Contradicting criteria 2 and 10 on musicnotationproject.org

[Pashkuli Keyboard]

I write this to point out an observation I think needs more clarification, regarding the Criteria on musicnotation.org.
I think there is a contradiction between two of your Criteria, namely Criteria 2 and Criteria 10.

*** Attention: Contradicting criteria ***
Criteria 2
The notation can be written conveniently and quickly with nothing more than a writing tool (such as a pencil) without the absolute necessity of a ruler or other drawing aids or specially prepared paper.
Criteria 10
No more than five identical, successive, and equidistant staff lines are shown, so that staff lines can be quickly identified without counting lines.
*** Attention: Contradicting criteria ***

If there are going to be lines drawn (as on a staff), this usually requires a ruler (to draw the straight lines of the staff) or more likely (always actually nowadays) a specially prepared paper with the engraved staff lines on the blank sheet or the corresponding pre-rendered staff on a computer screen.

[Douglas Keislar]

I can answer this one, as I remember discussing it with Tom Reed, the founder of the Music Notation Modernization Association. Criterion #10 does not imply that the notation system must use staff lines, although most do. It just states that if the system does use consecutive staff lines, there should be more than five without some sort of break in the pattern. And the key wording in Criterion #2 is "without the absolute necessity," which implies that a ruler can be very useful but is not *completely* necessary for handwriting music in the notation system. I have on occasion drawn staff lines by hand, without a ruler, on paper or a chalkboard when notating short sections of music for some purpose. It doesn't mean that one would expect to do that when preparing a long piece of music or when making a professional-looking presentation of the music. The main purpose of the criterion was to filter out systems that cannot communicate musical ideas without using technology (other than a single old-fashioned tool such as a pen or pencil), and this was to ensure that no one in the world is excluded because of poverty.

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[Douglas Keislar]

P.S. Criterion #2 also includes this wording:

In other words, a plain piece of paper and a pencil, or a chalkboard and chalk should be sufficient for quickly notating music in the notation if desired.

The word "quickly" here implies that one can write short musical passages this way, to communicate some musical idea or a short excerpt -- not a long piece of music, where of course it would be tedious to write in a staff-based system without a ruler (not to mention pre-printed manuscript paper).

[Pashkuli Keyboard]

Hi, Doug

Yes, I understand now. I just got much more attached to the words "quick" and "lines". Certainly there could be '0 lines' as in my PMN system.

Indeed if one stretches the word "quick", they can trace lines carefully enough across the width of a page (A4 or even A3).

And Music can be composed in small chunks, that is true also. But since Bach and around his time he had to use a rastrum (special pen, fork-like tool) to trace staff lines presumably to save time and consequently to have such papers prepared beforehand, I assumed that is the 'general' method of writing music with a 'pen and paper' as it is the way musicians did since the inventing of the printing press (although it was probably too expensive back then and not so much accessible).

Nowadays musicians by 'specially prepared score papers' though, so that they do not have to use rastrum or 'waste time' tracing (identical\parallel) lines by hand (presumably excluding dashed\dotted lines).

I also assumed that since music is a creative endeavour and can happen "at any time", no musician would be willing to risk "musical ideas flying away" simply because first they have to trace staff lines (regardless 1, 2… or 5).

Thus most musicians would trace staff lines on paper in their non-creative time, thus making a 'specially prepared paper' just in case "sudden moments of inspiration" happen. That is the point of view from which I interpreted the Criteria.