Student doing ES flashcards

[John Keller]

https://youtube.com/shorts/Sj6kfGm5Pd0

(unlisted video)

Alexander (7yo) loves doing Express Stave flashcards.

How important do you think speed and ease of recognising and locating the notes is in an alternative notation? 

Regards,

John Keller

[Jason Maccoy]

That’s great John. His speed and accuracy are very impressive!

Sent from my iPhone

On Jun 17, 2025, at 6:14 AM, John Keller <expres...@gmail.com> wrote:

https://youtube.com/shorts/Sj6kfGm5Pd0

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[Joseph Austin]

Your question: How important do you think speed and ease of recognising and locating the notes is in an alternative notation? 

My answer: Music is an aural skill, not a visual skill.

While I once embraced AN to facilitate reading sheet music for playing the keyboard, I am coming to believe that a student would be better served by learning "ear-hand" coordination rather than "eye-hand."  That is, first learn to play the way we learn to sing, "by ear." 

(When my children were taught violin, they first learned to play songs by rote, and could play several melodies and rhythms before ever encountering sheet music.  My father had learned the traditional way, but by the time I knew him, he only played "by ear", and could reproduce any melody he heard.)

I discovered, quite by accident, that after spending a year playing only in the key of C, i.e.  on the white keys, I could play simple melodies without looking at either music or the keys. And that was on the traditional piano.

I would imagine it would be much more effective on an isomorphic instrument, besides being applicable to any key.  Regrettably, "affordable" isomorphic keyboards are not readily available, or have turned out to be of poor quality and durability.  I would think the goals of music education would be better served by creating more isomorphic instruments  than by creating more isomorphic notations. [For example, it should be relatively trivial to re-engineer Orff-style xylophones into Janko arrangement, as Roy Pertchik has done.]

While I admire your ExpressStave notation for its isomorphism, I think the object of "recognizing and locating the notes" would be even better served by a notation that was isomorphic to the instrument, such as Klavarskribo.  My own experiments, e.g. ChromaTonnetz, always combined an isomorphic "shape-note" notehead notation ("isomorphic" for singers) with a "piano-morphic" staff.

At the more advanced level of playing, the student would be recognizing "shapes" rather than notes. At this point, perhaps the notational emphasis should shift to recognizing harmonic intervals, e.g. Pertchik's tri-color notation.

Of course, this is just one man's opinion, and only an amateur musician at  that. Regrettably, since retiring from academia, I am no longer in a position to test my hypotheses experimentally.

Joe Austin aka DrTechDaddy

"Music is poetry,

Why print is as prose?"

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From: musicn...@googlegroups.com <musicn...@googlegroups.com> on behalf of John Keller <expres...@gmail.com>
Sent: Tuesday, June 17, 2025 9:14 AM
To: musicn...@googlegroups.com <musicn...@googlegroups.com>
Subject: [MNP] Student doing ES flashcards

[John Keller]

Hi Joseph,

Yes music is an aural skill but not everyone has it naturally.

Ability to play by ear varies very much in my own students.

Some kids sing in tune easily from the start, others struggle all through.

Some, like me, can whistle in tune but the voice just wont hit notes despite years of singing lessons.

I have a good friend who learnt from the same piano teacher as me, who only plays by ear, has forgotten how to read completely.

For myself, learning classical repertoire requires learning exact notes, not just an ear version.

Yes melodies in one key can be learnt and improved. Basically its learning relative pitch, ie being aware of the sound of each degree of the diatonic scale. By using relative solfa and the “degree card” I aim to develop this ability in any key for my students, but you may be correct that it comes more naturally if you play by ear in only one key. And yes I think an isomorphic instrument may make this ability more transposable.

By the way I have a Chromatone virtually unused if anyone wants it.

I am surprised you think Express Stave is not isomorphic to the instrument! I would say it IS “piano-morphic” (7/5, not 6/6), which is why Alexander could learn it so quickly. It's a less busy compressed version of Klavar - each group of black keys has only one line instead of 2 and 3.

I agree that at advanced levels we recognise shapes. Which is an advantage of traditional notation and also 6/6 ANs such as ClairNote by Paul Morris. My ES has consistent interval sizes, but obviously the coding for black and white keys can obstruct perceiving interval structures somewhat. On the other hand it makes the various 12 keys have their own unique identities, like pianists often think of them.

Thanks for your comments Joseph. Out of interest, what was your academic occupation? 

Best wishes

John

To view this discussion visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/musicnotation/DU2P193MB232439D174715C560549E2CDA173A%40DU2P193MB2324.EURP193.PROD.OUTLOOK.COM.

[Joseph Austin]

John, 

Sorry to mis-characterize ExpressStave. I understand that is does have piano-morphic features.  I commend you for actually teaching and promoting it—so many notations published on MNP, including my own, are just "theoretical" and have never been used expect perhaps by the author.

Clairnote and Klavarskribo of course are other exceptions.

I was in Computer Science. I got interested in MNP via my attempts to develop a printable/typable (on a computer keyboard) music notation.

I had several versions posted on my website but the site has since disappeared.  And I think an attempt to clear "wasted" disk space resulted in losing my backup copies as well.

I also have a couple Chromatones, but they don't work anymore. The design seems prone to degradation of switch alignments.

I also have a couple Axis 49s, but the hexagons are aligned in the wrong direction for playing as a button accordion. I also built an isomorphic glock by modifying a band bell kit, even took a few lessons. And of course I have a traditional piano keyboard. But of late I have shoulder issues that make playing painful so I haven't been pursuing instrumental music.

In the meantime, for piano I had settled on Aiken 7-shape shape-notes plus coloring flats blue and sharps red.  I have settings for this in Lilypond and MuseScore. For singing I just pencil in the solfedge names on printed scores.

Of course, another of my pet projects is printing the music in "poetic" form instead of "prose" form, the way some hymnbooks are printed, breaking lines with the lyrics and not with the bars. 

It seems one the biggest impediments to actually using an AN is getting music into it.  I would suppose current research in AI would soon make that process trivial, but so far as I know, we aren't there yet.

Joe Austin, aka DrTechDaddy

Music is poetry; why print it as prose?

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From: musicn...@googlegroups.com <musicn...@googlegroups.com> on behalf of John Keller <expres...@gmail.com>

Sent: Wednesday, June 18, 2025 7:52 AM
To: musicn...@googlegroups.com <musicn...@googlegroups.com>
Cc: John K <JKo...@bigpond.net.au>
Subject: Re: [MNP] Student doing ES flashcards

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