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> Rhythmic notation doesn’t have to be able to indicate every conceivable rhythm any more than pitch indications need to be able to represent any conceivable pitch. I can happily keep music notation for the generally accepted system.
Very well said, John, and I fully agree. And for a new time notation, indicating all what the traditional rhythm notation already allows to notate would be enough.
Dominique
envoyé : 20 juin 2021 à 03:20
de : John Keller <jko...@bigpond.net.au>
à : "musicn...@googlegroups.com" <musicn...@googlegroups.com>
objet : Re: [MNP] Time Values in Alternative Notation
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P.S. I mean to say I agree with John's first sentence, not the second one, sorry. Hence my comment.
envoyé : 20 juin 2021 à 15:06
de : Waller Dominique <d.wa...@orange.fr>
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> My solution would be for tied ‘notes’ to have no head, just the stem and the slur. This would differentiate them from slurred notes, and duration information is in the stem (and beams).
That's exactly what I 've done for my own time notation. Dominique
envoyé : 21 juin 2021 à 11:10
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objet : Re: [MNP] Time Values in Alternative Notation
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To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/musicnotation/5DBA0D00-3318-4CD0-B0B4-337DE37AB866%40bigpond.net.au.The left hand rests help show the beats. Beams show beat divisions clearly. Ties obvious.Augmentation ‘dot’ at beam end (2nd-last note) could be a bit longer but confined by Finale characters..How clear and compact is the chromatic scale without accidentals!John KellerExpress Stave
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Dominique, Mark, John et al,
I see that there are some more problems with the traditional rhythm system.
One is Ties.My solution would be for tied ‘notes’ to have no head, just the stem and the slur. This would differentiate them from slurred notes, and duration information is in the stem (and beams).
Yes, Mark’s idea for crotchets to have one stem l , minims 2 ll , and semibreves 3 lll , was what I was thinking.
For ‘dotted’ values, a quarter-stem at the beam end. ll’ = 3 .(Would need a different name than ‘dotted note’)
Lettersquash’s query about notes with different number of beams connected on each side - yes the shortest value ‘wins'.
But the thing about beaming is, the grouping should show the rhythmic divisions, not the phrasing.
It should never be necessary to do maths of adding up note values.
Classical compositions time signatures could be revised to make the counting simpler. I think I illustrated Beethoven Pathetique sonata years ago. Here is an upgrade. This was originally all one bar.
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The left hand rests help show the beats. Beams show beat divisions clearly. Ties obvious.
Augmentation ‘dot’ at beam end (2nd-last note) could be a bit longer but confined by Finale characters..
How clear and compact is the chromatic scale without accidentals!
John KellerExpress Stave
On 21 Jun 2021, at 2:23 am, Waller Dominique <d.wa...@orange.fr> wrote:
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It should never be necessary to do maths of adding up note values.
I defy you to do it without. I don't mean you have to get out a calculator or a paper and pen and add numbers up. I mean that the way the time notation works is in fractions, mostly binary, so each sign (notehead shape, beam, stem number, dot or whatever) indicates an implicit numerical fraction, a value, and these are computed by the player (and even more so by the composer) to "add up" to beats and bar contents, including the addition of similarly fractional rest signs.
While some of this same mathematical reasoning, dividing and adding, may be used in a proportional notation system at times, it is also possible, most of the time, to compare the positions of items on the score while following it (and counting the beats). For example, with lines showing the duration of notes, one can see that a note's duration line ends just as another begins, or that a sequence of notes have duration lines that are the same length as the empty space in between them, and another continues for three of those divisions, etc. - judgements made by eye and a sort of kinesthetic mapping rather than "maths".
This conversation reminds me of my original project which was about humans commanding computers to play music, I used to think of it as a high-level language for music but it was actually a hybrid of notation and features of computer languages.
- It had a specific type of variable-proportional notation by beat, where if there were many notes, they could be accommodated and if few notes we could save space.- The proportional notation separated the onset of the notes and the duration of the notes, which is what most complicates TN rhythms or time notation,
but TN works for humans because we are good at "assuming".
The duration was notated by individual length of the notes.- Another feature was that the sequential notation of onsets had two nested levels, (like a routine and a subroutine) it may sound complicated but it is a simple and extremely powerful method for rhythm notation.
A special feature was that the beats ended with a special symbol like a wildcard e.g. * that represented any reminding value til the beginning of the next beat, in that way I could make any rhythm combination without having to calculate values like TN.
In the future I could still apply a variation of that system but things have evolved into another direction so I am not sure if that will be necessary.
I'm not sure what you mean by that.but TN works for humans because we are good at "assuming".
we tend to guess what a sign means, and often it works out ok, this is problematic, or at best sub-optimal. But it is true for most musicians. We do this in relation to reading the pitch, often judging an interval from the score or by guessing where the music progresses next. I used to do this most of the time until I memorised a piece, rather than relying on reading accurately. But we should avoid notation signs that are vague, hoping the player will interpret them as we wanted, except at the avant-garde end of the compositional spectrum. I recently read a paper by a self-styled composer who apparently paints watercolour pictures on manuscript paper and calls it "music". After all the pseudo-intellectual guff, I guess the players just look at it and make shit up. https://direct.mit.edu/leon/article/33/3/215/43870/Color-Music-Visual-Color-Notation-for-Musical (follow the pdf link for the full belly laughs)
Maybe I need to pick your brains about that!The duration was notated by individual length of the notes.- Another feature was that the sequential notation of onsets had two nested levels, (like a routine and a subroutine) it may sound complicated but it is a simple and extremely powerful method for rhythm notation.
