for the treble clef is not applicable anymore: cause it's GBDFA! WTH? the third line is now a D and not a B like before. sure, youre supposed to learn both clefs together, but especially for beginners and sight reading, it wouldve been nice if both had the same sequence. especially when theyre only a 3rd apart! a possible way to achieve this is to add an A to the top of the treble clef: EGBDF[A], and add and E to the bottom of the bass clef [E]GBDFA. now both are are easier to learn and you dont have to constantly shift a third in your head. the 3rd line is <i>always</i> a B in both staves.<p>Another improvement, especially for piano music is to make the white/black key indication carried in the note shape/head. right now the note head carries duration information. it could also include whether it's a black key or white. this is useful especially for complex keys with many sharps/flats. this way whether you're in C major or Ab Minor, you dont have to constantly remember which notes are accidentals. sure, youre supposed to learn the scale and remember (including all the cancellations, double sharp/flats), but it's massively easier if this useful info is carried in the note shape. eg: square note head = black, triangle = white.<p>sorry for the rant!
Musical notation is <i>really</i> interesting, a bit like mathematical notation. There's really only one standard way of doing it, both relatively recent, and both having histories going back thousands of years.<p>There's a few oddball variants that survive, and almost all ancient systems just used strings of characters from whatever the local writing system was to represent the music, but did so imprecisely. Few of the systems even provided absolute pitch guides or timing and provided more of a sketch of the tune than a high precision description.<p>For fun, try to come up with your own system from first principals without arriving at something that's kind of like what we use today and can still compactly describe just about any kind of music. Try the same with math notation. It's both hard and fun!<p>I'm glad that they put in the avant guard entry, but a few musicians also have various kinds of shorthand. Here's an entry on Yanni's.<p><a href="https://www.quora.com/Is-it-true-that-Yanni-cant-read-music" rel="nofollow">https://www.quora.com/Is-it-true-that-Yanni-cant-read-music</a>
Beautiful. In the XX century, many modern composers (like for example composers of serial music) invented diverse methods of music notation; it deserves to be explored in depth.<p>Here are some truly <i>fascinating</i> examples of them!<p><a href="https://llllllll.co/t/experimental-music-notation-resources/149/10" rel="nofollow">https://llllllll.co/t/experimental-music-notation-resources/...</a><p>And here<p><a href="https://www.smithsonianmag.com/arts-culture/5-12-examples-of-experimental-music-notation-92223646/" rel="nofollow">https://www.smithsonianmag.com/arts-culture/5-12-examples-of...</a><p>Warning: This will blow your mind.<p>EDIT: Also this link: <a href="https://www.smithsonianmag.com/arts-culture/5-12-examples-of-experimental-music-notation-92223646/" rel="nofollow">https://www.smithsonianmag.com/arts-culture/5-12-examples-of...</a>
There is also Byzantine Notation<p><a href="https://orthodoxwiki.org/Byzantine_Notation" rel="nofollow">https://orthodoxwiki.org/Byzantine_Notation</a><p>The interesting thing there I found "Byzantine notation, on the other hand, is relational; the note is dependent on the previous note and the symbol itself, which specifies the interval from the previous note. "<p>EDIT: Saw Ethiopian notation there and got curious and found this chant (performance?) from a music school from Addis Ababa<p><a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iztBcn3UZIA" rel="nofollow">https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iztBcn3UZIA</a>
Link to "Hurrian Hymn to Nikkal" c. 1500 BC. Modern arrangement could easily score the opening to a new David Fincher film ;)<p><a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-AKedKrxoLI" rel="nofollow">https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-AKedKrxoLI</a><p>21st Century notation software is fascinating in the way it bridges classical technique into contemporary sound production. It allows for the tiniest nuances in composition and engraving. A combinatorial ruleset of very high dimension indeed. While simultaneously integrating with state-of-the-art instrument synthesis and production software. It's just a remarkable attention to detail and UX design. I'm really inspired by it. Truly software as an "Extension of the Mind"!<p>Dorico | Steinberg<p><a href="https://www.steinberg.net/en/products/dorico/start.html" rel="nofollow">https://www.steinberg.net/en/products/dorico/start.html</a>
I think modern musical notation could be improved by making a more readily apparent distinction between phrase marks and tied notes. As it is one often has to read ahead on a tied note to see if is tied or not, which costs attention.
Sadly, they miss the important ones.<p><a href="http://noname.c64.org/tracker/manual_online.php" rel="nofollow">http://noname.c64.org/tracker/manual_online.php</a>
Shameless plug: [Ossia Score, a visual programming paradigm which can be used to make music and other creative applications](<a href="https://www.ossia.io" rel="nofollow">https://www.ossia.io</a>). Unlike many software in this category, it is not centered on the idea of data flow, but on time flow as main interaction paradigm (eg it looks more like a sequencer than a patcher), while still allowing programming elements.
For those intrigued by alternative music notation, I highly recommend the book "Notations 21" by Theresa Sauer. It's a gorgeous hardcover "art book" with full-page examples of modern notation systems (generally quite stunning and artistic) by over 100 different musicians and/or composers. If you search Pinterest for the title and author you can see some examples.
Pretty cool, but it leaves out <a href="http://www.byzantinechant.org/notation.html" rel="nofollow">http://www.byzantinechant.org/notation.html</a> (which looks, unsurprisingly, like a distant cousin of the Seikilos notation).