Proposal for a * joint * campaign. Take two.

[Fastgram org]

Hi,

I recently opened a thread proposing to unify energies in this group
to carry out a joint campaign to effectively get people to start using
other notations.

The hypothesis is that in this group there are already good enough
proposals and knowledge about the situation. All that is needed
therefore is coordination and focused efforts.

The concrete call for action quickly turned into a debate, and
therefore 0 action. Although the debate generated is very interesting,
I think it reinforces the hypothesis that there is too much knowledge
here and too little coordination and common work.

I understand that everyone here has a favourite proposal, a very
personal view of what may or may not work, and a different analysis on
why change is so difficult. But I would like to invite everybody to
take a step back and look at the issue in a more abstract way.
Achieving any kind of change (not just specifically on music notation)
on one's own is terribly difficult and painful. But with even a small
group of people collaborating together the possibilities grow
exponentially. And if any proposal breaks the inertia, it will be a
million times easier for all the other proposals and ideas.

I would like to invite the 322 people in this group to put aside their
particular project/analysis/idea for a moment and try joining others
here to work on a single joint proposal. It doesn't matter exactly
what idea we work on, the point is that if we are able to organise
around an idea and coordinate a sustainable work plan the chances of
this succeeding are infinitely greater.

So I again send an invitation to anyone who wants to collaborate, with
a practical and organised campaign, in making it a reality for people
to use other notations. If you are interested please reply to this
thread.

[But please, only replies to join the action! For debates please
create other threads].

Best wishes.

[lettersquash]

Hello Fastgram. I have hesitated to reply to this thread, but feel that it's important to do so. It means ignoring your final plea, for which I am sorry. I am not replying to "join the action". I hope you will take this in the spirit in which it is intended, one of open discussion towards better understanding...because I sincerely believe that only when we have gained enough understanding will we achieve the goal I'm sure we both aspire to. We appear to disagree on this point. You say there is "too much knowledge and too little coordination and work," and I share the sense of frustration, but if we knew what we needed to know to succeed, we'd succeed, and that's partly because we would coordinate and work more on the basis of that knowledge.

I don't think anyone is inspired to work on proposals they don't find promising, and working on several spreads effort and potentially confuses the audience too. Working on our individual favourite project, in ones or twos, means these are out in the world competing for views and admirers and improvements and popularization. It's slow and tedious and will take years, maybe decades, for music students to vote with their feet (or apps), but that's natural selection.

"And if any proposal breaks the inertia, it will be a million times easier for all the other proposals and ideas."

Not necessarily. A lot will go extinct. If everyone suddenly takes up FastGram or ExpressStave, I'll stop developing mine, because the competition would be even harder. It's possible some might be more suitable in particular circumstances, I suppose, so there might be room for several types, but the success of one will not be particularly aided by that of another, as far as I can see.

"It doesn't matter exactly what idea we work on, the point is that if we are able to organise around an idea and coordinate a sustainable work plan the chances of this succeeding are infinitely greater."

That's not very logical. It matters enormously what idea we work on, precisely because the chances of it succeeding depend vastly more on its inherent qualities than how much work we put in to promulgating it, and also because its inherent qualities are what inspire us to work on it. There's the unfortunate "if" in your second sentence. We are human beings. We clearly cannot just organise around any old idea with no regard for what it is.

I should end by saying that FastGram is a brilliant idea, something I've toyed with myself a fair bit. It solves a couple of the main issues I have with TN, the unequal staves, and the key signatures and qualifying accidentals. I also like the vision of it as being made up of elements that can be combined according to needs and wishes. It's beautifully presented.

I'd suggest another change (or option) - using a different head shape for the sharps. Up-pointing triangles might be good, or perhaps a square, reminiscent of the sharp sign. This would make the score less cluttered and avoid the problem that a sharp sign is between notes, and however much you know it belongs to the following note, there is more mental processing for the brain to make that assignment. Some will certainly object that flats are important and D-flat major just isn't the same as C# major (for reasons that escape me), but perhaps downward-pointing triangles might be another option for those determined to make life just a bit more complicated for themselves. ;)

I do find it a little odd that the webiste at fastgram.org has only two pages, and doesn't expand on the system in any more detail. It's addressed one half of the twin pillars of music, pitch. But timing - does it use the same note value signs as TN? (It looks like that's intended or hasn't been decided.) Do people find TN time value signs easy? Is it just identifying pitches that makes TN a pita? (I don't think so. I've been reading music a good number of years, and I still find it annoying.) Will it have rests of some kind, or continuation signs a bit like Klavar?

I wrote a while ago speculating that music notation apps will take increasing precedence and probably solve this problem. Rather than a single system, apps could be programmed to print music out (or display it) in a wide variety of notation systems, with all manner of options to choose. MIDI or MusicXML files - or ones yet to be devised - might be shared among musicians, but each read them according to their wishes.

I don't have the answer, I just believe in the value of discussion in honing where we put our effort. I wish you the very best with FastGram, and may the best notation(s) win!

¬~ | JF

[Iv]

Hi, Fastgram

The idea of joining forces as a community and expand your members by inviting more and more musicians and enthusiast about the topic of Music (notation) is really great!

The problems is, that 99% of the educated musicians have spent years... literally years learning the old-school (church) notation. Some call it Western music notation, but that is a misnomer.

Most people of such calibre, with whom I have talked about it, get discouraged at first, because they instinctively think... or realise they have lost years of their lives learning a language which might be dead (as Latin is almost dead, used sparingly in pharma and medical fields), should they focus their eyes and minds onto something new, learning a new language.

This is hard for 99% of the people. The other 1% just says... well, everyone uses the standard notation, no point of switching, though the ideas are cool.

The Church governed most of European and West world education and respectively the official Music education for more than 1000 years now (more than a millennium).

Most artistic and scientific subjects have had their Renaissance already (more than 300 years ago)... not Music notation and education though!

And it is pity... really.

We need the musical Bruno, Galilei, Mendel, Caravaggio, El Greco etc.