I am giving each note a specific position in the bar where it starts (and, of course, keeping track of the bars!), and then the duration can span any number of bars, rows, pages, if necessary, according to its duration variable. Since I've rejected the tyranny of the bar, my durations don't have to add up to the time signature and there are no ties. I see few, if any, problems arising from this approach.A special feature was that the beats ended with a special symbol like a wildcard e.g. * that represented any reminding value til the beginning of the next beat, in that way I could make any rhythm combination without having to calculate values like TN.
Yes, it's very interesting. I see you're still using a line indicating durations, although one per chord.
In the future I could still apply a variation of that system but things have evolved into another direction so I am not sure if that will be necessary.
Cheers
LS
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QUOTE: But the thing about beaming is, the grouping should show the rhythmic divisions, not the phrasing.
My experience is that the "beat" tends to be felt/sensed as occurring on the sustained note.
In many if not most cases, a short note following a long note it felt as an "anacrusis" or "pick-up" to the following note
rather than as an extension of the long note's phrase.
So the dotted convention, especially with beams such as a dotted eighth followed by a sixteenth, though simplifying timing arithmetic,
in my opinion, violates the "rhythm".
That is to say, I "hear" DAH di-DAH di-DAH ..., not DAH-di DAH-di DAH ...
Joe Austin
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> My solution would be for tied ‘notes’ to have no head, just the stem and the slur. This would differentiate them from slurred notes, and duration information is in the stem (and beams).
Dominique, I've tried something like that in Finale.
1st line--all noteheads represent the same duration; use slurs to extend "duration" of each note.
2nd line shows a note only for "note initiation time"; note continues until the next note in the voice
See Absolute Timing Notation — Note On Only | DrTechDaddy.com Blog
Timing-Examples1x-TieDuration-NoteOn.jpg (465×223) (drtechdaddy.com)
I also had an example with stems-only instead of rests. I can't find the graphic at the moment, but as I recall it was do-able in Finale.
I'm not sure about Lilypond.
In either case we need a reliable notation or convention for "note off".
When using stem-only for "continue", rests work for note-off if all notes in the voice end at the same time,
which is a reasonable assumption in many cases.
With many polyphonic voices, of course one could use separate staves for each.
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Hi Joe,
What I've done ressembles what you have in your second system, when you tie notes to rests, with that difference that in my system the signs for rests are the same than for duration, like the example you can't find. Take a look at this excerpt from a piano tablature (3 beats by measure).
envoyé : 22 juin 2021 à 18:09
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à : musicn...@googlegroups.com
objet : RE: [MNP] Time Values in Alternative Notation
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LS,
We could classify notations into two broad types: absolute and relative.
In "absolute", we specify an exact position of every point; in "relative", we specify a distance or interval from a previous point.
For timing, we specify the relative position to the "next" point.
An let's clarify another situation: We speak of "duration" of a note, but there are really two "durations" of concern.
One is how long to hold the note. But for purposes of rhythm, we are really concerned with the delay until the next note--the "inter-onset time".
For percussion instruments and certain playing styles such as staccato, the duration of the sound and the interval between notes are different.
Traditional "note duration" is really inter-onset time; the actual duration can be modified with staccato, tenuto, legato, etc. Then there's fermata!
So, In traditional notation, pitch is notated "absolute" and timing is notated "relative".
But there is no logical reason we couldn't do it the other way around.
I've seen proposals for notating chord by a root note (absolute pitch) but intervals (relative pitch) for the other notes in the chord.
Similarly, we could notate the strike-time for a note as an absolute position within a bar or line on some timing grid,
just as we notate pitch as an absolute position on a pitch-staff.
It seems to me that you are proposing something like that, and I for one think that is a more "musical" way of representing timing.
I have been struggling to represent rhythm in a manner similar to the way we represent scansion of poetry, with "feet".
In general, I have been thinking about "higher-level" components, analogous to syllables, words, phrases, rather than just "letters",
and how notation could at least expose them if not directly represent them.
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Dominique,
Yes, we seem to be doing similar things.
As I recall, I actually repeated the stems for each count, as in line one of my example, rather than using various numbers of beams.
Thus I would use a succession of stems "tied" with a beam to "count" a longer duration tone, instead of using a variety of beam or stem counts within a syllable.
Ideally, I would like to use beams to connect the notes in a "foot" or rhythmic "word", such as an iamb.
But then I notice that the syllables do not always start on a "beat" or on an even division of the measure.
This is often true in 6/8 marches, triple-time in general, and in jazz.
Then, for short-long patterns, the beam extends beyond the last notehead, like this: **--
If I use beams for "words", then they do not divide time in the conventional way, and may even span bars.
So I would add a time gird, or hierarchies of bar lines, to represent time, and use beams to connect feet, so both metrics would be shown.
So the result might be:
* a hierarchy of bar lines indicating the measures and count within a measures.
* a note-head for each note onset, positioned to the correct measure and count within the line and bar
* a "beam" spanning each "foot", connecting the notes in that foot (e.g. with stems)
and serving as a "continuation" mark for the "duration" (inter-onset-time) of the note.
* a "rest" symbol indicating the onset of a period of silence in a part.
* one might also include some kind of "rests" within a foot to represent staccato, etc.
* I would allow "word-beams" to span bar lines, and I would allow lines to break within bars, at natural phrase breaks.
This begins to expose the fact that "polyphony" applies to timing as well as pitch sequences:
the "drummer" marches to a different "beat", in terms of higher-level structure, than the singer;
the "ideal" line breaks for the drummer don't match the ideal breaks for the singer.
