Mirck - de Buur Klavar notation
Marco Mascioli
This my first post, so I'll introduce myself.
I am a software consultant that is currently working on a process to
streamline the translation from traditional music notation to the
Klavar notation.
In particular, after some experiments and assessments, we have
finalized our choice using the variant of the notation mentioned in
the subject.
The process is in its final stages and we would be able to start the
production of a catalogue of pieces in a very short period of time.
However, we could only find a brief description of the notation on
musicnotation.org and that raised some questions which I would like to
ask Mrs de Buur, who could be on this group.
There are questions about how to handle stops and sustains, the
indication of the hand to use and other things. Apart from the
positioning of the notes on the staff and its different size for the B/
C E/F keys, is it everything else the same as the traditional Klavar
notation?
Any help would be greatly appreciated.
Thank you
Doug Keislar
Thanks for your interesting post. I'm unsure whether Jean de Buur is
still reading the messages posted to this group, so I've forwarded your
message below to her. I hope she will reply to the group, so we can see
her answers to your questions.
Best regards,
Doug
Marco Mascioli
Much appreciated, thank you.
Should she reply privately, I'll ask for permission to publish the
reply here.
'Googling' doesn't help answering my questions, as the website where
the notation used to be explained is now down.
Best regards
Marco
Paul W Morris
Welcome to the group! As best I recall the Mirck version follows
Klavar in every way except for the differences described on the MNP's
website. Hopefully Jean will get back to you and confirm, but that's
what I recall.
Some links to several Klavar sites can be found here:
http://musicnotation.org/musicnotations/morenotations.html
I would be interested to hear more about the software you're working
on. Will it be available to anyone, and how? Will it be just for the
vertically oriented Klavar staff, or horizontal as well? Is it
connected with any of the three applications for Klavar listed on the
MNP's Software page? (KlavarScript, Klavar Music Writer, KLAVAR!)
http://musicnotation.org/software/index.html
All the best,
Paul Morris
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Marco Mascioli
Thank you for your help.
I was already aware of the links.
My replies to your questions follow.
> "Will it be available to anyone, and how?"
It's still a matter of our internal debate. Releasing it as a product
would be a big commitment. At the very least, we would need time to
support users via the Internet and we are not fully convinced (yet)
that the general conditions of the market for music in alternative
notations justifies the effort. Also, there are some licensing issues
with some development tools that have to be addressed before reaching
a decision. But we are open to suggestions.
> Will it be just for the vertically oriented Klavar staff, or horizontal as well?
After reading about the "certified" alternative notations on
musicnotation.org, we decided to go for the horizontal staff.
Actually, the deBuur-Mirck variant of klavarskribo was our second
choice.My preferred choice would have been the DA notation by Rich
Reed. His experiences around the US show that the main problem with
the traditional notation are flats and sharps in the key that confuse
the beginners, not the time division or the orientation of the staff,
and I totally agree with that.
However, writing a program to translate the traditional notation to DA
would have been more problematic, as we would have faced several
typographical problems about fonts and music symbols. All the
currently available fonts are adjusted for the traditional notation
and we didn't want to go for the creation of fonts appropriate for DA.
>Is it connected with any of the three applications for Klavar listed on the MNP's Software page? (KlavarScript, Klavar Music Writer, KLAVAR!)
The simple answer is no, it isn't. The more articulated answer is that
it is definitely linked to KLAVAR!, but only because I am developing
it. All the programs that you mentioned are for composers.
Klavarscript is more oriented to the professionals, whereas KLAVAR!
can be seen more as an educational tool for beginners. What we are
doing now is an application to print music sheets.
Best regards
Marco
On 4 Mar, 15:05, Paul W Morris <paulwmor...@gmail.com> wrote:
> Hi Marco,
>
> Welcome to the group! As best I recall the Mirck version follows
> Klavar in every way except for the differences described on the MNP's
> website. Hopefully Jean will get back to you and confirm, but that's
> what I recall.
>
> Some links to several Klavar sites can be found here:http://musicnotation.org/musicnotations/morenotations.html
>
> I would be interested to hear more about the software you're working
> on. Will it be available to anyone, and how? Will it be just for the
> vertically oriented Klavar staff, or horizontal as well? Is it
> connected with any of the three applications for Klavar listed on the
> MNP's Software page? (KlavarScript, Klavar Music Writer, KLAVAR!)http://musicnotation.org/software/index.html
Doug Keislar
It is interesting that your first choice was DA Music. Did you look at Isomorph? It has a very similar staff to DA Music, and similar notehead coloring (6-6), but otherwise is virtually identical to Klavar, with the same rhythm notation, notehead style, placement of stems, etc. (These features borrowed from Klavar are not visible in the presentation on the MNP site.)
It would be great if the software you're developing is designed in such a way as to simplify switching to notation systems that have other staff line patterns and other choices of notehead coloring. I don't think those features would require different fonts. I'm not saying that other notation systems should be supported at first, just that it would be nice to structure the software in a way that doesn't preclude making those kinds of changes later if desired.
http://musicnotation.org/musicnotations/3linesmajorthird.html#pot
6-6 Klavar by Cornelis Pot (the inventor of Klavar), in a variant rotated 90 degrees, is another system that should be easy to accommodate if the software was flexible with regard to staff lines and notehead color, because it has the same rhythmic scheme as Klavar.
I would think that supporting traditional rhythmic notation, as in DA Music, would be at least as difficult a challenge as supporting different fonts. With Klavar and its variants mentioned above, you don't have to worry as much about algorithms for spacing notes, since the spacing is proportional.
Anyway, it's great to hear you're developing this software. Please keep us informed of your progress!
Marco Mascioli
I certainly will.
What I found quite challenging with proportional notations is that,
provided that the staff has to be easily readable, as this is the main
purpose, the amount of paper needed is much bigger when we have
measures with short notes.
Taking it to the extremes, if we have a piece of music with quarters
in all measures but for some that contains some 32th(s), if I want to
keep the strict proportional representation of the time, I would have
many unnecessarily almost empty measures on the paper.
What I have done in my software is to render the measures in such a
way that each of them is proportionate to the shortest note contained
in the measure. This saves room on the paper.
Of course, this has also the consequence that not every measure has
the same length; however, the indication of the beats inside the
measure, as in standard Klavar notation, should help the reader to
interpret the duration of the notes correctly.
I would be extremely grateful for any comment or suggestion.
Marco
On 4 Mar, 18:28, Doug Keislar <d...@musclefish.com> wrote:
> Hi Marco,
> It is interesting that your first choice was DA Music. Did you look at Isomorph? It has a very similar staff to DA Music, and similar notehead coloring (6-6), but otherwise is virtually identical to Klavar, with the same rhythm notation, notehead style, placement of stems, etc. (These features borrowed from Klavar are not visible in the presentation on the MNP site.)
> It would be great if the software you're developing is designed in such a way as to simplify switching to notation systems that have other staff line patterns and other choices of notehead coloring. I don't think those features would require different fonts. I'm not saying that other notation systems should be supported at first, just that it would be nice to structure the software in a way that doesn't preclude making those kinds of changes later if desired. http://musicnotation.org/musicnotations/3linesmajorthird.html#pot
> 6-6 Klavar by Cornelis Pot (the inventor of Klavar), in a variant rotated 90 degrees, is another system that should be easy to accommodate if the software was flexible with regard to staff lines and notehead color, because it has the same rhythmic scheme as Klavar.
> I would think that supporting traditional rhythmic notation, as in DA Music, would be at least as difficult a challenge as supporting different fonts. With Klavar and its variants mentioned above, you don't have to worry as much about algorithms for spacing notes, since the spacing is proportional.
> Anyway, it's great to hear you're developing this software. Please keep us informed of your progress!
> Best regards,
> Doug
> Marco Mascioli wrote:Hi Paul, Thank you for your help. I was already aware of the links. My replies to your questions follow."Will it be available to anyone, and how?"It's still a matter of our internal debate. Releasing it as a product would be a big commitment. At the very least, we would need time to support users via the Internet and we are not fully convinced (yet) that the general conditions of the market for music in alternative notations justifies the effort. Also, there are some licensing issues with some development tools that have to be addressed before reaching a decision. But we are open to suggestions.Will it be just for the vertically oriented Klavar staff, or horizontal as well?After reading about the "certified" alternative notations on musicnotation.org, we decided to go for the horizontal staff. Actually, the deBuur-Mirck variant of klavarskribo was our second choice.My preferred choice would have been the DA notation by Rich Reed. His experiences around the US show that the main problem with the traditional notation are flats and sharps in the key that confuse the beginners, not the time division or the orientation of the staff, and I totally agree with that. However, writing a program to translate the traditional notation to DA would have been more problematic, as we would have faced several typographical problems about fonts and music symbols. All the currently available fonts are adjusted for the traditional notation and we didn't want to go for the creation of fonts appropriate for DA.Is it connected with any of the three applications for Klavar listed on the MNP's Software page? (KlavarScript, Klavar Music Writer, KLAVAR!)The simple answer is no, it isn't. The more articulated answer is that it is definitely linked to KLAVAR!, but only because I am developing it. All the programs that you mentioned are for composers. Klavarscript is more oriented to the professionals, whereas KLAVAR! can be seen more as an educational tool for beginners. What we are doing now is an application to print music sheets. Best regards Marco On 4 Mar, 15:05, Paul W Morris<paulwmor...@gmail.com>wrote:Hi Marco, Welcome to the group! As best I recall the Mirck version follows Klavar in every way except for the differences described on the MNP's website. Hopefully Jean will get back to you and confirm, but that's what I recall. Some links to several Klavar sites can be found here:http://musicnotation.org/musicnotations/morenotations.htmlI would be interested to hear more about the software you're working on. Will it be available to anyone, and how? Will it be just for the vertically oriented Klavar staff, or horizontal as well? Is it connected with any of the three applications for Klavar listed on the MNP's Software page? (KlavarScript, Klavar Music Writer, KLAVAR!)http://musicnotation.org/software/index.htmlAll the best, Paul Morris On Wed, Mar 3, 2010 at 1:55 PM, Marco Mascioli<marcomas2...@googlemail.com>wrote:Doug,Much appreciated, thank you.Should she reply privately, I'll ask for permission to publish the reply here. 'Googling' doesn't help answering my questions, as the website where the notation used to be explained is now down.Best regardsMarcoOn 3 Mar, 17:52, Doug Keislar<d...@musclefish.com>wrote:Marco,Thanks for your interesting post. I'm unsure whether Jean de Buur is still reading the messages posted to this group, so I've forwarded your message below to her. I hope she will reply to the group, so we can see her answers to your questions.Best regards, DougMarco Mascioli wrote:Hello,This my first post, so I'll introduce myself.I am a software consultant that is currently working on a process to streamline the translation from traditional music notation to the Klavar notation.In particular, after some experiments and assessments, we have finalized our choice using the variant of the notation mentioned in the subject.The process is in its final stages and we would be able to start the production of a catalogue of pieces in a very short period of time.However, we could only find a brief description of the notation on musicnotation.org and that raised some questions which I would like to ask Mrs de Buur, who could be on this group.There are questions about how to handle stops and sustains, the indication of the hand to use and other things. Apart from the positioning of the notes on the staff and its different size for the B/ C E/F keys, is it everything else the same as the traditional Klavar notation?Any help would be greatly appreciated....
