Is some kind of digraphia possible in the western musical language?

[Music Integrated Solution]

Even the word ‘digraphia’ does not seem to be incorporated yet to some English dictionaries but somehow there should be a word to describe – the fact – that some languages use two writing systems.

Theoretically, the simultaneous use of two systems is called Synchronic digraphia like in Serbian and others, and Diachronic digraphia when a language switches writing system e.g. Turkish (1928) replaced their Arabic alphabet script with 29 Roman-style letters.

For some reasons I believe that beyond ‘alternative notation’ we might rather be close to a sort of Synchronic digraphia in the western musical language, and we are already on the way.  

Enrique.

[Marius Amado-Alves]

Yes. In my experience tablature and traditional notation is a common phenomenon of synchronic digraphy. I have used and prepared scores with both tablature and traditional notation, for the same part or for different parts, for teaching and performing. And with chord names, chord charts... Jazz scores are often multigraphical.

[Ivaylo Naydenov]

Tabulatures are more convinient for the fretted string instruments.
There is a possible way to make a tabulature for keyboard instruments.
For this though the reader should dismiss any conection to the so
caled traditional notation.
Same kind of "tabulature" is suitable in a very wide extend to the
wood and brass instruments too.

2014-04-23 13:10 Гриинуич+03:00, Marius Amado-Alves <amado...@gmail.com>:

> --
> You received this message because you are subscribed to the forum of the
> Music Notation Project (hosted by Google Groups).
> To post to this group, send email to musicn...@googlegroups.com
> To unsubscribe from this group, send email to
> musicnotatio...@googlegroups.com
> For more options, visit this group at
> http://groups.google.com/group/musicnotation?hl=en
> ---
> You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups
> "The Music Notation Project | Forum" group.
> To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an
> email to musicnotatio...@googlegroups.com.
> For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
>


--
— van Loyden
Treatise On Pentatonics

[Music Integrated Solution]

Marius,

Guitar tabs (others) are rather an example of alternative notation; and one of the points I am trying to raise is that the analogy of digraphia in music would be a notation that achieve the same level of usage of TN, covering about the same scope, in other words more than tablatures.

 

However guitar tabs and the piano roll notation, which are by far the most successful forms of alternative notation are an important indication that ‘the other writing system’ should not be a diatonic reform or a chromatic recreation of TN, but a different kind of notation according to the order of priority of the roles of notation in our times, which are not the same of the times when staff notation was consolidated.

Another point is that unsuitability or that a ‘writing systems’ becomes unnecessarily obstructive is not exclusive of music, neither the search for solutions and the use of alternatives; just a few years ago technology started to propagate a form of music notation that represents musical notes with traces, both in diatonic and chromatic way; now chromatic prevails and its use increases continually, and that is having poor sight-reading capabilities and a limited use, but what if it continued its evolution?  

Even though the term ‘writing system’ is sort of exclusive for spoken languages and some people do not consider music as a kind of language still think the analogy is strong enough.

E.

On Wed, Apr 23, 2014 at 6:10 AM, Marius Amado-Alves <amado...@gmail.com> wrote:

Yes. In my experience tablature and traditional notation is a common phenomenon of synchronic digraphy. I have used and prepared scores with both tablature and traditional notation, for the same part or for different parts, for teaching and performing. And with chord names, chord charts... Jazz scores are often multigraphical.

--

[Music Integrated Solution]

It is interesting the battles of civilizations against obstructive writing systems, and I think at the bottom line TN has become obstructive after the western musical language evolution. 

E.

[Music Integrated Solution]

I should add that even more obstructive after the use of computers.

How do we measure or say that a writing system is obstructive?

Indicators might be the percent of illiteracy and the average time required to master (and maintain the skills) the writing system when compared to an ideal model.

Additionally is especially important to measure the suitability of the writing system for its use in technology.

How does TN rank in the scale of obstructive writing systems?

[Music Integrated Solution]

Another point is that before ET and computers the system was pretty much according to a manual era and the then prevailing tuning system, it means that it evolved according to the requirements of the time, but we have evolved a lot since then, what makes me think that another system should evolve according to the requirements of our times. 

What keeps me thinking aloud and casting questions: 

what could make anybody think that we do not need a system according to the requirements of our times?

E.

