Lilypond files for Klavar/Beyreuther hybrid notation

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Marco Rimoldi

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Apr 22, 2020, 9:14:37 AM4/22/20
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Hello, I'm attaching a simple extension I wrote for Lilypond that blends features from Klavar and Beyreuther's 6-6 notations.

I was looking for a notation to help me learn to play the piano on a symmetrical midi controller, and I must say I've found the project's website very helpful in deciding what I needed and how to implement it.

I basically borrowed the staff lines and 6-6 notehead pattern from Beyreuther's Untitled notation (not unlike the Lyrebird chromatic notation that I also like), and mixed that with Klavar's bilateral positioning of noteheads relative to the otherwise traditional stems. My only original addition is the notehead shape for half and whole notes.

I welcome any kind of feedback on this solution, it already goes a long way to cover my beginner needs but there's certainly room for improvements.

cheers,
Marco

entertainer.ly
klare.ly
entertainer.pdf

Dominique WALLER

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Apr 22, 2020, 5:07:44 PM4/22/20
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Hi Marco,

Intersting !

I can clearly see the relationship with Beyreuther's ideas, including his choice of colors (which is the reverse of LyreBird). But what's the interest of having a bilateral position around noteheads like Klavar, except avoiding noteheads overlapping ?

Dominique

envoyé : 22 avril 2020 à 00:40
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objet : [MNP] Lilypond files for Klavar/Beyreuther hybrid notation

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Joseph Austin

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Apr 22, 2020, 5:08:51 PM4/22/20
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Marco,
I like it!  Thanks.

Joseph Austin

On Apr 22, 2020, at 9:14 AM, Marco Rimoldi <anti...@gmail.com> wrote:


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<entertainer.pdf>

Douglas Keislar

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Apr 22, 2020, 6:28:15 PM4/22/20
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Hi Dominique,

Besides avoiding colliding noteheads when a chord contains a semitone, another possible rationale for the bilateral position of noteheads (i.e., placement on the opposite side of the stem depending on whether the notehead is white or black) is to correspond to the shape of a musical pattern on a keyboard. In the case of Klavar, the correspondence is to the black and white keys of the standard keyboard. In the case of Marco's system, as well as Wojcik's Isomorph system, the correspondence is to the keys of a two-row 6-6 keyboard (with which you are very familiar, of course). This can be seen in the Isomorph example here, for instance:
http://musicnotation.org/pdf/comparisons/Triads.pdf

Best,
Doug



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Douglas Keislar

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Apr 22, 2020, 6:31:03 PM4/22/20
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P.S. The same bilateral positioning occurs in Pot's 6-6 Klavar: http://musicnotation.org/system/6-6-klavar-by-cornelis-pot/
(although that page doesn't show the bilateral positioning).

Dominique WALLER

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Apr 23, 2020, 7:51:32 AM4/23/20
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Hi Doug,

Thanks for commenting on this. I had a look at the Isomorph example, and it speaks by itself. I now understand what you mean.

But to me, the black/white distinction is salient enough by itself, as you pointed several times yourself. I’d rather dedicate the stems the role of showing the attack of the note on the left-to-right axis that features time in a musical staff. Enrique Prieto and many others have regularly insisted on the difference there is between the attack and the duration of a note. If we should have to visualize this difference, then the stems can play this role, but how? The earliest version of ExpressStave showed this: all the stems would position on the left of all noteheads, a feature John abandoned later.

My best wishes to you too.

Dominique

envoyé : 23 avril 2020 à 00:30
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objet : Re: [MNP] Lilypond files for Klavar/Beyreuther hybrid notation

Dominique WALLER

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Apr 23, 2020, 7:51:50 AM4/23/20
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Hi Doug,

Thanks for commenting on this. I had a look at the Isomorph example, and it speaks by itself. I now understand what you mean.

But to me, the black/white distinction is salient enough by itself, as you pointed several times yourself. I’d rather dedicate the stems the role of showing the attack of the note on the left-to-right axis that features time in a musical staff. Enrique Prieto and many others have regularly insisted on the difference there is between the attack and the duration of a note. If we should have to visualize this difference, then the stems can play this role, but how? The earliest version of ExpressStave showed this: all the stems would position on the left of all noteheads, a feature John abandoned later.