>
> read more »
Michael Johnston
> provided that the staff has to be easily readable, as this is the main
> purpose, the amount of paper needed is much bigger when we have
> measures with short notes.
I like your sensitivity to these issues. Rhythmic notation reform has
largely been ignored, partly because of the impracticality of a
proportional design. TN developed along certain lines partly because the
early writers crammed as much as possible on that expensive sheet of
paper. Our new systems don't have to worry about expense but the number
of page turns!
It's good to read your posts here.
Cheers!
Michael
--
MICHAEL'S MUSIC SERVICE 4146 Sheridan Dr, Charlotte, NC 28205
704-567-1066 ** Please call or email us for your organ needs **
http://michaelsmusicservice.com "Organ Music Is Our Specialty"
Doug Keislar
> [...]
> What I have done in my software is to render the measures in such a
> way that each of them is proportionate to the shortest note contained
> in the measure. This saves room on the paper.
> Of course, this has also the consequence that not every measure has
> the same length; however, the indication of the beats inside the
> measure, as in standard Klavar notation, should help the reader to
> interpret the duration of the notes correctly.
>
some new symbol or word, analogous to a dynamic marking or tempo
indication, that indicates that the time scale is changing -- at least
in cases where there are many notes per beat and the beat lines are far
apart, making the beat spacing not as immediately obvious. This would
make it clear that it's just a visual change and not an actual musical
change of tempo or meter.
Doug
Marco Mascioli
Thanks for your comments.
The application that I am writing can be very economical with paper.
My early tests show that on pieces with a well distributed, "normal"
range of notes' durations, the "number of turns" could actually be
lower than with traditional notation, while still having a very good
readability.
To Doug
Thank you very much for your suggestion.
We will definitely implement it, in a way or another.
Marco
Doug Keislar
John Keller
I am extremely curious as to why you say your first choice was DA notation.
DA has the same staff pattern as Isomorph, in which the three close lines
represent the three black piano keys, as in Klavar; but in DA they represent
E F# and G#!
Cheers, John K
To Michael
Thanks for your comments.
Marco
--
Doug Keislar
I long ago asked Rich Reed, the inventor of DA Music, why he made that
choice. I believe it was because he wanted C to be on the single line,
reminiscent of Middle C in TN, or at least to emphasize C as the note
that people usually think of as a "home base." By contrast, the
inventor of Isomorph wanted to keep the black-key correspondence that
you mention. As you've often pointed out, the piano keyboard is
symmetrical around D and Ab, and as I'm sure you've noticed, that
symmetry is also true of Isomorph.
Doug
John Keller
I just thought that for someone who has been working with Klavar notation,
to then want to turn the three lines into E F# and G# instead of the piano
tab idea of Klavar, seems very strange, and I wondered if Marco may have
misread the DA note correlation or something.
Anyway in Rich Reed still around and does he still advocate the DA notation?
Also why the name? What does it stand for?
Cheers, John K
Marco Mascioli
I have simply got it wrong..., sorry about that.
I liked the idea of the line for the C, but didn't pay much attention
to the rest and I thought that the lines were actually as in the
klavar notation.
Thank you for making me notice.
Therefore, Klavar-Mirck-de Buur is now my first choice.
Cheers, Marco
> >> <marcomas2...@googlemail.com>
Doug Keislar
Other considerations, for what they're worth:
Isomorph has the three lines for F# G# A# as in Klavar (and has most of Klavar's other features).
Isomorph is less dense (crowded) than Mirck Klavar and regular Klavar, as it has four rather than five lines per octave.
Mirch is denser than regular Klavar, as the Mirck staff is strictly pitch-proportional rather than keyboard-proportional as regular Klavar is. The piano keyboard itself is not pitch-proportional, because the spacing of the half steps B-C and E-F is the same as the spacing of the whole steps between the other pairs of neighboring white keys. Klavar matches the keyboard, Mirck matches the sound.
Isomorph uses 6-6 notehead coloring, which results in a more uniform representation of intervals than does a 7-5 grouping. This uniformity is more representative of the sound, which is a desirable feature for all instruments, for musical-theoretical understanding, and for practical skills like transposition and improvisation. See, for example,
http://musicnotation.org/pdf/comparisons/Triads.pdf
http://musicnotation.org/pdf/comparisons/MajorScales.pdf
and compare Isomorph to Mirck Klavar. Notice how triads and scales (and any intervallic patterns in general) look similar in all transpositions in Isomorph but not in Mirck Klavar.
http://musicnotation.org/pdf/comparisons/JazzChords.pdf gives another example but doesn't include Mirck Klavar.
http://musicnotation.org/tutorials/intervals2.html includes a discussion about this attribute of 6-6 groupings.
Klavar and Mirck Klavar use 7-5 notehead coloring, which gives an intuitive match to the standard keyboard layout and key coloring, making it particularly useful for keyboard players. It also gives a good match to traditional nomenclature, which like the piano keyboard is based on the C major scale notes. In short, it's a more traditional approach than Isomorph. It's probably an easier leap than Isomorph for people already familiar with the piano keyboard and traditional nomenclature, or people who want to learn the piano and are more interested in playing from the page than in improvising.
Because different people have different criteria, it's hard to say that one notation system is the best, which is why I suggested trying to make the software architecture as flexible as possible in the hopes of eventually supporting more than one notation system.
Best regards,
Doug
Marco Mascioli wrote:
Marco Mascioli
I am very grateful for sharing your considerations.
I am not ready to disclose the technical architecture of the software,
yet, although I believe that it can easily be guessed.
Yes, it's going to be flexible to implement different staves.
However, I am following a pragmatic and business-oriented approach,
rather than an academic one.
I don't want to fight the music establishment, as there's no need to
do it. I am convinced that TN is the right choice for everyone who
wants to be a professional, especially for classic music.
I am not a musician, but I can understand that after years of classic
training, playing scales all the time on the piano, a student doesn't
need to look at the beginning of the line to know in which key s/he is
playing, as I need to do.
They just know it and they know which keys are 'on' and 'off', unless
otherwise indicated. Don't you want to learn it that way? Well, not
everyone must be a professional musician!
In my opinion, alternative notations are for people like me, in their
30s, 40s and 50s, that want to have a go at playing the piano.
They don't have time to play scales, and it's very likely that they
don't even want to play classical music.
They have the choice of the dozens of "playing by ear" courses on the
internet, to which thousands of people subscribe.
I can assure you that they are, on average, very rewarding (personal
experience!) for that segment of the market.
What I say is, why can't I give to them also the possibility to read
music, using a notation that it's complete and expressive as TN, but
it's easier to read?
And I want to do it with a (proportional) notation that ticks all the
17 boxes on musicnotation.org and with which I feel comfortable.
You seem to suggest that Isomorph is the best way to go. I take your
suggestion very seriously and evaluate it.
Regards
Marco
On 5 Mar, 19:20, Doug Keislar <d...@musclefish.com> wrote:
> Hi Marco,
> Other considerations, for what they're worth:
> Isomorph has the three lines for F# G# A# as in Klavar (and has most of Klavar's other features).
> Isomorph is less dense (crowded) than Mirck Klavar and regular Klavar, as it has four rather than five lines per octave.
> Mirch is denser than regular Klavar, as the Mirck staff is strictly pitch-proportional rather than keyboard-proportional as regular Klavar is. The piano keyboard itself is not pitch-proportional, because the spacing of the half steps B-C and E-F is the same as the spacing of the whole steps between the other pairs of neighboring white keys. Klavar matches the keyboard, Mirck matches the sound.
> Isomorph uses 6-6 notehead coloring, which results in a more uniform representation of intervals than does a 7-5 grouping. This uniformity is more representative of the sound, which is a desirable feature for all instruments, for musical-theoretical understanding, and for practical skills like transposition and improvisation. See, for example,http://musicnotation.org/pdf/comparisons/Triads.pdfhttp://musicnotation.org/pdf/comparisons/MajorScales.pdf
> and compare Isomorph to Mirck Klavar. Notice how triads and scales (and any intervallic patterns in general) look similar in all transpositions in Isomorph but not in Mirck Klavar.http://musicnotation.org/pdf/comparisons/JazzChords.pdfgives another example but doesn't include Mirck Klavar.http://musicnotation.org/tutorials/intervals2.htmlincludes a discussion about this attribute of 6-6 groupings.
> Klavar and Mirck Klavar use 7-5 notehead coloring, which gives an intuitive match to the standard keyboard layout and key coloring, making it particularly useful for keyboard players. It also gives a good match to traditional nomenclature, which like the piano keyboard is based on the C major scale notes. In short, it's a more traditional approach than Isomorph. It's probably an easier leap than Isomorph for people already familiar with the piano keyboard and traditional nomenclature, or people who want to learn the piano and are more interested in playing from the page than in improvising.
> Because different people have different criteria, it's hard to say that one notation system is the best, which is why I suggested trying to make the software architecture as flexible as possible in the hopes of eventually supporting more than one notation system.