[Joseph Austin]

One should not underestimate the "inertia" imposed by the large body of existing scripts and by the prevailing education system.  Consider the lack of success of efforts to "reform" spelling in significantly non-phonetic languages like English. Or resistance of schools to use of calculators for math.

I would say Edison invented the most practical alternative to traditional "notation"--

sound recording.  Now "everyone" can make and access sound and video recordings of just about any music.

While we debate, teens are turning to the internet to learn to play by watching the songs and techniques demonstrated; no notation needed!

I've been trying to wean myself from notation and play directly "by ear" myself.

If we need a permanent record, we have audio and video recording,

and computer storage.

Again, no notation needed, and we can capture subtleties of the performance that no notation can capture.

Consider the impact on music if the effort expended interpreting and creating notation were spent training one's aural recognition and retention skills, and skill in playing and interpreting "by ear".

So "digraphia" may be a step on the way to dispensing with written notation altogether.

Would that be so bad?

Joe Austin

[Music Integrated Solution]

All forms of recording and reproducing music rather contribute to change the roles of notation but do not replace it; we may not depend on notation to preserve music or to graphically describe its subtleties but will always need a form of notation. 

Recording is not a medium where music theory may hinge, 

we still need a medium to organize and control the harmonic material, e.g. with the new medium I can memorize chord progressions and move them to any key, which I cannot do with the traditional medium or without any medium.

The point is that new notation may play new and interesting roles while technology may replace others, and that is my experience.

Enrique.

[Joseph Austin]

As an example:  moving to a new key is much more complex ( or much more simple) than a  notational transformation.  In practice, it can be relatively unconscious (voice), sliding a capo (guitar), or changing an entire fingering pattern (piano or valve instruments).

I agree we will always have, even need, notation of some sort, 

but perhaps not scores.

But that's not really the point.

My point is that the "new media" such as you-tube are by-passing traditional notation with something approximating one-on-one human teaching.

As music "educators", we must be keep our eyes and ears open to how students actually learn.

Joe Austin

[Joseph Austin]

PS-

Of course, some kind of score would be essential for ensemble music,

especially large ensembles such as for symphonies.

Otherwise, how could the composer / conductor / musicians keep the parts and harmonies together?

But perhaps that's a clue to an aspect of notation that I've not often seen discussed.

For vocal music here are usually 4 parts on a grand staff, two parts on each staff with opposite stem directions. There are occasional conflicts, as when one part has a whole note and the other starts on the same pitch with a quarter note.  

Since my ChromaTonnetz doesn't uses stems for timing, I can still use them for parts,

but I need 4 stem positions instead of 2.  Alternatively, I use color to distinguish parts, but that doesn't work when two parts have the same pitch.  Or, we could always use separate staves for each voice, but that makes it more difficult to "see" the harmonic relationships

(especially so in TN, where the same position on different staves represents different pitches).

I could point out that TN's duration method of notating rhythm and timing is really not well suited to notate synchronization of parts. Perhaps that's one reason for the "tyranny of the bar"--every melody must be "chopped" into one-bar increments to maintain synchronization, otherwise it would be an impossible mathematical chore to keep track of the accumulated durations of polyphonic parts to determine the synch points.  So we must   split and tie syncopated notes held across a bar, and even across a count.

My suggested alternative has been to add a timing grid perpendicular to the pitch staff,

and place the start of each note at the appropriate timing grid mark.  Using a hierarchy of grid-line thicknesses (e.g. a heavy line for "bars" and a lighter line for "counts") would allow compression and expansion of the grid according to the density of pitch changes, while still maintaining a "positional" representation for beat and count.  Then one could dispense with fills, stems, flags, dots, ties, and any other durational notation, except for  "stop notes" when necessary to silence a voice before the next note in that part occurs.

Of course, such a timing grid is essential for "piano roll" type notations,

but PR in itself has no mechanism for distinguishing parts.

Joe Austin

On Apr 25, 2014, at 9:46 AM, Music Integrated Solution wrote:

[Music Integrated Solution]

Personally I also try to depend as less as possible on scores. Scores made possible that I could play the trumpet in a very short period of time when I was a teen, I cannot imagine how I could had done it without them, but then became too much dependent on traditional scores; such dependency on scores is not good either.

Now rather than a dependency on scores I have a dependency on notation as a medium; defining a ‘score’ as something that usually somebody else wrote (including a computer) and we mostly give a mechanical use of “look and push”.

