Re: [MNP] Did you learn to read music? A Plea and a Suggestion from a Mathematician...........

[dominique.waller]

Hi John W.,

 

Welcome and bravo, I enjoyed your poem all the way through.

 

But what did you mean when you wrote :

 

Their knowledge of maths was a REALLY bad dream,

                As a fifth plus a third makes a whole in their scheme

 

At first I thought you we’re talking about time values, as they are divisions of the whole note. But later I thought you meant intervals, but in this  case it doens’t work either, cause it’s a fifth plus a fourth that make a whole octave. What do you think ?

 

Dominique 

From: john....@ozemail.com.au

Sent: Tuesday, May 21, 2013 9:20 AM

To: musicn...@googlegroups.com

Subject: [MNP] Did you learn to read music? A Plea and a Suggestion from a Mathematician...........

 

Hi there - I might start with a little poem I wrote a couple of years ago........

 Did you learn to read music?

 

Did you learn to read music?  Those symbols are meant

To convey to us all the composers intent.

To let us know just how he/she would have said

His/her piece of music’s supposed to be played.

 

Modern music notation’s been out there for yonks,

Developed, they say, by Italian monks.

But when you look closely, you’d have to confess

That the scheme they came up with’s a terrible mess.

 

The twelve notes they gave alphabetical names,

From A up to G – but that’s seven, you exclaim!

Then they called them an octave, which doesn’t relate -

Even my grasp of Latin tells me that means eight!

 

Their knowledge of maths was a REALLY bad dream,

As a fifth plus a third makes a whole in their scheme.

And a three over four, while the maths is quite false,

Can be read – so they said - as an invite to waltz.

 

With quavers and crotchets and minims and breves,

The lengths of the notes also beg to deceive!

The breve is the longest, with logic quite fraught,

Since breve is pure Latin - its meaning is “short”.

 

They write all these notes on a staff with five lines,

And with strange exhortations like “DC al fine”s.

And a really low “C’ on a line they will place,

But the next higher “C” you will find in a space.

 

And these inconsistencies are not alone

As each different instrument’s got its own tone.

Your clarinet “C” is in fact a flat “B”,

But a French Horn blows “F” when you think it’s a “C”.

 

No wonder it’s so hard for people like me,

To become the musician that they’d like to be!

I can play it by ear, on a good day, with ease,

But the written stuff might as well be in Chinese!

 

To introduce myself, I am in my 60s, with a lifetime of mathematics – particularly the pattern-recognition types of maths, including statistics and graphs. In my work, it is essential to present these patterns clearly, so my mind does not see, for example, a chromatic scale when it is presented visually as a series of steps modified by accidentals. And a chromatic scale starting from one note doesn't even look the same as a chromatic scale starting from another one!!!  A chromatic scale is – by definition – a straight line in which each successive point is exactly the same tonal “distance” above or below the preceding one. I have no real pretentions to (or credentials for) being a musical innovator – I certainly haven’t studied musical theory in detail, although I have occasionally read articles about it.

I remember many years ago being intrigued about the differences between the frets on a guitar (monotonically decreasing spaces between frets) and those on an Appalachian dulcimer (wide, wide, narrow, etc), and my mathematical instincts got the better of me. I used a ruler to measure the distances between the frets on the dulcimer, and came up with some algebra that explained it, but I still didn’t understand why it had to be so. Some months later, in a café in Paris, I found myself breakfasting with a guy who was musical arranger for an American dance group performing “Saturday Night Fever” on a European tour, and I asked him if he could explain it. He couldn’t, but a young non-English-speaking Frenchman sharing our table madly scribbled some algebra onto a napkin, and explained it to me – in French. He was studying mathematics and music! It was the best musical theory lesson I ever had. I then had to translate this into English for the benefit of the American musical arranger! Of course, it led to some understanding of scales and modes and the fact (why wasn’t it obvious???) that the dulcimer’s frets are the result of only having the “white” notes. So I think I have a “naive” understanding of at least some areas of music theory, but that is about all.
 
Around 35 years ago I bought myself a clarinet, and for 32 years I was self-taught and played along to whatever I heard on disc or just in my head. Three years ago, I recognized a few of my short-comings - e.g. not being able to get the upper register notes - and went to adult classes, where I had to actually read music. Needless to say, it drove me mad, and I came up with a format that represents a chromatic scale that is intuitive, logical and everyone will recognize……………..