> Best regards,
> Doug
> Marco Mascioli wrote:John, Doug, I have simply got it wrong..., sorry about that. I liked the idea of the line for the C, but didn't pay much attention to the rest and I thought that the lines were actually as in the klavar notation. Thank you for making me notice. Therefore, Klavar-Mirck-de Buur is now my first choice. Cheers, Marco On 5 Mar, 01:52, "John Keller"<jko...@bigpond.net.au>wrote:Doug, I just thought that for someone who has been working with Klavar notation, to then want to turn the three lines into E F# and G# instead of the piano tab idea of Klavar, seems very strange, and I wondered if Marco may have misread the DA note correlation or something. Anyway in Rich Reed still around and does he still advocate the DA notation? Also why the name? What does it stand for? Cheers, John K ----- Original Message ----- From: "Doug Keislar"<d...@musclefish.com>To:<musicn...@googlegroups.com>Sent: Friday, March 05, 2010 12:12 PM Subject: Re: [MNP] Re: Mirck - de Buur Klavar notationJohn,I long ago asked Rich Reed, the inventor of DA Music, why he made that choice. I believe it was because he wanted C to be on the single line, reminiscent of Middle C in TN, or at least to emphasize C as the note that people usually think of as a "home base." By contrast, the inventor of Isomorph wanted to keep the black-key correspondence that you mention. As you've often pointed out, the piano keyboard is symmetrical around D and Ab, and as I'm sure you've noticed, that symmetry is also true of Isomorph.DougJohn Keller wrote:Hi Marco,I am extremely curious as to why you say your first choice was DA notation. DA has the same staff pattern as Isomorph, in which the three close lines represent the three black piano keys, as in Klavar; but in DA they represent E F# and G#!Cheers, John K----- Original Message ----- From: "Marco Mascioli"<marcomas2...@googlemail.com>To: "The Music Notation Project | Forum"<musicn...@googlegroups.com>Sent: Friday, March 05, 2010 8:58 AM Subject: [MNP] Re: Mirck - de Buur Klavar notationTo MichaelThanks for your comments.The application that I am writing can be very economical with paper. My early tests show that on pieces with a well distributed, "normal" range of notes' durations, the "number of turns" could actually be lower than with traditional notation, while still having a very good readability.To Doug Thank you very much for your suggestion. We will definitely implement it, in a way or another.MarcoOn 4 Mar, 21:36, Doug Keislar<d...@musclefish.com>wrote:Marco Mascioli wrote:[...] What I have done in my software is to render the measures in such a way that each of them is proportionate to the shortest note contained in the measure. This saves room on the paper. Of course, this has also the consequence that not every measure has the same length; however, the indication of the beats inside the measure, as in standard Klavar notation, should help the reader to interpret the duration of the notes correctly.That sounds perfectly reasonable to me. You might also consider adding some new symbol or word, analogous to a dynamic marking or tempo indication, that indicates that the time scale is changing -- at least in cases where there are many notes per beat and the beat lines are far apart, making the beat spacing not as immediately obvious. This would make it clear that it's just a visual change and not an actual musical change of tempo or meter.Doug-- 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 tomusic...@googlegroups.comTo unsubscribe from this group, send email to...
>
> read more »
John Keller
Have you looked at Express Stave? It has a 7-5 coding like Klavar but is
more compact, so the eyes do not have to scan as much as in reading Klavar.
It is also quite compatible with TN as you can see by watching my YouTube
video on Bass Clef.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I1DTGDDQLUA
I am a profession musician and teacher. Piano, violin, viola.
Cheers, John K
Hi Doug,
Regards
Marco
> read more �
--
You received this message because you are subscribed to the forum of the
Music Notation Project (hosted by Google Groups).
Doug Keislar
> You seem to suggest that Isomorph is the best way to go. I take your
> suggestion very seriously and evaluate it.
>
variants, so I had only mentioned those (and DA Music because of your
interest in it). There are of course many other systems on the Music
Notation Project Web site, some of which I like a lot. Of the Klavar
variants, Isomorph is the one that has (like DA Music and the other 6-6
systems) the advantage of a good representation of intervals, which I
think is extremely important for understanding music. But it might be a
harder "sell" because it's less familiar and so requires more effort to
explain it and its advantages.
Guitar tablature is extremely popular on the Web, and I see no reason to
assume that a keyboard tablature like Klavar or Mirck Klavar could not
also be popular. Guitar tablature has the disadvantage of using two
dimensions for pitch, so I think it's especially useful for showing
chords rather than melodies, which is not true of Klavar.
Some companies (Thumtronics, MUTO) have attempted to market isomorphic
(e.g., 6-6) notation systems in conjunction with isomorphic (e.g., 6-6)
keyboard instruments, which have a nonstandard key layout. In an ideal
world, I think this is the best approach for music. For marketing in
the real world to people who want to learn to play standard keyboards,
it might be more profitable to use a 7-5 notation like Klavar. On the
other hand, the isomorphic systems are also very good for other
instruments, such as stringed instruments, that don't have a 7-5 bias
built in.
Doug
Paul W Morris
Thanks for answering our questions. It's interesting to hear about
your approach. I agree with Doug on the benefits of making software
adaptable to different staff line patterns and note color schemes.
It's good to hear that it will be flexible enough to implement
different staves. I take it that you were the main developer behind
the KLAVAR! software?
(I assume you probably already know about this, but we have also begun
work towards enhancing the Lilypond software application for use with
various chromatic staff notations:
http://musicnotation.org/software/lilypond.html )
I also agree with Doug on the benefits of notations like Isomorph or
DA that have a 6-6 pitch pattern, especially for the more uniform
representation of intervals that this provides.
Paul M
> --
> You received this message because you are subscribed to the forum of the
> Music Notation Project (hosted by Google Groups).
Marco Mascioli
I have followed the very interesting argument on ES and alternative
notations on pianostreet.
I believe that it has gone on for 4 years!
It has been very illuminating and definitely contributed to form my
opinion on the subject.
I'd like to create an engine that can create several proportional
notations and I believe that I am on the right way to achieve it.
Cheers, Marco
On 5 Mar, 21:45, "John Keller" <jko...@bigpond.net.au> wrote:
> Marco,
>
> Have you looked at Express Stave? It has a 7-5 coding like Klavar but is
> more compact, so the eyes do not have to scan as much as in reading Klavar.
> It is also quite compatible with TN as you can see by watching my YouTube
> video on Bass Clef.http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I1DTGDDQLUA
> > example,http://musicnotation.org/pdf/comparisons/Triads.pdfhttp://musicnotati...
> > email tomusicnotat...@googlegroups.comTo unsubscribe from this group, send
Marco Mascioli
I thank you all for your invaluable help.
I am the only analyst, designer and developer behind the KLAVAR!
software, apart from the copyright holder.
The project is currently on hold because of some technical problems on
the MAC OS/X version, completely outside of our control.
We've been caught in the crossfire of a major dispute between Apple
and Nokia and some development tools from Nokia on the Apple platform
are not working, with Nokia showing no intention to fix them.
It's a porting from an old Atari ST application.
The old application runs perfectly on Atari ST emulators per PC, like
Speed.
Therefore, in order to have it up and running without waiting, the
easiest thing to do is to grab an emulator and get the old application
from SourceForge.
My tool can't be compared with something like Lilypond, but it has it
has a very specific role in our process.
Marco
jeannet...@aol.com
The piano keyboard is strictly proportional if you measure at the back
side: 12 equal distanced notes, white and black.
On the frontside you see only the 7 whites, not proportional.
One line less looks less clottered, but gives the necessity of
leger-lines. Klavar has none!. Klavar gives a full picture of the
keyboard.
Just look and push. Even note-names are not necessary. Not used
notegroups are left off.
If we design the notes big enough children start even at three years
of age.
This advantage only counts for keyboard instruments. All the other
advantages of klavar count for all instruments.
Marco,
I see you have some questions about klavar. I will be pleased to answer.
First: I am not the inventor of klavar, just a - lifelong - user,
fan, teacher.
The E-note touches the 2-line group, the F-note the 3-line group. I
should not make these notes smaller, but let them overlap.
All white notes must look the same. Black notes are a little smaller
for better view. Pitch proportionality helps reading.
Klavar also has proportional timing.
The many duration-signs from TN are all deleted. A note lasts until the
next note appears. Only one stop-sign "v" if a note should stop earlier.
After the stop there is a silence until the next note , even if this
is some measures furtheron. So all different silence-signs are deleted
In case a note must continue together with the next one, a
"continuation-dot" is put on the place where it normally should stop.
This dot is put underneath the stem of the accompaniing note and on the
pitch-place of the continuing note.
I hope you understand. PLease ask anything you want.
Cheers, Jean
-----E-mail d'origine-----
De : Doug Keislar <do...@musclefish.com>
A : musicn...@googlegroups.com
Envoyé le : Vendredi, 5 Mars 2010 20:20
Sujet : Re: [MNP] Re: Mirck - de Buur Klavar notation
Marco Mascioli
Thank you very much for taking the time to reply to my message.
I am aware of the details of the traditional klavarskribo notation.
If I am not mistaken, I have a subscriber to the newsletter on
www.klavarscore.co.uk to your name and e-mail address.
I am the responsible for everything that appeared there, together with
the porting to PC of a small klavar editor called KLAVAR!
I have a couple of question is about the stems, Does your notation
keep their different versus for the hands and is there any exact rule
to assign the hand to every note?
Thank you
Best Regards
Marco
> De : Doug Keislar <d...@musclefish.com>
> A : musicn...@googlegroups.com
> Envoyé le : Vendredi, 5 Mars 2010 20:20
> Sujet : Re: [MNP] Re: Mirck - de Buur Klavar notation
>
> Hi Marco,
>
> Other considerations, for what they're worth:
>
> Isomorph has the three lines for F# G# A# as in Klavar (and has most of
> Klavar's other features).
>
> Isomorph is less dense (crowded) than Mirck Klavar and regular Klavar,
> as it has four rather than five lines per octave.
>
> Mirch is denser than regular Klavar, as the Mirck staff is strictly
> pitch-proportional rather than keyboard-proportional as regular Klavar
> is. The piano keyboard itself is not pitch-proportional, because the
> spacing of the half steps B-C and E-F is the same as the spacing of the
> whole steps between the other pairs of neighboring white keys. Klavar
> matches the keyboard, Mirck matches the sound.