Notation as a medium is the opposite, there are no written scores but notation is integrated to the music perception process (in our minds), which also leads to the ‘push’ but without the ‘look’ to something already written.

We may express in a different way but ultimately it might be all about the same.

Another new role of notation is to command computers to play, usually what we are not able to play as performers, and that is also the opposite when they give us the score and we play.

E.

[Joseph Austin]

Enrique,

I like the idea of a "point and click" piano-roll interface to a MIDI generator so I can generate my own scores for a computer to play.

I used to learn my choir parts that way, using the old Cakewalk,

But then Cakewalk essentially abandoned MIDI and went to compresses audio,

and i haven't really found a satisfactory substitute.

The MIDI format, in  the "visual digital" form of the Cakewalk MIDI event list, was sufficiently editable to customize arrangements of performance pieces of around 100-200 measures.

Now I envision computer-playable scores as a method for ear training,

for learning to recognize melodic phrases and chord progressions, 

and as a reference to play a song by ear.

Perhaps I haven't looked hard enough, but I haven't found a really flexible program for that either.  Most software seems committed to reproducing conventional notation, including enforcing all sorts of TN rules to keep you from doing anything notationally original!

My piano teacher tries to teach his students to compose tunes.

If more teachers did that, I think new notation would be the natural outgrowth.

Joe Austin

[Music Integrated Solution]

Joe,

At this point we may wonder:

if we have not been able to widely use a chromatic variation of TN or even having a diatonic reform, what could make anyone think that we are going to have ‘another writing system’ for music at the same level of usage than the one we have now?

The answer resides in that we already have another form of writing music widely used, which is aggressively projecting as the other writing system, considering that it started to propagate with the boom of computers and has already dropped sharps and flats.

(1)Widely used (2)no sharps or flats; these are - two extraordinary achievements - that have occurred naturally given a new scenario. 

Formerly I had the feeling of being creating a system from scratch as an alien, but now I see it as part or continuation of a natural process that belongs and correlates 100% with this planet and these times.

As many others also wondered, why has chromatic notation failed? When indeed what has failed is the chromatic recreation of staff notation, while chromatic notation has clearly succeeded in a different form.

I hope that this weird combination of competition/collaboration that has driven mankind for centuries continue to work one more time, as there is a lot of work ahead. Beyond notation a theoretical chromatic system still has to prove it works overall better than the diatonic system, especially for tonal music, the PRN has not proven that yet.

E.

[Joseph Austin]

Enrique,

Notation, like natural language, evolves.

I've conjectured that the reason English has such illogical spelling is that printing (which "froze" the spelling, preceded sound recording, which is "freezing" the pronunciation, by half a century, during which pronunciation continued to evolve but spelling did not.

This same technological delay may have contributed to the tendency to teach musical performance from reading sheet music rather than from hearing a performance.  

Today, however, it is often easier to access a recording of a piece than to find suitable sheet music.

My children learned violin by the Suzuki method, learning pieces from recordings plus instruction on fingering before they ever encountered sheet music.  Teens today can do the same for virtually piece and instrument from YouTube videos.

As for theory, as I understand it, the problem with "chromatic theory" is that it has no compelling rationale as to what is "consonant" and what is "dissonant."

The "harmonics" theory, with the principle of preference for small whole-number ratios,

seems to have a mathematical foundation that is consistent with human experience.

So it may be that "equal temperament" can never be more than a pragmatic approximation to just intonation, theoretically speaking.

It is of course quite possible to develop a nomenclature and pedagogy based on 12 (or some other number) of equally-spaced (on the logarithmic scale) intervals of the "renova". 

But in the end, the "ears" know when two tones "harmonize". 

Singers do it instinctively; instrumentalists tune by it.

And when they do, the frequencies of the tones are found to be in small whole-number ratio.

Joe Austin

[Music Integrated Solution]

Joe,

It is interesting what you say, and here we find another analogy of music as a kind of language; in music, spelling (notation) at some point also froze, while pronunciation (tuning) continued evolving and probably has frozen also in what is called the western musical language, which like English ended with a gap between spelling and pronunciation.

I do not envision digraphia in English; the problem is mild especially when compared with some eastern languages, though for non-native English speakers it is much more difficult.