 

To distinguish it from the current illogical system, I would rename the notes A to L, eliminating accidentals entirely. How would I notate rhythm? I have few problems with the existing system in this respect. My “staff” would have to be printed in a grey tone or in a contrasting colour, so that both solid notes (quavers, crotchets) and hollow ones (minims, semibreves) would be visible printed in black. The “dot” notations to lengthen the notes or indicate staccato would also need to be quite clear when on a grey line. I would be happy, though, to include some sort of a “key signature”, which could look far more informative than the existing one. It could, for example, be indicated by identifying the notes of the key to the left of the staff. It could be made very easy for beginners by colouring in the appropriate lines on the staff. Accidentals would then really stand out as not being on a "coloured" line. The scheme would also be quite capable of representing modes, as well as Major/Minor keys. It would allow us to get rid of the stupid system that tells me I’m playing a C on my clarinet when everyone else knows I’m playing a Bb. Different pitch ranges on different instruments can be addressed by showing different ranges of the “keyboard”. The full range of my clarinet requires a staff of 13 lines and 13 spaces on the normal staff, but would require 43 lines on my staff - maybe a problem, but with the clarity of printing we have these days, I suspect that it could be printed at a much smaller scale than I have here, and still be much more readable that something cluttered up with accidentals. Of course, "ledger lines" could be used just as well in my system as in the normal one.

I would like to thank Doug Keislar and John Keller for encouraging me, after I first approached the Forum via an email containing some of these ideas.

Comments welcome! Of course I would be disappointed if my scheme is shown to be unworkable, but then maybe there are some good bits here and there.

 

 

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[Joseph Austin]

John,

Welcome to the forum.

Thanks for the poem.  I think most of us on this forum would agree with the sentiment.

As for your notation, it is similar to  something we call "piano roll",

which stands for any of a variety of notations based on the old-fashioned piano rolls that consisted of a punched paper roll to actuate the keys of a player piano.

I've done some experimenting with similar notations myself, and also a condensed form of it which used lines for the black notes and spaces for the white notes, with 1.5 spaces for EF and BC (in standard nomenclature.)  You can review my attempts on my website: 

DrTechDaddy.com,  menu Music

My previous post to this forum included an example of my latest efforts.

I find it quite useful for the level of piano music that I am capable of playing.

You might also want to look at some of the other notations described on the Music Notation Project website

http://musicnotation.org/

Joe Austin

[Music Integrated Solution]

Hi Walker,

Your poem is an original way of expressing the frustration when trying to learn Traditional Notation at the wrong time, the best time for learning TN is as a child guided by an instructor; usually children will obediently learn and accept what they are taught by the adult without questioning it, while some adults may struggle processing the information and they do dare questioning or analyzing it.

 

TN is better learned as a child.

 

I learned some English as an adult and could not help wondering why its writing turned into such a mess, nobody dares attempting to improve it but many dare attempting to improve the readability of music notation.

 

In the last years I have empirically learned a couple of things:

(1)Musicians will not learn an equivalent alternative notation that just improves readability

(2)Non musicians concerned with readability issues usually will not learn existing alternatives unless influenced by a music teacher or is made very easy for them, some  will rather attempt to create their own system no matter what the outcome could be.

Bottom line, alternatives to notation just for the sake of improving readability are likely to remain in small circles with a limited use or as a personal hobby.

 

However, if we go deeper into the matter there are still reasons that may justify the common use of an alternative system:

The traditional system evolved and was consolidated in a manual era – unfortunately it works only manually – in other words the traditional methods of notating music, generating nomenclature and analyzing harmony work only manually.

That is a problem in an era of computers where we should be able to produce a functional score out of a music description file (e.g. MIDI) of complex performances, accompanied by a faultless description of the succession of harmonies.

Being a system intended only for a manual use the TS is an obstacle for using the full possibilities that technology offers today.

 

Another reason could be improving the control of music; imagine we take the Roman numerals and replace them by better readable symbols – it does not improve the control of math – the Hindu-Arabic numeral system is better because it improves the control of math and not because is better to read.

 

Bottom line, a contemporary alternative has to be concerned at least with (1) simplification and readability, (2) the requirements and possibilities of our times (3) the control of music and (4) it should be more useful not equal or less useful, as an integrated and equivalent system.

Enrique.

[Ivaylo Naydenov]

(1)Musicians will not learn an equivalent alternative notation that just improves readability

(2)Non musicians concerned with readability issues usually will not learn existing alternatives unless influenced by a music teacher or is made very easy for them, some  will rather attempt to create their own system no matter what the outcome could be.

Bottom line, alternatives to notation just for the sake of improving readability are likely to remain in small circles with a limited use or as a personal hobby.

So true!

 --- van Loyden