>
> Isomorph uses 6-6 notehead coloring, which results in a more uniform
> representation of intervals than does a 7-5 grouping. This uniformity
> is more representative of the sound, which is a desirable feature for
> all instruments, for musical-theoretical understanding, and for
> practical skills like transposition and improvisation. See, for
> and compare Isomorph to Mirck Klavar. Notice how triads and scales
> (and any intervallic patterns in general) look similar in all
> transpositions in Isomorph but not in Mirck Klavar.http://musicnotation.org/pdf/comparisons/JazzChords.pdfgives another
> example but doesn't include Mirck Klavar.http://musicnotation.org/tutorials/intervals2.htmlincludes a
> For more options, visit this group athttp://groups.google.com/group/musicnotation?hl=en
Keislar, Doug
You are absolutely correct that the piano keyboard is pitch-proportional in the rear portion of the keys. Thank you for pointing this out! In fact, a white key's wide portion at the front is shorter (from front to back) than is the white key's back portion (which is about the same length as a black key). So we can say that the majority of the keyboard is in fact strictly pitch-proportional.
When Cornelis Pot designed Klavar, he quite understandably made the spacing of the white notes proportional to the front part of the white keys, because that is the part of the keyboard that is most immediately obvious. But in doing so he sacrificed pitch-proportionality. Your Mirck version corrects that problem.
So I was wrong to write that Klavar matches the keyboard and Mirck Klavar matches the sound. Instead, Klavar matches the front part of the keyboard but not the sound, while Mirck Klavar matches both the back part of the keyboard and the sound. Sorry for my error.
In fact, regular Klavar could even be said to be less proportional to the keyboard than Mirck Klavar is. If you look carefully at a keyboard, you notice that the black keys are not (except for Ab) positioned midway between the front parts of the neighboring white keys, but the black notes in Klavar are positioned midway between neighboring white notes. This problem doesn't exist in Mirck Klavar, as it matches the back part of the keyboard, where black and white keys are the same width.
Regarding Isomorph, which has one line for D in place of Klavar's two lines for C# and D#, you write that this approach requires leger lines. I assume you mean for the notes C and E. Actually, this is not correct. Isomorph doesn't use leger lines for those notes. In Isomorph (and some other systems) the notes of the chromatic scale alternate regularly in color (black/white), and as a result there isn't any confusion about the identity of the notes in the large space between the single line (D) and the first of the three lines (F#, going upward, or Bb, going downward). D (on the single line) is black, Eb (just above and touching the single line) is white, E (midway between the single line and the F# line, but touching neither) is black, and F (below and touching the F# line) is white.
Of course, Isomorph's coloring of the notes from C up to E is the opposite of the coloring on a normal keyboard, so it doesn't match the keyboard as Klavar does. Some people, such as Paul Morris, have colored the keys on their standard keyboard so that C through E are the inverses of their usual colors, making a 6-6 color pattern like Isomorph's noteheads, and providing some of the benefit of a tablature. Still, the physical layout of the standard keys (regardless of color) matches the Klavar pattern better. 6-6 notations match nonstandard, 6-6 keyboards better than 7-5 keyboards (and vice versa -- 7-5 notations match the 7-5 keyboard better than the 6-6 keyboard).
I don't know whether Tadeusz Wojcik, the inventor of Isomorph, intended it for 6-6 keyboards. In the few pages of literature I have, he depicts a standard keyboard.
On a different topic, but one that a number of people on this mailing list are interested in: Isomorph uses a base-12 numerical nomenclature for pitches. It is zero-based, but starting on D rather than C. Instead of 10 he uses a backward 5, and instead of 11 a backward 3.
Isomorph uses a solfege that retains the traditional do re mi fa so la ti (do is C, as usual) and adds five syllables for the chromatic notes: ge zi we corresponding to the three black lines and na and bo for the notes C# and D#. I'm guessing it's a fixed-do system, as the example he shows has re corresponding to zero (D).
As previously mentioned, Isomorph's rhythmic system is identical to Klavar, as are its notehead shape (circular) and stem placement (white and black noteheads have the stem on opposite sides).
Doug
John Keller
criticisms I had, was about the white and black notes being on different
sides of the stems. I felt this was only necessary for semitones where the
notes would otherwise overlap. It was particularly distracting for a fast
chromatic thirds passage - really hard to see which notes to play together.
I also found the wide span hard to scan and hard to get used to the larger
interval sizes. And the busy-ness of lines made reading it tiring. I am told
that you get used to this. I am rather surprised Isomorph retained the
stemside rule, particularly when, for the reverse coloured CIDJE notes, it
has no relation to the fingers playing black keys closer to the back and
white keys closer to the front.
Remind me again what Klavar calls the black keys. Also, is there a kind of
relative solfa system?
Express Stave is kind of a contracted Klavar, where the 3 line group and
2-line group each become a single line. Have you tried to read ES Jean?
Cheers, John K
Hi Jean,
Doug
Doug,
Marco,
Cheers, Jean
Envoy� le : Vendredi, 5 Mars 2010 20:20
Paul W Morris
> Some people, such as Paul Morris, have colored the keys on their standard keyboard so that C through E are the inverses of their usual colors
If you haven't seen it, here's a page about this on the MNP wiki, with images:
http://musicnotation.org/wiki/6-6_Colored_Traditional_%287-5%29_Keyboard
This 6-6 coloring has helped me to see and learn the common interval
patterns in each key, scale, chord, etc... despite the irregular
physical configuration of the piano keys.
Paul M
jeannet...@aol.com
Cor Pot (pronounce Pott) did not sacrifice proportionality because of
the front side of the piano, but
-so told me his nephew Hessel Pot - because at the time he started
printing Klavarskribo, it was technically
impossible to let the noteplaces overlap! (It is 1930!! ): just think
of our old Underwood typingmachine and you understand.
In our computertime it IS possible to let notes have half places and
to have different sizes.
I proposed the more perfect proportionality, because the chords over
the split in the linegroups look stretched compared to
the other same chords. I always tended to spread my fingers a little
more. A problem is that (though in rare cases)
the notes E and F overlap ,also B and C. This bothers me less, I even
like it.
Marco thinks the notes should be designed smaller. It is a possibility.
Smaller notes are also used in case there are exceptionally a large
number of notes in one of the measures.
About 6-6:
Pot was also interested. He possessed a Janko piano. I saw it on his
Instutution. He tried a notation for it;
But he realised that his time was not yet ripe for a so radical change
in music thinking.
I am nearly of his generation. and I also think now that it may be for
some time in the future,
when our musical feeling is no longer based on the interval suite of
the major scale.
I DO believe 6-6 can be of great use for entertainers,,while
transposing becomes so much easier.
But I DONT believe it can conquer the musicworld in my lifetime, and as
long as in nearly every house in the world
there is a classical instrument: piano, keybaord, melodica,
xylophone.... millions of children and adults can be made happy
with Klavar.
My personal opinion: Klavar an alternatif for classical music, 6-6
for entertainers.
On nomenclature:
Pot uses: c-d-e-f-g-a-b-c and des- es-fes-as-bes.
Klavar also uses the do-re-mi-fa-sol, and zu-vo--pe-bi-nu
In France the c-d-e.... are not known. They use do-re-mi.... for fixed
and moving notes.
I think this is super to sing the songs we play, and to
transpose!
(so do all southern (European) countries.)
My klavar-vesion uses do-re-mi.... and dos (for do-Sharp ) -
res - fas- sos- las..
I prefer going forwards in stead of backwards (as Pot does°
In our songbooks of yesterday there is the numbersystem. I Think it
came from China.
Do = 1; 0 is nothing, does not exist. Fa-sharp= 4/ and a dot
underneath a note is an octave lower, a dot sur la note an octave
higher.
Well,I think I did my best.
Best greetings, jean
-----E-mail d'origine-----
De : Keislar, Doug <do...@musclefish.com>
A : musicn...@googlegroups.com
Envoyé le : Dimanche, 7 Mars 2010 8:12
Sujet : RE: Re : [MNP] Re: Mirck - de Buur Klavar notation
Marco Mascioli
I just want to reply to your assertion about my intention to print
notes smaller.
I never mentioned this. What I am doing in my software is to change
the size of each measure according to the duration of the shortest
notes contained in it.
This way the size of the measures is variable, therefore leading to a
different ratio "space on paper/time". It can be slightly more
challenging and things can be improved as Doug said, with some
direction signing, but it leads to the major result that the "number
of page turns" is kept down to a similar level, if not less than the
traditional notation, which is the question that everyone I have
spoken to about Klavar raises immediately (often to discard it without
any possibility to reply, I am afraid to say).
If you can find some time, I'd really appreciate if you could tell me
something more about the indication of which hand to play a note with.
Is it mandatory or just for beginners? If so, which are the rules to
assign one hand to a certain note? A very rough decision would assign
the bass clef in TN to the left hand and the violin clef to the right
hand, but even I, not being a musician, can understand that this is
not always right.
As I am sure you can appreciate, this is fundamental for writing music
in Klavar, as I have been told that the rule for he duration of notes
(the previous note finishes when the next one begins, unless otherwise
stated with stops and sustains) applies separately to each hand.
Thank you for your help
Best greetings
Marco
> De : Keislar, Doug <d...@musclefish.com>
> De : Doug Keislar <d...@musclefish.com>
> A : musicn...@googlegroups.com
> Envoyé le : Vendredi, 5 Mars 2010 20:20
> Sujet : Re: [MNP] Re: Mirck - de Buur Klavar notation
>
> Hi Marco,
>
> Other considerations, for what they're worth:
>
> Isomorph has the three lines for F# G# A# as in Klavar (and has most of
> Klavar's other features).
>
> Isomorph is less dense (crowded) than Mirck Klavar and regular Klavar,
> as it has four rather than five lines per octave.
>
> Mirch is denser than regular Klavar, as the Mirck staff is strictly
> pitch-proportional rather than keyboard-proportional as regular Klavar
> is. The piano keyboard itself is not pitch-proportional, because the
> spacing of the half steps B-C and E-F is the same as the spacing of the
> whole steps between the other pairs of neighboring white keys. Klavar
> matches the keyboard, Mirck matches the sound.