However in music the problem goes beyond a gap between spelling and pronunciation because notation (quote Koppers) is the medium where music theory hinges but furthermore, writing music ended in a subjective manual process that we have not been able to successfully automate.

The conflict of a writing system with technology is like the drop that overflows the cup.

The English writing system has no conflict with technology, TN does.

Enrique.

[Music Integrated Solution]

And here is a point:

IF proposals are just a chromatic recreation of TN or just about the gap between spelling and pronunciation, it will not overflow the cup either.

[Joseph Austin]

I just discovered an interesting tablet app: Fingertip Maestro http://fingertipmaestro.com/
Has anyone had experience with this yet?

Joe Austin

[Joseph Austin]

Enrique,

I think the "gap" is analogous to the gap between words and feelings--what the word evokes.

If that is the case, then it may not be possible to capture it in notation, or even theory.

After all, is it not the essence of art to explore various "triggers" to feelings and emotions?

I asked someone how to decide which chords fit best with a given melody line.

He answered:  "the ones that sound best."

That is probably the best answer one could give.

But as a scientist, I want to reduce it to a formula.

But if I could, then would music any longer be art?

I suppose I might do a survey and discover that music that becomes popular tends to follow certain patterns, such as harmonic progression around the circle of fifths.

Then I might propose various mathematical or physiological reasons why this might be the case.

But then some group like the Beatles will come along and become wildly popular with different progressions.

Joe Austin

[Doug Keislar]

Just watched a couple of the videos. I'd say it's a 21st-century answer
to the autoharp:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Autoharp

Doug

[Music Integrated Solution]

On Thu, May 22, 2014 at 6:04 PM, Joseph Austin <drtec...@gmail.com> wrote:

Enrique,

I think the "gap" is analogous to the gap between words and feelings--what the word evokes.

There is a gap also but between two completely different eras with different requirements, which have propagated two completely different ‘music writing systems’.

Yes, we should speak of 'music writing systems' as we speak of writing systems in language, - one more analogy.

Enrique.

[Joseph Austin]

So perhaps the key here is to treat music itself as a *language*.

It certainly has many of the properties of verbal languages:

alphabet, vocabulary, grammar, etc.

(The denotational aspects may be harder to pin down, 

but isn't all art an attempt to express "something" from one person to others? )

The process of "learning music" may be analogous to learning a language:

at some point, we begin to discern from among the babble of sounds, certain patterns,

and to associate "meanings" with these patterns,

and eventually rules for creating our own patterns.

Even natural language writing systems haven't progressed much past the word level in identifying structures,

but computer-assisted analysis allows higher-order structures to be recognized and represented, even if not in the must convenient human-readable form.

The human brain certainly must provide a lot of the analysis and structure-creation needed to, say,

interpret a set of notes as a chord, or recognize rhythm, repetition and variation, etc.

So I suppose the question is, whether it is useful to develop a "writing system" that can express these higher structures, or do we simply rely on succeeding generations to rediscover them and pass them on though less precise means such as natural language discussion.   

I've often lamented that schools teach only the "masterpieces" of the arts, seldom spending time on folk art or even "popular" works.  The problem being that the beginner is confronted with an "infinitely" high step between where he starts and what is "great", with no examples of the progressive development from the "bottom" to the "top".

Instead of being taught "good" vs. "bad" (i.e., everything not "good"), perhaps we should be taught "better" vs. "worse". 

So imagine answering questions such as:

"Melody A is "better" than melody B because..."

or even "melody A is more like Melody B than like Melody C because..."

(Or substitute any characteristic you choose for melody).

If all we have to compare is strings of numbers (e.g. pitches and durations), what intelligent comments can we make?

We must be able to organize and categorize the numbers into patterns and structures to make meaningful statements.

Joe Austin

[Music Integrated Solution]

On Wed, May 28, 2014 at 4:53 PM, Joseph Austin <drtec...@gmail.com> wrote:

So perhaps the key here is to treat music itself as a *language*.

Music, language and art are distinctive enough to have its definition, however sometimes music (as R. Oliphant put it) seems to be a very special sort of language that resists description in conventional linguistic terms.

So analogies are rather aspects they have in common sometimes interesting but also could be useful e.g. to help predicting what is most likely to happen regarding music writing systems.

I am putting together some thoughts that I usually work around, intended for communication and eventually help people understand that if the battle for reforming the traditional notation is considered lost, there is still a feasible way out based on precedent from languages.