Or for piano, "the left hand doesn't care what the right hand is doing."
From: musicn...@googlegroups.com <musicn...@googlegroups.com> On Behalf Of Waller Dominique
Sent: Tuesday, June 22, 2021 12:33 PM
To: musicn...@googlegroups.com
Subject: RE: [MNP] Time Values in Alternative Notation
Hi Joe,
What I've done ressembles what you have in your second system, when you tie notes to rests, with that difference that in my system the signs for rests are the same than for duration, like the example you can't find. Take a look at this excerpt from a piano tablature (3 beats by measure).
envoyé : 22 juin 2021 à 18:09
de : drtec...@gmail.com
à : musicn...@googlegroups.com
objet : RE: [MNP] Time Values in Alternative Notation
> My solution would be for tied ‘notes’ to have no head, just the stem and the slur. This would differentiate them from slurred notes, and duration information is in the stem (and beams).
Dominique, I've tried something like that in Finale.
1st line--all noteheads represent the same duration; use slurs to extend "duration" of each note.
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LS,
We could classify notations into two broad types: absolute and relative.
In "absolute", we specify an exact position of every point; in "relative", we specify a distance or interval from a previous point.
For timing, we specify the relative position to the "next" point.
An let's clarify another situation: We speak of "duration" of a note, but there are really two "durations" of concern.
One is how long to hold the note. But for purposes of rhythm, we are really concerned with the delay until the next note--the "inter-onset time".
For percussion instruments and certain playing styles such as staccato, the duration of the sound and the interval between notes are different.
Traditional "note duration" is really inter-onset time; the actual duration can be modified with staccato, tenuto, legato, etc. Then there's fermata!
So, In traditional notation, pitch is notated "absolute" and timing is notated "relative".
But there is no logical reason we couldn't do it the other way around.
I've seen proposals for notating chord by a root note (absolute pitch) but intervals (relative pitch) for the other notes in the chord.
Similarly, we could notate the strike-time for a note as an absolute position within a bar or line on some timing grid,
just as we notate pitch as an absolute position on a pitch-staff.
It seems to me that you are proposing something like that, and I for one think that is a more "musical" way of representing timing.
I have been struggling to represent rhythm in a manner similar to the way we represent scansion of poetry, with "feet".
In general, I have been thinking about "higher-level" components, analogous to syllables, words, phrases, rather than just "letters",
and how notation could at least expose them if not directly represent them.
Hi John F.
I'm reading you had troubles with understanding beams and ties. But it's normal! Beams and ties in their present form are illogical! Normally one reads from left to right, in the direction of time; stems mark the starting of the note and the beaming indicates the division of time. But in today's ligatures, one must look backward so to say. For example, in the case of a dotted 8th note + a 16th note, one has to look at the beaming on the left of the second stem to identify the 16th note, not on its right! All those discrepancies stem from the same original cause: the shortening of the final beam.
What I mean is that, originally, in medieval tablatures, there were three beams for three quavers in ligature ; but with time, the last beam fell off and disappeared. A consequent reform of time notation would imply to fix that and restore ligatures in their original form, so that they appear much more logical and visually intuitive, and time-proportional (yes, all that at the same time). Have a look at the added file, it's explained with examples I've edited rhythms with Bach, OpusText and MusiSync fonts. Dominique
N.B. For rhythms in binary division, in my system a plus sign appears instead of the augmentation dot.
envoyé : 22 juin 2021 à 23:44
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objet : Re: [MNP] Time Values in Alternative Notation
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Hi John K.,
> While logical, I worry that your idea will look too continuous when the various one beat patterns are used in succession.
I guess you mean those signs are too compact when tied together. It's true that TN better separates signs. To indicate the end of the beat or show subdivisions inside the beat, it's always possible to leave a little blank, a little visual interruption from a beat to another or a beam to another if it is for clarifying subdivisions. So, groups of notes are clearer. Check the attached file with an excerpt of the Bolero melody in cipher notation (tablature). Separations between beats are clear.
> And the idea that the beams must always follow after the note head, makes it much harder to learn TN as well as your system.
The goal is to reform or replace TN, not to make it easier to learn! My system is not harder to learn for someone who hasn’t been raised with TN. On the contrary, the benefits of this solution are numerous:
- it's time proportional
- it's explicit and visually intuitive
- it's intellectually satisfying because it's logical
- it's faithful to the history of music notation and tablature
> Also, your idea for augmentation + instead of a dot, would be better at the beam end.
I'm not sure I understand what you mean. What would be better? Where exactly would you put the sign? Please give me a visual example.
> How would you go for large double-dotted chords!
There would be only one plus sign (or double plus sign) attached to the stem that supports all the notes of the chord. Exactly like you proposed yourself in your Scriabin excerpt recently. Or maybe I misunderstood your comment (possible). Cheers! Dominique
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<70D9E4C8-2A52-4A60-975A-8153EE048EFD.jpeg>
Hi Mark
I had a look at your view. Not bad! I just wonder when or where that would be useful. I have no opinion yet. But your drawing looks fine, really.
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Hi John
The upper part in the 3 in 2 - this is dotted quarter to eighth, I think your graphic just shows an even division.
I'd like to have seen that with pitch indicated too,
though why you don't want to share your pitch notation is crazy in a group dedicated to looking at alternatives!
Strictly proportional rhythm notations aren't used in print because they take up too much space horizontally. Imagine a passage of long duration notes with occasional passages of short duration notes would look.