>
> Isomorph uses 6-6 notehead coloring, which results in a more uniform
> representation of intervals than does a 7-5 grouping. This uniformity
> is more representative of the sound, which is a desirable feature for
> all instruments, for musical-theoretical understanding, and for
> practical skills like transposition and improvisation. See, for
> example,http://musicnotation.org/pdf/comparisons/Triads.pdf
>
> ...
>
> read more »
Peter Jackson
Peter
(852)2982-1177
Mob 6771-2743
jeannet...@aol.com
I also prefer to put all notes below the stem in the melody-line. Only
in chords the blacks go up to form a real image of the chord.
Black notes represent black keys.. It has nothing to do with where
you push. A pianokey is a lever: the more you push on the front side,
the lighter you have to push.
Oeff, you started with a Liszt piece??? No wonder you had problems. I
tried your ES system with a very simple melody. I even had a real
problem finding the notes. But.... as you say : " you can get used to a
lot."
For better rerading you may delete any group of lines that is not used.
Not only a whole octave, but even a 2-group or a 3-group!
So for simpel music you need only a few lines. The 2-group I call a
"street" a nd the 3-group a"highway"!!!
You can even have a melody on 2 lines.
For very complicated music the score is more complicated too. Klavar
can than have an rather large effect, but;;;; on the other hand:
So many signs are no longer needed, that simplified enormous the image
of the score:
Only one silence in stead of 11 in TN. No flags, multiple flags,
bars, ...All this makes the view much more quiet.
The sollfa system can be used with any notation. See my letter to Doug.
Cheers, Jean
-----E-mail d'origine-----
De : John Keller <jko...@bigpond.net.au>
A : musicn...@googlegroups.com
Envoyé le : Dimanche, 7 Mars 2010 10:28
Sujet : Re: Re : [MNP] Re: Mirck - de Buur Klavar notation
Envoyé le : Vendredi, 5 Mars 2010 20:20
jeannet...@aol.com
I think changing the size of the measure must be an exception. There
must be a real reason for it.
Stem points to the right: right hand, to the left: left hand. The
composer desides .
For duration: You are right: A note lasts to the next IN THE SAME HAND.
Greetings, Jean
-----E-mail d'origine-----
De : Marco Mascioli <marcom...@googlemail.com>
A : The Music Notation Project | Forum <musicn...@googlegroups.com>
Envoyé le : Mardi, 9 Mars 2010 14:14
Sujet : Re: Re : : [MNP] Re: Mirck - de Buur Klavar notation
Hello Jean,
Best greetings
Marco
--
John Keller
I would prefer chord notes to all be written on the same side of the stem,
EXCEPT for semitones, where they would overlap. Thus In Merck Klavar, EF
would be written on opposite sides, just as F and Gb would be.
Yes, i dont choose easy pieces, I like to challenge myself!
I was very inspired a while back with your Happy Birthday music.
In fact I have designed a whole beginners method for very young children,
using the vertical stave to begin.
Today I had a 4 yo girl who has learnt about four months, having 15 minute
lessons. We did a new song, "Big and Small", and she could read and play it
quite easily. As a reward I played and sang the song, while she did a dance
to it!
I attach the page here. As you see, I have benefitted from your ideas.
Cheers, John K
John Keller
The usual rule in TN piano music is the top stave is for the right hand,
bottom for the left. This is regardless of the clef used on each. There are
exceptions though, if top stave notes have a stem (and beam) going down to
the bottom stave, it may mean the left hand plays these notes. This is
"cross stave". Sometimes other indications are used - RH, LH or small
brackets to indicate hand groups.
In horizontal Klavar, the stem up for RH and stem down for LH could be used
consistently, even for complicated hand crossing, I would think.
Cheers, John
----- Original Message -----
From: <jeannet...@aol.com>
To: <musicn...@googlegroups.com>
Sent: Wednesday, March 10, 2010 12:51 AM
Subject: Re : : : [MNP] Re: Mirck - de Buur Klavar notation
Hi Marco,
I think changing the size of the measure must be an exception. There
must be a real reason for it.
Stem points to the right: right hand, to the left: left hand. The
composer desides .
For duration: You are right: A note lasts to the next IN THE SAME HAND.
Greetings, Jean
-----E-mail d'origine-----
De : Marco Mascioli <marcom...@googlemail.com>
A : The Music Notation Project | Forum <musicn...@googlegroups.com>
Envoy� le : Mardi, 9 Mars 2010 14:14
Hello Jean,
Best greetings
Marco
> Envoy� le : Dimanche, 7 Mars 2010 8:12
> Envoy� le : Vendredi, 5 Mars 2010 20:20
Marco Mascioli
Thank you for your clarifications.
My explanations follows.
Jean,
Regarding the size of the measures, as I said in a previous post, I am
sorry to say that I have to compromise.
I had to stop converting a Beethoven sonata because the size of the
measure was ridiculous, if I wanted to give the reader a decent chance
of reading it.
That was because few measures had long sequences of 32th.
If I applied your (or Pot's) principle about having all the measures
of the same size, I would end up with a staff containing a lot of
almost empty measures, with the music needing (really unnecessarily,
in my view) a lot of paper to be printed on. I can tell you that that
is not commercially acceptable.
Regarding the fact about who decides which hand plays a note, what you
said doesn't help a lot. You might be aware that many composers have
written their music in TN and that to these days, music is still
officially published in TN. So in the vast majority of cases we don't
have the composers' decision. Also, I might be not an expert on this,
but I do believe that composers are more interested in music rather
than playing techniques.
John,
At least my approximation wasn't too far to right thing. Of course,
the 'exceptions' are the things that bother me.
What I don't in all this "playing-hand" business is that I can't
produce a music sheet in Klavar, unless I have all the details of
which hand plays which note.
Unfortunately, from that comes the rule of where to put stops and
sustains, which must be applied to hands separately.
Your considerations really worry me, as they imply that a translation
of any piece to klavar can't be automated and there has to be a manual
intervention for checking the notes in TN in order to assign the hand
to them.
Which, in turn, means that in order to be a music publisher in klavar,
you first must be an accomplished pianist that, at least, feels
comfortable with assigning notes to hands, that is, the playing
technique, on any piece of music, modern or classic. I wouldn't dare.
I believe that I find a way to solve this problem. I have to evaluate
how fundamental those flaws in klavar are and, possibly, how to fix
them.
Regards
Marco
On 9 Mar, 13:51, jeannettedeb...@aol.com wrote:
> Hi Marco,
>
> I think changing the size of the measure must be an exception. There
> must be a real reason for it.
>
> Stem points to the right: right hand, to the left: left hand. The
> composer desides .
>
> For duration: You are right: A note lasts to the next IN THE SAME HAND.
>
> Greetings, Jean
>
> -----E-mail d'origine-----
> De : Marco Mascioli <marcomas2...@googlemail.com>
> ...
>
> read more »
Marco Mascioli
Just to say not to worry about it any more.
A better understanding of technology available and playing techniques
have helped me.
I have now a process to assign automatically hands to notes in klavar
in every case.
Regards
Marco
> ...
>
> read more »
Michael Johnston
> said doesn't help a lot.
This brought up something that I had discussed with Albert Brennink and
Tom Reed. Some composers don't care and others make a big deal of it. Mr
Brennink's edition of the Bach Orgelb�chlein (Chroma Edition, 1996)
tries to indicate what Bach's autograph showed. Sometimes, Bach used
stem direction to show voices and sometimes, especially in keyboard
music, for hands. Compare Bach's manuscript with ABC notation of Nun
komm, which is attached. Stems on the left or the right indicate left or
right hand, leaving up or down for voice leading. I used color in a
couple of pieces for this before abandoning it -- on stage, the color
was insufficient to be clear.
Anyway, I know 1996 was a long time ago, but this reminded me of it.
Cheers!
Michael
--
MICHAEL'S MUSIC SERVICE 4146 Sheridan Dr, Charlotte, NC 28205
704-567-1066 ** Please call or email us for your organ needs **
http://michaelsmusicservice.com "Organ Music Is Our Specialty"
Doug Keislar
(Brennink in this case, unless he was copying another edition) has had
to make many decisions about which hand plays which note, because that
information is not explicit in the composer's original. Piano music
*usually* has the right hand in the top staff and the left hand in the
bottom, but there are many exceptions, and I'm skeptical that a
completely automated system will always do the right thing. I don't see
how one can remove a human editor from the process. The software needs
to provide a way for a user to correct the automated "transnotation."
With luck there will not need to be frequent corrections.
Doug
Marco Mascioli
I can say that I expect from the software to "guess right" on a very
high percentage of the "controversial decisions".
The technologies used allow that.
Then I would have a very small number of cases of well identified
cases where a human intervention might be needed, but I am not worried
about that.
Moreover, it seems to me, and this debate confirms it, that there is
even little certainty about the subject on TN.
I believe that the indication of the hand in klavar was needed only to
simplify the notation, not to give information to the performer.
If it didn't have it, according to the klavar rule for releasing a
key, the notes coming from the "accompaniment staff" of TN, usually
"less dense", would probably have lots of sustain dots following them
in klavar, since the melody on the other staff is usually "more dense"
with notes, and each of them would stop the one on the other staff
from being played.
To a non expert, it looks a limit of the notation, but I am not in the
position to question any choice and, more importantly, I can't suggest
any alternative.
Marco
Doug Keislar
One question I have about Klavar is whether a given Klavar staff can have more than two "hands," by which I mean more than two distinct stems at any instant in time. I understand that Klavar is supposed to be usable for more than just the piano. How is the pedal part written in organ music? Does it require its own staff? I suppose that in orchestral scores each instrument has its own staff.
And how does Klavar indicate multiple contrapuntal voices that are played by only two hands? For example, the example that Michael sent, or any Bach keyboard piece with three or four simultaneous voices. It would be clearest to have separate stems for each voice, as in TN. Does Klavar allow that?
Doug
Marco Mascioli
I totally agree with your first point. I believe that if we wait for
the perfect solution, nothing gets done.
Fortunately, nowadays anything can be edited and re-issued in seconds.
Should the majority of performers complain about the indication on a
sheet, it's trivial to adjust it and make the new version available.