My best wishes to you too.

Dominique

envoyé : 23 avril 2020 à 00:30
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objet : Re: [MNP] Lilypond files for Klavar/Beyreuther hybrid notation

John Keller

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Apr 23, 2020, 8:19:19 AM4/23/20
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Hi Dominique,

Yes I thought that having all note-heads facing forward would reinforce the habit of looking ahead on the stave, but in practice i didn’t think it helped me personally. I don’t really know why the standard stem rule originated (up on the right and down on the left) but I decided it is best for a new notation to look as much as possible like the traditional. I feel that my current versions of Express Stave have achieved this quite well. No notes jump out too much now that i have tweaked the fonts. I am enjoying practicing a lot during this global home-stay.

Stay safe everyone,
John Keller


Joseph Austin

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Apr 23, 2020, 10:54:23 AM4/23/20
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As it is, both the coloring and the stem side convey the same information, so they are mutually redundant.  Given stem-side as the 6-6 discriminator, one could use color for another purpose.  For example, for compatibility with conventional keyboards, one could use color for the 5-7 pattern and stem-side for the 6-6 pattern. (Even for the traditional keyboard, the 6-6 pattern allows one to easily distinguish major and minor seconds and thirds, which helps in chord recognition.)

One advantage of using Lilypond is that it's fairly straight-forward to make such modifications to suit one's individual taste!  For example, I routinely use Lilypond to color sharps red and flats blue in otherwise TN music  for personal performance.
So C# minor or Ab major is about as easy to read as C.

Joseph Austin
"Music is poetry; why print it like prose?"

On Apr 23, 2020, at 8:19 AM, John Keller <jko...@bigpond.net.au> wrote:

Hi Dominique,

Marco Rimoldi

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Apr 25, 2020, 6:16:31 AM4/25/20
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I think I really really liked the consistent use of shapes to convey harmonic information in general! Although indeed that makes for some redundancy of information.

Anyway I've been reflecting on this, thanks to everyone's messages, and I now tend to see the coloring as less linked to the 6-6 pattern and more adaptable to contain instrument specific or other types of information. I recognize this system as part of a family, with Isomorph, 6-6 Klavar and Antoon Dekker's variation, that are shape compatible while potentially allowing flexible uses of color. For example one could mimic Beyreuther's own peculiar piano design, with black C D E keys (see the picture I've taken from http://www.beyreuther-musikprinzip.de).

Enough theory, now I'll focus on putting the notation to use and learning from practice. :)

Best wishes to all,
Marco
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Joseph Austin

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Apr 25, 2020, 11:13:47 AM4/25/20
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Marco,
Best wishes in getting down to practice.
Do you have a Beyreuther-style or other 6-6 instrument?

I'm in "book 4" of my piano lesson series, where emphasis is on the ledger-line notes and keys with more black notes--the very areas where notation would supposedly make a significant difference. But even so, it's my impression that the notation is not so much the problem as getting my fingers on the right notes. After a few passes of a piece,
I "know" what notes I should play, but actually playing them continues to be a challenge.

Perhaps a "better" notation has the advantage of preventing making (and learning) mistakes due to reading errors. But I'm finding true what I heard in a TED talk from I forget who, but the idea is that we improve as we begin to play longer sequences per "impulse", i.e. grow from one note look-ahead to two to four to measures to phrases.
(BTW, look-*ahead* per se is probably the important skill for playing from notation;
that is, we need to be reading *ahead* of what we are playing.)

With that in mind, it seems to me that a notation that exposes the *pattern* of the phrase to be played is most helpful. In that respect, I find line breaks and rhythm incongruities the more serious impediments to visual recognition of the pattern than pitch-related anomalies. But these areas seem to attract scan attention among notation reformers.

Line breaks, for example, would seem rather trivial to fix, but most score software I've tried makes it very difficult to break lines mid-bar, though composers seem to have no aversion to it, especially in compound rhythms.