The 3 in 2 is 'implied' in your example notation, but technically speaking, the proportions aren't given 'exactly' so how would we 'know' what rhythm is meant? We can sort of visually 'approximate', but TN rhythm notation indicates which duration is meant, but 'proportional' notations are by 'eye'. I think this notation would have difficulties with indicating the difference between a dotted rhythm and a 2+1 triplet rhythm clearly, not to mention parts that cross over each other. I'm sure John K could also point out how TN's symbolic approach to rhythm allows for performance flexibility.
I see a lot of examples of these new rhythm notations (like Dodeka) but with really simple music, but I really think they'd run into problems even coping with a Mozart piano sonata, let alone anything more modern like Debussy or Stravinsky.
I've taken the liberty of attaching some Equiton, both in the original published form of its rhythm notation and in the notation (which can be used for other stave notations) for rhythm I devised. The original is very hard to read, and the lower one attempts to clarify how the four beats are counted in the bar. It's an improvement, but whether it's any good is debatable. I devised the notation because I was dissatisfied with the original form. Given that we can use double stems for half notes, this modified TN rhythm could be used with Equiton, though for some reason visually it looks like a kludge.
I'll 'raise' you with another example of 'Black Pages' - this is by Brian Ferneyhough. I'm agnostic on whether this is possible or impossible (the BBC Symphony have performed it btw - it's on You Tube), but it pushes the limit of notation of rhythm (and pitch, the parts include microtonal accidentals). Could it have been done differently and sounded the same ? - that's an interesting question. My own notation can write this, but, for all practicality, would it be worth it?
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Hi John
Yes, the dot means 'count one beat'. This way, if you have say (apologies for doing this in text d. = 2 d.. = 3 d...=4 beats.) Subdivided beats don't use the dot except to add beats afterwards - see below), because the subdivision markers indicate the number of sub-beat parts earlier notes should continue through. There is another use of the dot so: .d (i.e. before a notehead), this is to indicate a tied note where it would not normally be possible just to place a dot in the following bar (page turns, and where complex part writing on one stave would lead to loss of clarity.) The TN example is from a notation programme I use on my iPad, so the spacing is something I think is reasonably right from TN engraving rules.
In this link https://share.icloud.com/photos/0BR1xCR_6g-lnMKcJYIcRBJ4A, there is a 're-beamed' version in the manner you suggest. I decided against it for the reason encircled in red, because I felt at speed (sight reading) this could be confused with a different subdivision of the beat (three in this case - it looks like a triplet), hence I chose a 'hierarchical' view of the beat, saying this stem is attached to two sub beats - and the noteheads placed in the correct rhythmic position.
I have also added some example rhythms in the same image, A B and C. A is just a representation of how the rhythm works - 2 beats, 1 beat, 2 halves, 3 1/3s, and a beat divided into two parts, then one into two sub parts and the other into three. Example B demonstrates ties, and example C the use of the tie dot, and the repeat of C is how I would notate it normally. I'm using the 'stemmed' version of my rhythmic notation as it is closest to traditional notation, but for handwriting ease, I use curved lines. The whole idea is based on the notion of a visual group = 1 beat, and hierarchical groups (structured recursively the same) set out the same way. There's no notion of a 'tuplet', just a 'group' of notes. In the second C example, I think the attack points of the notes is seen clearly, and the dots show the counting of 3 beats in the bar. The B example also includes a rest symbol - a short dash added to the stem to indicate 'no symbol here', rather than an 'invisible' continuation symbol (as I describe in the original presentation). I'm still not happy with the rest symbol - I've tried several and none seem to fit the bill from my original use of the 1/8 rest looking like a 7, to an X and later an ø.
It is an experimental notation, and for most music I think it's reasonably clear. I prefer a notehead to attach other markings such as accents etc, than a 'duration rectangle', which I think can look confusing with mixed long notes and short notes overlapping on the same stave. One of the things musicians explained to me was that counting was difficult in music, and that notation obscures the basic pulse, and that if there was a way to 'see' the beat structure, things would be clearer.
I draw all my examples in a graphic programme, as I don't have the necessary modern programming skills to devise a notation app to translate to Equiton.
Kind regards
Mark
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Hi John and all,
A point about ties and slurs. In English music vocabulary, slurs I guess are those big arcs that indicate to play notes legato, in a continuous way. And ties I guess are those arcs that bounds note-heads of the same pitch to indicate to sustain the sound from a beat to another.
If we agree on this vocabulary, then what you’ve proposed, that I’ve proposed too, is to tie stems without repeating the notehead(s). But I've noticed that to do so, you’ve tightened the time symbols at the place of the (missing) note-heads and not at the other end of the stem. Because I also work with tablature, where ciphers and time symbols are joined but autonomous (which what I try to do with staves) it appeared more natural to me that time symbols should be linked together, and therefore not at the place of their missing noteheads.
One advantage of your solution is that, in the more usual case of stems above noteheads, slurs could be drawn above stems and ties under noteheads, so that one could not confuse them. But I come with the opposite solution: it should be more natural to draw slurs next to noteheads, and ties next to the opposite end of the stem, on the “pure rhythms” side so to say. Of course, this could not work for the choral, with its entangled voices, only for melodies and chords.
Besides, to go on with your linguistic joke on my time notation, it’s not true that ittiestimesymbolswithoutanygpapinbetweenthem. The truth is it separates clearly each beam from the other but with a smaller gap and not in the usual way. On the contrary, traditiona notatio cho of th natura en of eac duratio o els tur i backwar insid th ti an i th ga i large i i becaus i take th plac o th missin bea! Dominique
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Hi John,
> I wanted to ask you Dominique, how you represent the longer note values. Do you continue with beams literally showing duration?