As far as the other questions are concerned, I am not in a position to
give an answer.
My level of expertise and knowledge of klavar is just not adequate.
I'd like to create a catalogue of pieces, and I am tailoring my tools
mainly towards it.
However, their design is already generic enough as it is now, I
believe.
Marco
On 10 Mar, 00:47, Doug Keislar <d...@musclefish.com> wrote:
> I think it's reasonable to say that if even in TN the reader has to decide sometimes to play something with the LH in the top staff or the RH in the bottom staff, there's no reason they shouldn't have to do the equivalent in Klavar sometimes, by considering the right-going and left-going stems as guides rather than as fixed rules.
> One question I have about Klavar is whether a given Klavar staff can have more than two "hands," by which I mean more than two distinct stems at any instant in time. I understand that Klavar is supposed to be usable for more than just the piano. How is the pedal part written in organ music? Does it require its own staff? I suppose that in orchestral scores each instrument has its own staff.
> And how does Klavar indicate multiple contrapuntal voices that are played by only two hands? For example, the example that Michael sent, or any Bach keyboard piece with three or four simultaneous voices. It would be clearest to have separate stems for each voice, as in TN. Does Klavar allow that?
> Doug
> Marco Mascioli wrote:Doug, I can say that I expect from the software to "guess right" on a very high percentage of the "controversial decisions". The technologies used allow that. Then I would have a very small number of cases of well identified cases where a human intervention might be needed, but I am not worried about that. Moreover, it seems to me, and this debate confirms it, that there is even little certainty about the subject on TN. I believe that the indication of the hand in klavar was needed only to simplify the notation, not to give information to the performer. If it didn't have it, according to the klavar rule for releasing a key, the notes coming from the "accompaniment staff" of TN, usually "less dense", would probably have lots of sustain dots following them in klavar, since the melody on the other staff is usually "more dense" with notes, and each of them would stop the one on the other staff from being played. To a non expert, it looks a limit of the notation, but I am not in the position to question any choice and, more importantly, I can't suggest any alternative. Marco On 9 Mar, 23:06, Doug Keislar<d...@musclefish.com>wrote:It seems to me, in studying the example Michael sent, that the editor (Brennink in this case, unless he was copying another edition) has had to make many decisions about which hand plays which note, because that information is not explicit in the composer's original. Piano music *usually* has the right hand in the top staff and the left hand in the bottom, but there are many exceptions, and I'm skeptical that a completely automated system will always do the right thing. I don't see how one can remove a human editor from the process. The software needs to provide a way for a user to correct the automated "transnotation." With luck there will not need to be frequent corrections. Doug Michael Johnston wrote:Regarding the fact about who decides which hand plays a note, what you said doesn't help a lot.This brought up something that I had discussed with Albert Brennink and Tom Reed. Some composers don't care and others make a big deal of it. Mr Brennink's edition of the Bach Orgelb chlein (Chroma Edition, 1996) tries to indicate what Bach's autograph showed. Sometimes, Bach used stem direction to show voices and sometimes, especially in keyboard music, for hands. Compare Bach's manuscript with ABC notation of Nun komm, which is attached. Stems on the left or the right indicate left or right hand, leaving up or down for voice leading. I used color in a couple of pieces for this before abandoning it -- on stage, the color was insufficient to be clear.Anyway, I know 1996 was a long time ago, but this reminded me of it.Cheers! Michael
Doug Keislar
http://musicnotation.org/blog/2009/11/announcing-the-music-notation-project-wiki/#comments
regarding the inventor of this notation system:
http://musicnotation.org/musicnotations/6lines.html#virtue
I had no idea who Constance Virtue was or what her background was. So she studied with the famous composer Alban Berg!
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alban_Berg
As a close associate of Schoenberg's, Berg must have been aware of Schoenberg's notation system:
http://musicnotation.org/musicnotations/3linesmajorthird.html#schoenberg
I wonder whether Virtue was, too. Anyway, her apparent training in 12-tone music was likely a factor in her decision to design a chromatic notation system. It's interesting to learn tidbits like this, since the MNP site doesn't provide biographical information.
Doug
Michael Johnston
I certainly would not have guessed that. I'm a fan of Berg, so I'll dig
around some books to see if there's anything on her there.
Peter Jackson
Klavar Music Foundation ofo GB
Marco,
The usual rule in TN piano music is the top stave is for the right hand, bottom for the left. This is regardless of the clef used on each. There are exceptions though, if top stave notes have a stem (and beam) going down to the bottom stave, it may mean the left hand plays these notes. This is "cross stave". Sometimes other indications are used - RH, LH or small brackets to indicate hand groups.
In horizontal Klavar, the stem up for RH and stem down for LH could be used consistently, even for complicated hand crossing, I would think.
Cheers, John
----- Original Message ----- From: <jeannet...@aol.com>
To: <musicn...@googlegroups.com>
Sent: Wednesday, March 10, 2010 12:51 AM
Subject: Re : : : [MNP] Re: Mirck - de Buur Klavar notation
Hi Marco,
I think changing the size of the measure must be an exception. There
must be a real reason for it.
Stem points to the right: right hand, to the left: left hand. The
composer desides .
For duration: You are right: A note lasts to the next IN THE SAME HAND.
Greetings, Jean
-----E-mail d'origine-----
De : Marco Mascioli <marcom...@googlemail.com>
A : The Music Notation Project | Forum <musicn...@googlegroups.com>
Envoyé le : Mardi, 9 Mars 2010 14:14
Envoyé le : Dimanche, 7 Mars 2010 8:12
Envoyé le : Vendredi, 5 Mars 2010 20:20
--
Marco Mascioli
Thank you for your message.
It's a pleasure to speak to you here, as a representative of the
Klavar Foundation of GB, after all the effort I put in trying to exert
the homonymous organisation in the Netherlands, as KF-GB was
constantly part of the discussions.
Ok, I accept, of course, that in order to write music, in any
notation, one must be a musician.
What I find less convincing is that in order to translate one notation
in another one must be a great musician/performer as well.
It's like saying that in order to translate the works of a great
writer in another language, the translator has to have the same kind
of talent.
Actually, translations of literary works prove that the opposite is
more often true, with translations by great writers usually of a
lesser quality than others done by less talented people, but more 'in
tune' with the spirit of the original author.
In this case we have a different 'attitude' in the two 'languages'. TN
is apparently less specific about playing techniques, leaving much of
it to the training and taste of the performers.
Klavar, instead, tries to give a stronger indication about it. As I
said in my previous message, in my opinion this is just to make the
rule 'release the key when the following note appears, unless
otherwise stated' work reasonably well. Should we apply it to both
hands at the same time rather than for each hand separately, the sheet
would become as unreadable as TN, especially for beginners.
However, in my opinion, there is a big problem with this. The problem
is that whoever 'translates' pieces of classical music, for which we
don't have sound/video recordings by the authors or their contemporary
performers, needs to put his/her interpretation of the 'handling',
which might not be evident from TN, thus adding something personal to
the description of the music, as the author published it in TN.
That brings us back to my previous assertion that, in order to
translate a piece of music to klavar, you must be an accomplished
performer/musician, probably trained for decades in TN. Very, very
unlikely to happen, as history as shown.
That's why I would decide to move as soon as possible to music that is
not likely to spark any of those kind of controversies.
Best regards
Marco
> > ----- Original Message ----- From: <jeannettedeb...@aol.com>
> > To: <musicn...@googlegroups.com>
> > Sent: Wednesday, March 10, 2010 12:51 AM
>
> > Subject: Re : : : [MNP] Re: Mirck - de Buur Klavar notation
>
> > Hi Marco,
>
> > I think changing the size of the measure must be an exception. There
> > must be a real reason for it.
>
> > Stem points to the right: right hand, to the left: left hand. The
> > composer desides .
>
> > For duration: You are right: A note lasts to the next IN THE SAME HAND.
>
> > Greetings, Jean
>
> > -----E-mail d'origine-----
> > De : Marco Mascioli <marcomas2...@googlemail.com>
> ...
>
> read more »
Doug Keislar
I suppose you would know the answers to the questions, below, that I
asked a couple of days ago. I'm especially interested in the answer to
the question in the last paragraph.
Related to that, Marco says that Klavar's continuation dots (which
indicate a note's duration) apply to all the notes connected to a stem
(i.e., all the notes of a chord that are played by one hand). Sometimes
in music two simultaneous notes played by the same hand have different
durations. How does Klavar deal with that?
Best,
Doug
Marco Mascioli
I feel that I can give an answer to the question about continuation
dots (aka 'sustains').
The general rule in Klavar says that 'a note stops to be played when
the following one, for the same hand, is indicated on the staff'.
Two exceptions, of course.
- If the first note has to stop before the following one is indicated,
a 'stop' sign, a 'V' is indicated on its line at the time when the
note has to stop.
- If the first note has to be played for longer than it would be if it
stopped when the new note appears, a 'sustain' dot is indicated on its
line at the time when the new note appears. Subsequently, the general
rule applies like for any other note.
The mentioned rules allow to deal with the case that you indicated
very easily.
In other words, you can see a klavar staff like a MIDI tablature, with
a line for each key of the piano keyboard, instead of instruments. As
in MIDI, we have the indications of the pitch and duration of each
sound.
The only difference is that, in order to be printable and readable,
some rules to indicate the duration of a note has been devised.
In essence, the general rule mentioned above is just a practical
expedient to avoid a vast number of unnecessary 'ending note' symbols.
Cheers
Marco
jeannet...@aol.com
But: No proportional pitch. No proportional timing. No continuous
stave.
I like to have them used to the whole system from the beginning.
You start vertical , but change later to horizontal. In klavar after my
first lessons
the notes become gradually smaller, but the system stays the same.
I think you have great pedagogic talent. you work as I do. But do you
have already
25,000 musicbooks in ES? like klavar?
<Notes always same side of the stem.> In Klavar all white notes are
always below the stem.
In my version the blacks also. Exception made: if there are black and
white notes on the stem
the blacks go up. So in the case of EF or BC I think we must not
make an exception:
both downwards. The possibility exists that they overlap half. I do not
think I ever met this possibility,
Cheers, Jean
-----E-mail d'origine-----
De : John Keller <jko...@bigpond.net.au>
A : musicn...@googlegroups.com
Envoyé le : Mardi, 9 Mars 2010 15:05
Sujet : Re: : [MNP] Re: Mirck - de Buur Klavar notation
jeannet...@aol.com
continue.