Enrique.

[Joseph Austin]

Enrique,

Having witnessed, in my lifetime, the emergence of guitar and tablature as the dominant instrument and notation of new musicians, supplanting piano, bowed strings, and band instruments, I conclude that change is not impossible.  

Certainly imitation of one's "hero's" is partly responsible, but I suspect the fact the guitar (and voice) is easy enough to play that it can be practically self-taught has something to do with it.

If we changed our focus from NOTATING music to MAKING music, and to understanding what one needs to know and to do in order to MAKE music, then I think we would evolve better instruments and better notations.  Perhaps the problem is, we revere "classical" music to the point that we have confined our attention to imitation instead of creation.

As for notation, why has not jazz and rock created a demand for evolving notation?

Is it because these are not played from notation?  

Is that because these forms are too complex to express in TN, 

or too simple to need it,

or too fluid to be reduced to a fixed pattern of pitches in time?

For my purposes, the most useful advances in "notation" are Roman chord numbering and shape-notes,

both of which convert music to a key-independent expression (express pitch in intervalic vs absolute terms).

I'm still searching for the equivalent in rhythm and form notation, to express temporal structure as stress patterns instead of durations.  And for formal expression, to write music as poetry, broken by phrases and stanzas,

rather than as prose, broken at bar lines.

In both endeavors, I'm receiving little help from the creators of notation software, who like many music teachers,

seem more committed to enforcing preservation of the past than enabling pioneering the future.

Joe Austin

[Music Integrated Solution]

Joe,

Pioneering the future is such a risky business that few people are willing to pay the price or take the chance, what we already have has somehow worked and for many people is all they need, but new ideas might be welcome as long as they are really worthwhile.

My vision is that there is ahead a paperless era of dynamic scores and visual encapsulation of data, where those manual and beautiful traditional scores do not seem to belong.

If anything I have learned in the last few years is that we are anything but frozen, though movement is slow.

Enrique.

[Joseph Austin]

Enrique,

This may be somewhat off-topic, and perhaps erroneous as I am not an expert,

but I think there may be a parallel in biological evolution.

At first, I think Darwin believed that evolution occurred because of "random variations" but didn't understand how they arose, perhaps by radioactive mutations of the genes.  Now I believe we understand that the combination of male and female chromosomes offers the opportunity for a number of "splice points" such that, in effect, the "random variation" occurs with each conception.

Extending the analogy, we are unlikely to see individuals change ("radioactive-induced mutations") in large number.

But we can reasonably expect "evolution" from one generation to the next.

That's why I say we should focus our attention on pedagogy.

Joe Austin

[Joseph Austin]

Enrique,

This may be somewhat off-topic, and perhaps erroneous as I am not an expert,

but I think there may be a parallel in biological evolution.

At first, I think Darwin believed that evolution occurred because of "random variations" but didn't understand how they arose, perhaps by radioactive mutations of the genes.  Now I believe we understand that the combination of male and female chromosomes offers the opportunity for a number of "splice points" such that, in effect, the "random variation" occurs with each conception.

Extending the analogy, we are unlikely to see individuals change ("radioactive-induced mutations") in large number.

But we can reasonably expect "evolution" from one generation to the next.

That's why I say we should focus our attention on pedagogy,

and toys!

Joe Austin

[Music Integrated Solution]

Joe,

From a previous conversation it was pending to explain why I oppose complex symbols, I mean like combining colors or other modifications, main reasons are that traces will cross over them, so they should not have any detail, still visible when small and the other one is that for me is easier to remember them and the artificial order that is assigned to four symbols, hope you take a look at the excerpt, just a variation of many possibilities.

Enrique.

[Joseph Austin]

Enrique,

This may be somewhat off-topic, and perhaps erroneous as I am not an expert,

but I think there may be a parallel in biological evolution.

At first, I think Darwin believed that evolution occurred because of "random variations" but didn't understand how they arose, perhaps by radioactive mutations of the genes.  Now I believe we understand that the combination of male and female chromosomes offers the opportunity for a number of "splice points" such that, in effect, the "random variation" occurs with each conception.

Extending the analogy, we are unlikely to see individuals change ("radioactive-induced mutations") in large number.

But we can reasonably expect "evolution" from one generation to the next.

That's why I say we should focus our attention on pedagogy,

and toys!

Joe Austin