In my system (see added table), longer values are perpendicular to short values: the half note has a stem, the whole note a double stem, the maxima a triple stem. It’s not thick stems like the ones that hold the beams. There are bold stems that contain the timing information just as beams contain it. And at the foot of these single, double or triple bold stem may emanate a thick line (dotted line if necessary, see added excerpt) that extends the time symbol from left to right in proportion of its value. This is for pedagogical purposes only, so as the beginner may internalize the value of the symbols on a visual basis. It’s not meant to survive in more complex scores, or only virtually, when the extending line can be recognized or identified with the staff line (added excerpt)
The case of the quarter note is slightly different. We all agree that the central duration of the system of values is now the quarter note and not the whole note anymore. So, in my system, this value is symbolized with a vertical stem with a little black circle in its middle that symbolizes que turning point of the logarithmic progression of beams to another progression of stems. And so, this quarter note symbol can be extended from its very center (no image available for now).
But those extending lines would be reserved for beginners for pedagogical purposes, at the early learning stage, and for simple melodies. After that, bold stems would be used as the abbreviations of those extended forms. This is necessary because if those extended lines were maintained in more complex scores, they could be very cumbersome, sometimes cluttering the score. And a notehead without stem, or a cipher alone, would be considered a quarter note by default.
envoyé : 15 juillet 2021 à 01:11
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Good point Doug.
I agree with the idea of keeping timing information away from the note-head which codes only pitch.We all seem to agree on this point.
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Hi John and all (not sure you had my answer by mail),
> I wanted to ask you Dominique, how you represent the longer note values. Do you continue with beams literally showing duration?
In my system (see added table), longer values are perpendicular to short values: the half note has a stem, the whole note a double stem, the maxima a triple stem. It’s not thick stems like the ones that hold the beams. There are bold stems that contain the timing information just as beams contain it. And at the foot of these single, double or triple bold stem may emanate a thick line (dotted line if necessary, see added excerpt) that extends the time symbol from left to right in proportion of its value. This is for pedagogical purposes only, so as the beginner may internalize the value of the symbols on a visual basis. It’s not meant to survive in more complex scores, or only virtually, when the extending line can be recognized or identified with the staff line (added excerpt)
The case of the quarter note is slightly different. We all agree that the central duration of the system of values is now the quarter note and not the whole note anymore. So, in my system, this value is symbolized with a vertical stem with a little black circle in its middle that symbolizes que turning point of the logarithmic progression of beams to another progression of stems. And so, this quarter note symbol can be extended from its very center (no image available for now).
But those extending lines would be reserved for beginners for pedagogical purposes, at the early learning stage, and for simple melodies. After that, bold stems would be used as the abbreviations of those extended forms. This is necessary because if those extended lines were maintained in more complex scores, they could be very cumbersome, sometimes cluttering the score. And a notehead without stem, or a cipher alone, would be considered a quarter note by default. Dominique
envoyé : 15 juillet 2021 à 16:46
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Hi John F,
I was thinking of Mark and Dominique when i thought we agreed on this. I wasn’t aware of you vehemently disagreeing!
Anyway your mention of Stuart Byrom and his WYSIWYP, got me looking up his website, and WOW, I was amazed he has his app working for translating musicXML files.
I just converted and looked at Bach prelude and fugue 2 (WTC bk 1).
I imaging that he could probably do a timeline version of ES if I asked nicely.He must be very knowledgable in programming or coding (Is that what its called?) to know how to turn the XML into such a clear graphic output.
It would be good if he posted about his achievements here. Its not important that his system is not 12 step.Neither is Equiton or Dominique’s system.
Stuart, if you are listening, Congratulations!
Cheers,John K
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For the record, I would like to state that I also agree with
"the idea of keeping timing information away from the note-head which codes only pitch."
I've been convinced for some time that we need something I've called "absolute notation" to indicate timing and rhythm.
I've offered the distinction of "relative" vs. "absolute" with the example of pitch.
TN notates pitch "absolutely". That is, the pitch of the note is determined by it's position on the staff independent of any other notes.
I've seen "relative pitch" proposals in some numeric chord notations, where the root note is specified "absolutely" and the other notes are denoted, not by their absolute or scale pitch, but by their interval from the root. For example, a C major chord might be denoted C 4 7 or even C 4 3 instead of C E G,
where 4 and 7 are half-steps above the root, and 4 and 3 are half-steps above the previous lower note.
My point here is not to debate the merits of such an approach, but just to point out the difference between absolute and relative notation.
TN notates time "relatively", i.e. the start (and end) time of a note must be computed *relative* to the start and duration of every other note from the beginning of the composition! Or at least relative to the start of the measure, except in those cases where the first note in the measure doesn't start at the start of the measure! It doesn't take much complication until you cannot tell, by just looking at a note, what count is starts or ends on. I suppose the grouping referenced by lettersquash is a mechanism to simplify that computation.
I've also suggested that the orthographic grouping in TN does not always correspond to the way I hear the grouping musically. For example, I tend to hear a short note following a long one as belonging to the following motif, with the sustained note ending the preceding motif. But TN typically groups a short note as the end of a previous "beat" rather than as a "pickup" to the next beat.
Irrespective of any other considerations, TN timing notation is also an ad-hoc jumble of different sorts of notation, a situation that drives software developers mad.