So for a chord of three notes, you need three dots.
The same for the stop-sign.
Jean
-----E-mail d'origine-----
De : Doug Keislar <do...@musclefish.com>
A : musicn...@googlegroups.com
Envoyé le : Jeudi, 11 Mars 2010 20:06
Sujet : [MNP] for Peter Jackson [Re: Left & Right Indications for
Keyboard]
John Keller
Pitch does become proportional, but i found it better to separate the lines
a little more to begin, so the kid can see it better when it changes from 3
black group to 2 black group. And I start with just one line and gradually
add the others.
Have you tried your horizontal Mirck Klavar with any students?
I do not have 25,000 ES pieces of course, but I can make them quite quickly!
I have a lot of current pop songs requested by students, currently working
on an arrangement of "Fireflies" which is very popular at the moment. The
available sheet music is never a good arrangement for piano, so the hardest
part is making the nice arrangement, not translating the notation.
Regarding timing, I agree to is good to show the lengths of notes
proportionally and I try to do this.
I am aiming to teach both ES and TN in my latest book. In the past I have
taught TN first and then taught some advanced students to read ES as well.
But sometimes this has confused a kid because it takes so much constant
drill to teach them TN bass and treble. So I am now trying the ES first, as
a way to introduce the idea that they CAN read notation. I also have
different ES clef signs now, so that when I introduce the TN treble clef
they will ask what it means, and know it is different to the ES "bird" clef.
Cheers, John K
----- Original Message -----
From: <jeannet...@aol.com>
To: <musicn...@googlegroups.com>
Cheers, Jean
Envoy� le : Mardi, 9 Mars 2010 15:05
Peter Jackson
If you read Dutch ; or even if you do not I suggest you get hold of good samples of Klavar music. The best guide is the large volume call Algemene Muziekleer.Klavar Catalogue no.12600 by W.A. Kaasjager. It gives examples of everything in Klavar you need to know.
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Michael Johnston
challenges for me. The left to right pattern is firmly etched in my
head, it seems. But, I am trying!
In the organ sample, is *every* note in the pedal indicated as played by
the left foot? If I understand the stem direction correctly, is that
really the intent?
> 3. Bach type voices.
What is this? Contrapuntal? I think it means simply independent voices.
We used to have an inventor who spoke Dutch, Andre, but I don't think he
reads the messages any more.
Marco Mascioli
Thank you.
- I have to tell you that I am not flying very high. The basics of the
notation are more than enough for me. 100% compliance with Pot's or
Jean's indications is not my first goal. Compliance with the
suggestions by MNP are far more important to me. In the world of
classical music, I am through and just to cut costs. If my software
can't convert automatically some pieces of music and/or render them in
a way that it's usable for the segment of the market which I want to
address, so be it. Also, I am going for the horizontal staff.
- Klavar Music Writer. I know your software and during our
investigation we considered it, but there are some issues with it.
1. It requires a manual effort, and that's far from ideal. Nowadays
you have to have the (financial and technical) resources to be able to
achieve a catalogue of 2000 in 12 months at most, with the right type
of music for the right people, in order to at least be on the map.
Even at this early stage, we have the potential to achieve around 120
per month. As a side note, in another thread of this group I have read
Jean saying that there are more than 20000 pieces in Klavar (Pot's
vertical version). I disagree. While evaluating what to do for KF-NL
we studied their catalogue very carefully indeed. There might be 20000
on a list, but a very generous estimate, by someone far more competent
than me, put the figure of sellable stuff in the real world of today
at around 1000. However, when I saw the list, my figure would be even
lower. That's why I decided to do something about it.
2. It doesn't work unless you have a real MIDI instrument connected.
It would be extremely beneficial as an editor, and we already
considered using it, as I am not someone who likes to reinvent the
wheel, but it would be much more usable if it worked with the PC
internal MIDI software synthesizer, which it has been there for ages
now. At least we would be able to compare it with Klavarscript. I have
used the MIDI interface for KLAVAR! on PC, MAC and I am doing it on
Linux. It shouldn't be a major change for you.
Best regards
Marco
On 13 Mar, 13:56, Peter Jackson <petersjack...@gmail.com> wrote:
> Hi Marco,
>
> I am attaching some scanned Klavar music to illustrate the answer to the
> queries you mentioned
> 1. Continuation dots 2. Extra voices (ensembles) 3. Bach type voices.
> Jean has already clarified the continuation dot problem . A continuation
> refers only to the one note that lies directly in the path of the dot. If
> you need to sustain 2 notes then use 2 dots.
>
> If you read Dutch ; or even if you do not I suggest you get hold of good
> samples of Klavar music. The best guide is the large volume call Algemene
> Muziekleer.Klavar Catalogue no.12600 by W.A. Kaasjager. It gives examples of
> everything in Klavar you need to know.
>
> You may be able to get help from Mr Leunis *Padmos* at email address:
> leu...@hetnet.nl or by post at Waalstraat 41
> 3181 ES Rozenburg (ZH). He has produced a folder called DE BRUG NAAR KLAVAR
> a pretty comprehensive description of the Notation. I was last in touch with
> him 10 years ago.......
>
> My transcribing program *Klavar Music Writer *may be of interest to you; it
> can be linked to an electronic keyboard. It is a brilliant program. I have
> used it for 20 years ( different versions) and have transcribed over 2000
> pieces of music with it. It is a free download from our website,http://www.klavarmusic.org/
> continuation dots.mdi
> 153KViewDownload
>
> Organ sample klavar.jpg
> 1183KViewDownload
Peter Jackson
jeannet...@aol.com
The Klavar-catalogue for piano has over 25,000 numbers. Any classical
piece
and very much religious music is immediately availible, and a lot of
folk- and modern songs,
lesson-books, many books with simplified music or simple music for
beginners or children ....
A catalogue-number can be a musical work, but also a book or an album:
By heart I can mention: an album of over 100 wellknown American songs;
idem Dutch songs; Volks-, Trink- und Wanderlieder (German);
also one book of about 900 religious songs (Dutch); and many many
more.....
This all contains an estimated 200,000 pieces!!
The only genre not so much represented are modern songs as there are
copyrights to be payed.
This is only paying if you can sell a great number.
If your aim is to edit only "sellable stuff in the real world of today"
and make a profit of it,
I think you should make very good calculations. This sort of music is
very ephemeral, and
you must be well informed about the copyrights you will have to pay!!!
I have still a question for you:
You tallk about a klavar interface for PC for midi.
Can you tell me how I can do this on my PC, when I connect the PC via
midi with my electric keyboard?
Thank you in advance.
Greetings,
Jean
-----E-mail d'origine-----
De : Marco Mascioli <marcom...@googlemail.com>
A : The Music Notation Project | Forum <musicn...@googlegroups.com>
Envoyé le : Samedi, 13 Mars 2010 18:20
Sujet : [MNP] Re: for Peter Jackson [Re: Left & Right Indications for
Keyboard]
Marco Mascioli
Hi Jean,
I don't want to start an argument, also because I am not an expert.
However, I can assure you that the person that did the evaluation of
the catalogue is in the 'klavar world' since a long time, more or less
like yourself, judging from what you wrote in other posts. He is very
passionate about the klavar notation and he knows almost everything
in the Klavar world inside-out.
But it's not my or his opinion that counts, it's the evidence from the
sales department that speaks volumes.
I kindly invite you to re-read your post. Religious songs? German,
Dutch and American popular songs? I really hope that you don't really
believe that you can make any notation survive today on that
catalogue!
I'll give you an example. How 'sellable' is the version for church
organ of 'Happy Xmas' from John Lennon&Yoko Ono? You might want to
count it in your 200000 pieces, but please don't tell me to include it
in my 1000!
Yes, l know very well how the music industry works and how expensive
the licensing printed music can be, but I also know that there are
opportunities out there that can be exploited.
I might well fail to do anything significant, as it's always the most
likely outcome in businesses, but I want to give some of my time to
the project so that I can feel that I have done something 'new'.
Regarding the MIDI interface, I am sorry but I can't help, but I think
that others in this group are better qualified than me. I have no
experience at all in connecting instruments to computers, as I am only
a software engineer. What I have done, as others have, is to create
software on PCs that plays MIDI from a klavar staff without the need
of any hardware component.
Best regards
I know how the licensing of modern music works and I know that
publishing pieces of music can cost a lot of money.
> De : Marco Mascioli <marcomas2...@googlemail.com>
Michael Johnston
> pedal notes always points to the left
Yes, that's why I asked about it. It looks odd and inconsistent in an
otherwise consistent notation.
> and the left foot is used most of the time.
Actually, no! You wouldn't say that the left hand is used "most of the
time" and the same is true in conventional organ literature. Now, in the
world of the cinema organ or jazz with Hammonds, that's true -- but they
mostly play by improvisation and don't need notation. Ironic, huh?
> ^ is placed to the right of the note. a "u" shape can also be used
These are traditional pedaling marks, of course used with TN. I was
thinking that the stem direction would be or might be used to indicate
the same thing, removing the need for these marks. Left/right hand,
left/right foot -- this would appear to be the perfect chance for symmetry.
Is there a Klavar sample of Nun komm from the Orgelbuechlein? That would
match the one I posted from Brennink's ABC Notation.
Peter Jackson
Best wishes
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Doug Keislar
Thanks for posting those images of Klavar! Very useful. The straight (diagonal) lines indicating voice-leading are interesting.
Regarding the stem direction in the pedal part, it seems to me, as someone with quite limited organ experience, that foot indications for the organ pedals -- whether right vs. left foot, or toe vs. heel -- are usually analogous to fingering for a single hand, since the pedal usually is playing a single musical voice and there's often more than one way to choose to play a note. For beginners, marking every single note with an indication of how to play it can be useful, whether the note is played by the hand or the foot. For more advanced players, it can be annoying. So I'd go with the notion that the Klavar stems' all pointing one direction was done for simplicity, giving the player the choice rather than having the editor dictate it for every single note. A lot less work for the editor, too, since deciding the pedaling would require more thought than the simple decision to give notes in TN's top (RH) staff a rightward stem in Klavar and notes in the staff below that (LH) a leftward stem.
