The thing all of these new notations miss is the fact that western music is constructed stacking thirds on top of each other.<p>A major chord is a root, a 3rd on top of it, and another minor 3rd (or R+3+5 relative to its root). Add another 3rd (R+3+5+7) for a major 7th chord. Add another minor 3rd (R+3+5+7+9) for a major 7th(9) chord. Etc.<p>This is easy to see at a glance, both in pentagram (where thirds are line-to-line or space-to-space) and solfege/letter form (where a C chord is C-E-G, or Eb for minor, but always E). This is the reasoning behind enharmonic notes like G# and Ab (same frequency, different name), so E major is E-G#-B, and F minor is F-Ab-C. Chord inversions are then super easy to identify: G-C-E is C major in first inversion.<p>The notation looks great for mathematical operations, but it's not a replacement for solfege as a quick reading/writing notation. It misses a lot of implicit intent.
Is this mostly renaming the notes or is there something more? That said it is a useful way to think about some musical concepts. It's the same as integer notation for pitch classes if I'm understanding correctly: <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pitch_class#Integer_notation" rel="nofollow">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pitch_class#Integer_notation</a>.
I wonder whether the author is familiar with musical set theory? This is a very rich branch of modern music theory that makes use of some very similar ideas. <a href="https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Set_theory_(music)" rel="nofollow">https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Set_theory_(music)</a>
This highlights the tension between wanting to navigate the instrument, easily vs wanting to understand the music easily in terms of scales and tonal theory. Standard music notation is great for understanding the notes in the context of the scales and chords that you're using, while guitar tablature is excellent at telling a guitar player how to play the notes.<p>As a pianist, I'm certainly not looking for this, but a piano keyboard is designed exactly the same way that standard music notation is; the notes for a C major scale are the default, and then there are the other notes that you can access differently. I would suspect that vocalists would prefer standard notation also, since their ear naturally understands things in terms of the scales that they are used to.<p>From talking to advanced classical guitar players, I get the sense that standard musical notation is generally preferred over tablature. They know where the notes are already, so they don't need notation that tells them where the notes are. Their chief aim is to play the music in a way that understands the material and treats it well, so for them the standard music notation that provides easy musical understanding is an advantage.<p>I've programmed some things that worked with music, and it's annoying to have to convert between standard notation and integers that represent unique notes. This proposed notation system might make an ideal specialized notation for programming music applications.
In guitar playing, I am constantly thinking about the distance the notes in terms of frets (half steps) but it’s relative. Making the pitch a digit where 0 is C and 6 is always f# (or whatever) doesn’t quite work with how I think musically and I’m not sure it’s an improvement.<p>You’re dropping the notation relating to keys, why still base it around C? I’d prefer to make A zero, or E, for guitar players.<p>I do like having the octave embedded in the notation.<p>I’m not comfortable with using 0-9 and a-b as pitch. The last two (known for hundreds of years as G and g#) stand out awkwardly.<p>Maybe just ditch the whole thing and use Hz.
Very intersting. I wonder if that’s the kind of mathematical tricks that yaron herman’s teacher taught him. I’ve always wondered what those could have been.<p><a href="https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yaron_Herman" rel="nofollow">https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yaron_Herman</a><p>Edit : so it seems that method was somethin called the Schillinger system, based on numbers.. but i couldn’t find anything more detailled online.