Consider how many *different* orthographic features are used to convey timing: solid or hollow noteheads, stems or not, various numbers of flags or maybe beams instead, one or more dots following, dots or dashes above/below (staccato, tenuto, etc.), fermata, repetition of the notehead with added ties (easily confused with slurs) across a bar or half-bar, numbered "slur" arcs for tuplets, and bar lines of various sorts, plus the time signature. And another whole alphabet of notehead shape for rests. Then there's swing, where the nominal timing is reinterpreted as something else. And perhaps I've omited some. Reform would be warranted just on considerations of simplicity and consistency!
Joe Austin
aka DrTechDaddy
"Music is Poetry; why print it like prose?"
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Mark,
I mostly agree with what Lettersquash has said. I was thinking in terms of identifying the start and possibly end of a note directly in terms of "count position" on a timeline, as opposed to indirectly through the cumulative durations of notes preceding it.
Of course, we do have more literally "absolute notations" like MIDI. And as was pointed out, even "absolute" pitch is not totally absolute if you admit various tunings.
I would say the important question is, how is the sequence of tones defined *musically*. Do we think of or hear music a cumulative sequence of durations or as series of events occurring in (our out of) sync with a regular pulse or beat, or pattern of pulses or beats? So of course there is an element of "absolute" and an element of "relative" in any specification. The same could be said for pitch as well. Do we hear pitch in music just as a particular frequency, or do we hear it as a position within a scale or an interval between notes of a chord?
My goal is for the notation to expose the relationships that we actually hear in the music. So for pitch, the scale position and harmonic intervals of notes is "heard", so it should be "shown" as well. That is, shown directly, e.g. by "shape notes" for scale degrees or isomorphic notation for intervals, so the same visual distance in the notation always corresponds to the same aural "distance" in the musical sound.
If we were to apply the same concept to timing and rhythm, it would be clear visually from the notation where each note fits into the pattern of beats and counts that make up the rhythmic pattern of the music, so perhaps we should insist on "time isomorphism" as well, where equal visual separation of notation corresponds to equal time separation of sound.
For that matter, the pattern of beats and counts itself should be notated. Counts can be done with a grid or ruler. As for the "beats", I suggested something like poetic scansion, or something like a drum track. If the beat were everywhere the same repeating pattern, it might be specified in an extended time signature, which is essentially what we have now, implicitly. But I think more flexibility is needed.
In any case, I think TN does a poor job of notating the "beat". BTW, to the extent TN does include notation for beats, it uses one more orthographic feature that I neglected to include in my prior list--the accent mark < .
To summarize, my view is that a score should *look* like what it *sounds* like. Literally, of course, that is absurd. Or course, I don't mean the literal sound but our mental abstraction of *patterns* of sound, in the pitch and time and rhythm dimensions.
Let's consider a thought experiment. Suppose we had sound recordings of a half-dozen short simple pieces and scores for those pieces, of approximate equal durations.
Spread the scores on a table, play the recordings one after another, and invite people to attempt to match the scores to the songs. I'd say a good notation should be intuitive enough that the "general public", not specifically educated in music notation, could make the match.
Regards,
Joe Austin
aka Dr Tech Daddy
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The problem I have with timeline rhythm notation is around its interpretation, or how or should it incorporate interpretative elements.
Suppose we take the same passage of music, played on different instruments. For reasons of timbre and performance practicality, the same TN notated music will appear quite different in a 'piano roll' notation, if we notate 'how it sounds'. Think of the difference between a vibraphone and a xylophone - would you indicate the length of the note according to the decay of the sound, or the length of the note as required?
What about articulations? How short is a staccato - how would it be notated if incorporated into the 'brick' of a note? A tenuto - how much longer than a normal note duration? If you indicate these things as well as the note 'bricks' then someone reading the notation who is told 'these bricks indicate how long the note is' and then told 'but we need to play them shorter or longer according to the articulations' might reasonably think there was something wrong with this notation.
How would a fermata be indicated? How many beats to indicate on the timeline?
Also, ornaments, tremolandi, tremoli, trills, grace-notes - how would you indicate them with points on an abstract timeline, when their interpretation gives more or less time to them depending on the phrasing?
And, for phrasing - playing slurs on the piano usually leads to a slight overlap of the notes (piano), but for other instruments would not (voice) - would the notation show this is it is 'how it sounds'?
Would you notate an accelerando as shortening of note bricks? And similarly a decelerando as a lengthening? Surely it is the 'beat' that is slowing' not the durations lengthening. When playback is rendered on a midi 'piano' roll, all the subtle variations of tempo - rubata - rit etc, these all play havoc with 'quantisation' (which duration is meant) - I'd argue that to notate 'how it sounds' would similarly need to show this in the same way.
The example suggested of matching performances rendered using a 'piano roll' type notation to their recordings is true in so far as the notation 'renders' the performance. However, each performance is a valid *interpretation* of the TN (i.e. abstract) rhythms. To place one of the piano rolls in front of a performer will only result in an attempt to duplicate that performance - which is not interpretation, but 'copying'.
Language is notated using symbols and alphabets, not directly phonetic. Notating language 'how it sounds' with phonetics preserves dialects and other information, which interesting, but would lead individuals to think this was the notation for the language when in fact, the language deals with symbols separately - hence people with different dialects can read the same prose, even though they may speak it very differently.
Personally, I'm not convinced of the use of a timeline notation, as it puts interpretative items into the duration of the music. The differing ways the same notation can be performed by different instruments adds to this. An abstract 'this is half a beat' symbol is always that, even when we indicate a tenuto or staccato over it, yet the timeline 'bricks' would be of different sizes.