Doug
Michael Johnston
Here's a sample of a piece from 1915 by Pietro Yon, organist at St
Patrick's Cathedral, New York City. Notice the stem direction for the
different feet. He also used the standard heel & toe marks as well.
> deciding the pedaling would require more thought than the simple
> decision to give notes in TN's top RH) staff a rightward stem
> in Klavar and notes in the staff below that (LH) a leftward stem.
Yes! The Dupre edition of Bach is so heavily edited this way that many
don't like for this alone. And, for great works such as Art of Fugue,
there is *no* way to tell what was desired because Bach wrote it on 4
separate staves. Of course, people could play keyboards reading from
open score (I had to do this to pass a test in college in the late
1970s; I wonder if they still require it today.) but some of things
simply cannot be played. In a couple of instances, the notes go off the
ends of the keyboards. Franck and Rachmaninoff were famous for writing
things that required spans of up to a 12th. Ouch. But hey, they could do
it, so why not us? <g>
Anyway, for my part, any AN should be able to accommodate the
specialties of an instrument, such as pedalling for organ, or harmonics
for guitar, or various articulations for strings, or harp nail plucks,
etc. It seems to me that Klavar could do this easily unless there's a
rule about stem direction that's specifically for pedals.
It might be useful to see how Klavar would handle double stops on
violins and violas, or maybe Bach's cello suite:
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/9/9c/Bachs1a.gif
In the MS (link above) and in the printed edition (attached), there are
stems up and stems down near the end of the page. There must be a reason
that is particular to the cello for this because they don't indicate
voices in that there is only one voice here. Double stops come later.
Would Klavar honor this or would the editor/transnotator just smooth it
out? If anyone here can explain the purpose of this, I'd love to know,
just as a point of trivia.
Doug Keislar
(up and down stems), but if I had to guess, I'd point out that this
split happens right when the cello starts playing repeated notes (three
A's in a row), and ends right when it stops doing that. So maybe Bach
was emphasizing that these repeated notes were not to be tied or even
slurred (bowed in the same direction) but played with alternating bow
direction.
It's interesting that the edited version (the PDF) puts only one stem on
each of these notes, but Bach's original MS has two stems (one up and
one down) on the notes that appear to be in two voices.
There doesn't seem to be any musical reason to consider this passage to
suddenly be in two voices rather than one, so my guess is the composer
is emphasizing the articulation and a desire to have the performer make
each of the repeated notes quite distinct.
Doug
Michael Johnston wrote:
> [...]
John Keller
up notes are open A string, the down stem notes fingered on the D string.
(Cello strings are C G D A going up, same as on viola)
Ive played the viola version of this piece.
John K
----- Original Message -----
From: "Doug Keislar" <do...@musclefish.com>
To: <musicn...@googlegroups.com>
Sent: Wednesday, March 17, 2010 6:56 AM
Subject: Re: [MNP] Re: for Peter Jackson [Re: Left & Right Indications for
Keyboard]
Michael Johnston
Brilliant!
This is another use of stem direction for me. It's actually really clear
now that you mention it. Thanks!
Troy
Hi Marco,
Another solution I would like to propose is to return to the use of
traditional rhythmic notation.
The traditional rhythmic notation, I find, is the most condensed and
compendious way of representing the rhythm of a music piece.
After all, it has only been tried and tested in the last couple of
centuries. Another advantage of this system is that you can cleanly
represent different "voices" or "layers" on single staff.
In learning a piece of music in standard notation, I find that the one
thing that gives me the most grief is locating the correct pitches.
The rhythm can usually be deciphered pretty easily unless it is a very
advanced piece involving N-tuples and polyrhythms and such.
I do not think the proportional way of showing rhythm has any distinct
advantage over the traditional rhythmic notation when presented to
someone without a sense for metre and pulse, and could not audiate
basic rhythmic patterns.
Have you seen the Ambrose Piano Tabs program? It uses traditional
rhythmic notation. It might perhaps give you some ideas for your own
software. You can see a screenshot of it from the following URL:
http://www.ambrosepianotabs.com/Content.aspx?id=37
Regards,
Troy
~~~
On Mar 4, 2:07 pm, Marco Mascioli <marcomas2...@googlemail.com> wrote:
> Hi Doug,
>
> I certainly will.
>
> What I found quite challenging with proportional notations is that,
> provided that the staff has to be easily readable, as this is the main
> purpose, the amount of paper needed is much bigger when we have
> measures with short notes.
>
> Taking it to the extremes, if we have a piece of music with quarters
> in all measures but for some that contains some 32th(s), if I want to
> keep the strict proportional representation of the time, I would have
> many unnecessarily almost empty measures on the paper.
>
> What I have done in my software is to render the measures in such a
> way that each of them is proportionate to the shortest note contained
> in the measure. This saves room on the paper.
> Of course, this has also the consequence that not every measure has
> the same length; however, the indication of the beats inside the
> measure, as in standard Klavar notation, should help the reader to
> interpret the duration of the notes correctly.
>
> I would be extremely grateful for any comment or suggestion.
>
> Marco
>
> On 4 Mar, 18:28, Doug Keislar <d...@musclefish.com> wrote:
>
> > Hi Marco,
> > It is interesting that your first choice was DA Music. Did you look at Isomorph? It has a very similar staff to DA Music, and similar notehead coloring (6-6), but otherwise is virtually identical to Klavar, with the same rhythm notation, notehead style, placement of stems, etc. (These features borrowed from Klavar are not visible in the presentation on the MNP site.)
> > It would be great if the software you're developing is designed in such a way as to simplify switching to notation systems that have other staff line patterns and other choices of notehead coloring. I don't think those features would require different fonts. I'm not saying that other notation systems should be supported at first, just that it would be nice to structure the software in a way that doesn't preclude making those kinds of changes later if desired. http://musicnotation.org/musicnotations/3linesmajorthird.html#pot
> > 6-6 Klavar by Cornelis Pot (the inventor of Klavar), in a variant rotated 90 degrees, is another system that should be easy to accommodate if the software was flexible with regard to staff lines and notehead color, because it has the same rhythmic scheme as Klavar.
> > I would think that supporting traditional rhythmic notation, as in DA Music, would be at least as difficult a challenge as supporting different fonts. With Klavar and its variants mentioned above, you don't have to worry as much about algorithms for spacing notes, since the spacing is proportional.
> > Anyway, it's great to hear you're developing this software. Please keep us informed of your progress!
> > Best regards,
> > Doug
> > Marco Mascioli wrote:Hi Paul, Thank you for your help. I was already aware of the links. My replies to your questions follow."Will it be available to anyone, and how?"It's still a matter of our internal debate. Releasing it as a product would be a big commitment. At the very least, we would need time to support users via the Internet and we are not fully convinced (yet) that the general conditions of the market for music in alternative notations justifies the effort. Also, there are some licensing issues with some development tools that have to be addressed before reaching a decision. But we are open to suggestions.Will it be just for the vertically oriented Klavar staff, or horizontal as well?After reading about the "certified" alternative notations on musicnotation.org, we decided to go for the horizontal staff. Actually, the deBuur-Mirck variant of klavarskribo was our second choice.My preferred choice would have been the DA notation by Rich Reed. His experiences around the US show that the main problem with the traditional notation are flats and sharps in the key that confuse the beginners, not the time division or the orientation of the staff, and I totally agree with that. However, writing a program to translate the traditional notation to DA would have been more problematic, as we would have faced several typographical problems about fonts and music symbols. All the currently available fonts are adjusted for the traditional notation and we didn't want to go for the creation of fonts appropriate for DA.Is it connected with any of the three applications for Klavar listed on the MNP's Software page? (KlavarScript, Klavar Music Writer, KLAVAR!)The simple answer is no, it isn't. The more articulated answer is that it is definitely linked to KLAVAR!, but only because I am developing it. All the programs that you mentioned are for composers. Klavarscript is more oriented to the professionals, whereas KLAVAR! can be seen more as an educational tool for beginners. What we are doing now is an application to print music sheets. Best regards Marco On 4 Mar, 15:05, Paul W Morris<paulwmor...@gmail.com>wrote:Hi Marco, Welcome to the group! As best I recall the Mirck version follows Klavar in every way except for the differences described on the MNP's website. Hopefully Jean will get back to you and confirm, but that's what I recall. Some links to several Klavar sites can be found here:http://musicnotation.org/musicnotations/morenotations.htmlI would be interested to hear more about the software you're working on. Will it be available to anyone, and how? Will it be just for the vertically oriented Klavar staff, or horizontal as well? Is it connected with any of the three applications for Klavar listed on the MNP's Software page? (KlavarScript, Klavar Music Writer, KLAVAR!)http://musicnotation.org/software/index.htmlAll the best, Paul Morris On Wed, Mar 3, 2010 at 1:55 PM, Marco Mascioli<marcomas2...@googlemail.com>wrote:Doug,Much appreciated, thank you.Should she reply privately, I'll ask for permission to publish the reply here. 'Googling' doesn't help answering my questions, as the website where the notation used to be explained is now down.Best regardsMarcoOn 3 Mar, 17:52, Doug Keislar<d...@musclefish.com>wrote:Marco,Thanks for your interesting post. I'm unsure whether Jean de Buur is still reading the messages posted to this group, so I've forwarded your message below to her. I hope she will reply to the group, so we can see her answers to your questions.Best regards, DougMarco Mascioli wrote:Hello,This my first post, so I'll introduce myself.I am a software consultant that is currently working on a process to streamline the translation from traditional music notation to the Klavar notation.In particular, after some experiments and assessments, we have finalized our choice using the variant of the notation mentioned in the subject.The process is in its final stages and we would be able to start the production of a catalogue of pieces in a very short period of time.However, we could only find a brief description of the notation on musicnotation.org and that raised some questions which I would like to ask Mrs de Buur, who could be on this group.There are questions about how to handle stops and sustains, the indication of the hand to use and other things. Apart from the positioning of the notes on the staff and its different size for the B/ C E/F keys, is it everything else the same as the traditional Klavar notation?Any help would be greatly appreciated....
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