I've also come to believe that most popular keyboard methods must focus so much attention on the anomalies of the notation that they omit or obscure teaching the actual formal structure and harmonic and melodic progressions of the music itself.

Do let us know how you progress in using your new notation, and what advantages you experience with it.

Joseph Austin
"Music is poetry; why print it as prose?"

John Keller

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Apr 25, 2020, 7:17:29 PM4/25/20
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Hi Joseph,

Which piano method are you working through, may I ask.

Cheers,
John
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Antoon Dekker

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Apr 26, 2020, 2:37:03 AM4/26/20
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Hi Doug,

I liked the chart comparison of the triads. I see that it comes from the musicnotation.org site, but I didn't find text with a link to the chart. Is there a link to this chart on the notation site?

Regards,
Antoon
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Marco Rimoldi

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Apr 27, 2020, 1:11:15 PM4/27/20
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Antoon, I've found it linked at the bottom of this page:


Joseph: mine is also a 2-row 6-6 keyboard, but the top row is entirely black.

best,
Marco 

Dominique WALLER

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Apr 27, 2020, 2:49:43 PM4/27/20
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Hi Marco,

So you have a two-row 6/6 keyboard at home, that's right? Did you build or modify it yourself? And could you send me a picture of it?

I've dedicated a whole website to this type of isomorphic keyboard http://www.le-nouveau-clavier.fr/

I just have found someone in Italy to revise the Italian section, as it's been badly translated.

Cheers, Dominique

envoyé : 27 avril 2020 à 19:11


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objet : Re: [MNP] Lilypond files for Klavar/Beyreuther hybrid notation

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Marco Rimoldi

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May 2, 2020, 8:51:52 PM5/2/20
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Hi Dominique, yes it's a Behringer UMX 610 modified with a set of keys designed and sold by Joseph Summers (he has a few videos on Youtube: "NT keys").

Marco

Dominique Waller

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May 10, 2020, 8:12:24 AM5/10/20
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Hi John and all,

 

You wrote > I don’t really know why the standard stem rule originated (up on the right and down on the left) but I decided it is best for a new notation to look as much as possible like the traditional.

 

In both cases, you’ll notice, the notehead is slightly sloping upward on the left-to-right axis. The oval is not exactly horizontal. Besides, I think I’ve guessed where the ‘stem rule’ comes from. In the Guido de Arezzo era, notes were plain squares, and they call it called black square notation. On the longa note, the tail falls at the right of the square. Later on, in the Renaissance came the white notation era, with both white or black noteheads, but this time short values are diamond square with stem falling on the pointing middle of the lozenge square. Have a look at picture 1 [White notation]. At that same time also, flags began to appear on stems to signify a further subdivision of the note value. If you look at the last example on the right, you can see that the stem seems to be slightly transferred to the right, as if to balance the flag with the weight of the black lozenge slightly on the left. It’s so true that in picture 2 [Marais gigue détail], this time from the French baroque era, the copyist has drawn stems raising upward on the right of eighth notes and symmetrically, notes with their stems downward have their flag turned leftward! In both cases, the notehead, now totally rounded, seems to balance the weight of the flag and vice versa (although the copyist hesitates to have the falling stem touch the notehead from the left, but rather on the middle of it…). But this calligraphy couldn’t last long, because, what if this falling flag turned leftward was to be linked to others in multiple beamed note figures? It became impossible to maintain this esthetic. And logically, flags came back to the right whether they were born by raising or falling stems. See picture 3 [Froberger2] at the time of Bach. And the ‘stem rule’ hasn’t changed since. Dominique.



Le jeudi 23 avril 2020 14:19:19 UTC+2, John Keller a écrit :
Hi Dominique,

Yes I thought that having all note-heads facing forward would reinforce the habit of looking ahead on the stave, but in practice i didn’t think it helped me personally. I don’t really know why the standard stem rule originated (up on the right and down on the left) but I decided it is best for a new notation to look as much as possible like the traditional. I feel that my current versions of Express Stave have achieved this quite well. No notes jump out too much now that i have tweaked the fonts. I am enjoying practicing a lot during this global home-stay.

Stay safe everyone,
John Keller

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