There are many other reasons, such as voice layout where voices share one stave where timeline notation becomes messy - especially where rhythms are different between the voices - to which division lines/time points do the notes refer for their placement?
Dodeka notation is a sort of 'timeline' notation, and it too falls into the same problems. These notations look 'simple' but when presented with any reasonably complex music, rapidly become cumbersome and unreadable.
This is not to say TN is great, not can I say my own 'solution' is great. But I don't get the arguments that timeline notation is better than TN.
Mark
Hi Joe,
>For example, I tend to hear a short note following a long one as belonging to the following motif, with the sustained note ending the preceding motif. But TN typically groups a short note as the end of a previous “beat” rather than as a “pickup” to the next beat.
I quite understand your point here and feel very much like you. But I don’t think writing things differently would be a progress. It’s possible to create the feeling you wish by adding a slur, so as to clarify groups of notes inside a regular sequence of beats. Historically speaking, it took time to have equal length of time between bars. It was not the case with the first tablatures, in which bar-lines were displayed irregularly, sometimes for rhythmic grouping and sometimes for obscure reasons.
Besides, your mantra through years has been: Music is poetry, why write it like prose?
But I think you’re much more demanding on musical notation then you are on poetry. Because precisely, poetry (in its classical form at least) displays sentences in groups of equal length like musical bars, sometimes independently of the meaning. On the contrary, prose is more faithful to the meaning and inner rhythm of the sentence since commas freely separate group of thoughts, and also at the same time allow a pause to breathe. In typography, they talk about grammatical commas versus physiological commas, but very often both coincide naturally – the sense and the breath. So if musical notation is already written like prose, like you claim, then I think maybe it’s better like this. And I think it somehow resembles poetry already by the regularity of its bar-lines, like I’ve mentioned. Dominique
envoyé : 15 juillet 2021 à 21:02
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Dominique,
Ah, I guess there are always multiple opinions on any issue.
I suppose what I really want is the *tools* to print the music the way I like it, to make it easier for me to read and play,
and let you print it the way you like it. As it is, many of the tools on the market make it extremely difficult if not impossible to do things we talk about here, even to break lines between bars, for example. And almost nobody lets us print 12-position staves. Few of the proposals on this website can actually be produced with commonly-available software.
But I think my concern goes beyond that. I'm also trying to *understand* the music. I'm searching for notations that expose more of the "musical" structure of the music, that assist in recognition of the form, the rhythm, the harmony, the melody, as well as just the raw notes. These might not be notations used for performance, but perhaps for composition, or for study. Reducing ideas to some formal representation has been a tool of science for centuries. It not only aids communication, but I believe it also aids understanding. And potentially it reduces the learning curve for new students who what to master what is known and done before exploring what is yet to be discovered and accomplished. I would say the existence and persistence of this site, and the continuing emergence of "better" notations, is evidence that the traditional notation is inadequate in many respects.
And I am particularly interested in notations that can be produced by individuals, using tools like computers or more recently tablets and the web, because that is my professional field. I know that the computer is, in principle, capable of rendering any of the notations that have been proposed on this site. And I regret that developers of commercial software seem more interested in "enforcing the rules" than in supporting experimentation.
Studying notation "improvements" also suggests potential improvements in the way music and instrumental performance are taught, but that is a subject beyond my professional talents. Although, as a professional educator (but not in music) and as a music student myself, I feel qualified to express opinions on how well the method would seem to work for me.
Your point about poetry is well taken. There is a certain multiplicity of structures, and potential conflict between the semantics and the syntax, between the sentence structure and rhythm and rhyme, between phrases and bars. But wouldn't it be nice to have the freedom to emphasize one or the other, without being forced in one direction just to save paper and ink?
Over the years I have "implemented" and tried, to one degree or another, about a half-dozen different notations posted on this site. I've even simply "improved" TN by such things as splitting lines at phrase boundaries and coloring sharps and flats. I'd say any of there notations are easier to play than TN. But I must say it's proven to be more trouble to convert TN into a "better" notation than to actually learn to "read" the TN itself. (But I don't think I actually *read* it--I think I simply eventually memorize it and use the notation as a cue to jog my memory.) So why bother? Well, for "science" sake. And in the hope that eventually we will have tools to make transcription easier.
So we keep at it!
Joe Austin
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Mark,
I'm not sure I understand your objection. I think we are seeking a notation that encodes the "essence" of the musical idea in an intuitive, easily interpreted way.
Piano-roll of course works very well for controlling a piano to reproduce a performance. It seems to be becoming popular as a "falling notes" notation for "teaching" piano songs on YouTube. But I don't imagine the virtuoso pianist of the future will bring a tablet with a "falling notes" score to the stage at Carnegie Hall, but who knows? That's not to say she would not have used it as a student.
When I say the notation should reflect what the music "sounds like", I'm of course taking in abstractions.
Consider guitar tablature. Can one look at it and "hear" the chord progression? I doubt it.
But I can "look at" the notes in my hymnal and tell that I'm on a different page than what the choir is singing.
It seems to me that we who post here have focused our attention to pitch and have neglected rhythm.
I think, in fact, the rhythm notation of TN is more in need of reform than the pitch notation.
(I suspect that might be true for music education in general, but I have no real data to back that up.)
Time-proportional notation seems to be a valuable contribution to that reform, as the 12-step isomorphic staff was to pitch notation.
But I agree time-proportional alone is not the complete answer--we also need to identify the "beat" or stress pattern.
