NOTUS

[John Keller]

Hi Everyone,

I came across another Alternative Notation, not represented on musicnotation.org.

This is an explanation of NOTUS that is easy to understand (even in non-English).
https://www.facebook.com/notus.erwinclauws.1/videos/3602084653443864

What do you think of it?

My main complaint is how in the semitone B-C both notes are ‘line’ notes.
I did suggest to Erwin Clauws that 2 space notes would be nicer to represent the diatonic octave renewal.
And make it a wholetone eg between G and A rather than a semitone.

Cheers,
John

PS I have previously posted about Gabriel Notation by William Tapley.
This seems to be a system which satisfies all the criteria for inclusion on the main section of the website, but is not.
It may be mentioned somewhere but there does not seem to be a search function any more.
Although i am on the committee, I dont have any ability to edit the website, even my Express Stave Wiki page.

[Pashkuli Keyboard]

It is similar to standard, but with WAY too many ledger lines, which will make it difficult to read. Also "accidentals" are even harder after a while.

Not really anything plausible in the long run.

[John F]

G'day JK,

That's interesting. The pitch representation strikes me as quite good. I see what your objection is and agree to some extent. On the other hand, the three lines nicely indicate a similar arrangement to TN, and the "natural" C-major scale with its already named notes is a reasonable rival IMHO (in fact, trumps) the G-A split. The descriptions on the website (it takes a bit of digging, but it's at https://notus.world (click on the English link down the page rather than using a page translator) emphasize it's not a stepping stone to TN, but that feature does lend it to that quite well. Beyond that, I'm afraid, it seems like a lot of reinvention of the wheel, and not something I'd want to read from. The sharp and flat notes are too wide, taking up as much space as a couple of noteheads. As yet I didn't read much beyond the grey unplayed notes and other arbitrary inventions, like the repeat signs, but I've downloaded the freebies - wow it's some hard sell, innit? - to have a gander.

John F

[Dominique Waller]

Hi John,

Thank you for that great find! I'm not in favor of an alternative diatonic notation, as you already know probably. But however, I found this video inspiring. And all is very cleverly displayed.

I went on their website and was half surprised to read : " To be very clear! NOTUS is not intended to replace conventional music notation! Such an attempt is silly and also impossible. On the other hand, NOTUS is the only real alternative for all those who are excluded from studying music because of difficulties in learning the complex conventional music notation. NOTUS offers them altogether a fully-fledged study of notated music."

No comments....

Dominique

[Pashkuli Keyboard]

Not this NOTUS again.

1. too many ledger lines = even more cumbersome to read than SMN (standard music notation)

2. sharps\flats is a fraction of… a ledger line to the note - good luck reading that

[John F]

1. It has fewer ledger lines than TN, since there are only three per octave instead of five. More importantly, because the octaves have identical line positions from one to the next octave, and there is a bigger space betwen octaves, the notes are easy to decipher, where TN ledger lines are all equidistant and their cycling is interleaved (because they indicate an odd (7) number of diatonic pitches on an even (line-space...) staff, adding further confusion. Take note that C isn't a head on a ledger line, it's just the symbol for C, always.

2. I don't see any reason to suppose they're hard to read. A notehead simply has a bar attached to the upper half or lower half. This makes them all individually marked (as if all were given # or b as accidental), but indicates the higher or lower pitch by the position on the staff, where # and b wouldn't. I think they could be improved by being less wide, and I don't particularly like them, but they're not hard to identify.