And there are alternatives to a duration ribbon.
Joe Austin
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The problem I have with timeline rhythm notation is around its interpretation, or how or should it incorporate interpretative elements.
Suppose we take the same passage of music, played on different instruments. For reasons of timbre and performance practicality, the same TN notated music will appear quite different in a 'piano roll' notation, if we notate 'how it sounds'. Think of the difference between a vibraphone and a xylophone - would you indicate the length of the note according to the decay of the sound, or the length of the note as required?
What about articulations? How short is a staccato - how would it be notated if incorporated into the 'brick' of a note? A tenuto - how much longer than a normal note duration? If you indicate these things as well as the note 'bricks' then someone reading the notation who is told 'these bricks indicate how long the note is' and then told 'but we need to play them shorter or longer according to the articulations' might reasonably think there was something wrong with this notation.
How would a fermata be indicated? How many beats to indicate on the timeline?
Also, ornaments, tremolandi, tremoli, trills, grace-notes - how would you indicate them with points on an abstract timeline, when their interpretation gives more or less time to them depending on the phrasing?
And, for phrasing - playing slurs on the piano usually leads to a slight overlap of the notes (piano), but for other instruments would not (voice) - would the notation show this is it is 'how it sounds'?
Would you notate an accelerando as shortening of note bricks? And similarly a decelerando as a lengthening?
Surely it is the 'beat' that is slowing' not the durations lengthening.
When playback is rendered on a midi 'piano' roll, all the subtle variations of tempo - rubata - rit etc, these all play havoc with 'quantisation' (which duration is meant) - I'd argue that to notate 'how it sounds' would similarly need to show this in the same way.
The example suggested of matching performances rendered using a 'piano roll' type notation to their recordings is true in so far as the notation 'renders' the performance. However, each performance is a valid *interpretation* of the TN (i.e. abstract) rhythms. To place one of the piano rolls in front of a performer will only result in an attempt to duplicate that performance - which is not interpretation, but 'copying'.
Language is notated using symbols and alphabets, not directly phonetic. Notating language 'how it sounds' with phonetics preserves dialects and other information, which interesting, but would lead individuals to think this was the notation for the language when in fact, the language deals with symbols separately - hence people with different dialects can read the same prose, even though they may speak it very differently.
Personally, I'm not convinced of the use of a timeline notation, as it puts interpretative items into the duration of the music.
The differing ways the same notation can be performed by different instruments adds to this.
An abstract 'this is half a beat' symbol is always that, even when we indicate a tenuto or staccato over it, yet the timeline 'bricks' would be of different sizes.
There are many other reasons, such as voice layout where voices share one stave where timeline notation becomes messy - especially where rhythms are different between the voices - to which division lines/time points do the notes refer for their placement?
Dodeka notation is a sort of 'timeline' notation, and it too falls into the same problems. These notations look 'simple' but when presented with any reasonably complex music, rapidly become cumbersome and unreadable.
This is not to say TN is great, not can I say my own 'solution' is great. But I don't get the arguments that timeline notation is better than TN.
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Response to John Keller post of 15 july
Hi John,
Sorry to be so late in responding to your comments to the other John (lettersquash) but here goes:
… your mention of Stuart Byrom and his WYSIWYP, got me looking up his website, and WOW, I was amazed he has his app working for translating musicXML files. I just converted and looked at Bach prelude and fugue 2 (WTC bk 1).
Thanks for the WOW. As a side issue, I want to ask you if you have a good source of MusicXML files. I’d be very interested to know as I have had little luck in finding a wide variety of files across all musical genres.
I imaging that he could probably do a timeline version of ES if I asked nicely. He must be very knowledgable in programming or coding (Is that what its called?) to know how to turn the XML into such a clear graphic output.
The other John was correct that I had the programming done by University students (according to my specs). After a lot of head scratching, I am now able to make modest cosmetic changes and rebuild it. But I would not be able to write it from scratch. Among other things, it requires skills with TypeScript, React, and Scalable Vector Graphics. So I regret that I cannot create an Express Stave app for you. However, if you were to find someone with these (or equivalent) skills, they could start by looking at my open source app on GitHub (a software development repository).
My main goal in designing WYSIWYP was to make reading music as easy as possible while still retaining all of the functionality of TN. Currently, the app is like an alpha version in that it implements all of the design changes to TN for staves and rhythm, but it still remains to implement all of the TN symbols as well as support for multiple parts. This will be a huge job. (BTW my website has a page that discusses the current limitations). My goal with the three months I had with the University students was to create a proof of concept version that could be used for evaluation of my design.
It would be good if he posted about his achievements here. Its not important that his system is not 12 step. Neither is Equiton or Dominique’s system.
Early on in my design, I decided that the 12-position chromatic staff was too much for beginning students (at least it was for me). I could well be wrong about this and that is why I am in search of an academic-type to evaluate various AN designs both chromatic and diatonic including mine for musicians of all experience levels. My greatest achievement will be when that happens, and I will certainly report back here if/when it does.
I also decided that students who do want to pursue a “serious” commitment to playing an instrument will sooner or later have to learn TN in order to operate in the current music world. So I also tried to stay as close as possible to the “basics” of TN (horizontal timeline, diatonic scale, noteheads) in order to facilitate learning TN later. On the other hand, old retirees like me can just stay with WYSIWYP (as long as they can find the MusicXML files they want !).
Stuart, if you are listening, Congratulations!
Your words are music to my ears. Thanks John ! Wishing you good health.
Stuart