New Klavarskribo version idea

[Antoon Dekker]

I created a new version of Klavarskribo. Like Mirck's version it is pitch proportional. But in contrast to Mirck's version, the placing of the head (up/down) is strictly determined by the the odd or even position within the chromatic scale. Please have a look in my attachments. 

Because of the resemblance between the keyboard and the bars (pattern and orientation) it will be easy and intuitive to read it for keyboard instrument, but also because of the strict equal distance between intervals, the reading of intervals will be improved in respect to other Klavarskribo versions. What do you think of this?

[Joseph Austin]

Personally:

1. I think the original KS has a lot of advantages for the standard piano, in that it exactly matches the instrument,

which is **not** purely pitch-proportional.   And of course, it allows sheet music to be mechanically produced.

2. I think your 6-6 version has an advantage for a 6-6 or Janko keyboard.

A primary consideration for the Janko keyboard is distinguishing which whole-tone row the given note is on.

The  “opposite-side-of-the-stem” rule is ideal for this, as it gives an intuitive visual indication.

For Janko, however, there is little merit in the Klavar staff or the 7-5 coloring.

In my opinion, these not only distract from, but actually obscure, the isomorphism of 6-6.

I’d consider a “muto” staff (two lines a tritone apart) and a coloring based on three colors, e.g. the coloring proposed by Roy Pertchik.

Joe Austin

On Jul 21, 2015, at 9:24 AM, Antoon Dekker <antoon...@gmail.com> wrote:

I created a new version of Klavarskribo. Like Mirck's version it is pitch proportional. But in contrast to Mirck's version, the placing of the head (up/down) is strictly determined by the the odd or even position within the chromatic scale. Please have a look in my attachments. 

Because of the resemblance between the keyboard and the bars (pattern and orientation) it will be easy and intuitive to read it for keyboard instrument, but also because of the strict equal distance between intervals, the reading of intervals will be improved in respect to other Klavarskribo versions. What do you think of this?

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[Doug Keislar]

Hi Antoon,

This is an interesting variant; thanks for sharing it!  It is sort of between Klavar and Isomorph.  The staff and the notehead coloring are like Klavar, whereas the consistent shape of intervals and chords (in either of two mirrored forms) is very much like Isomorph:

http://musicnotation.org/system/isomorph-notation-by-tadeusz-wojcik/
http://musicnotation.org/pdf/comparisons/Triads.pdf
http://musicnotation.org/pdf/comparisons/JazzChords.pdf

Your choice of putting the C whole-tone scale above the stem (and the Db whole-tone scale below the stem) corresponds very closely to what Bart Willemse calls the
"Alternative Balanced keyboard layout (F-based)":
http://www.balanced-keyboard.com/Layout.aspx
and which is the layout I prefer for a 2-row 6-6 keyboard. Your major triads (for example) look just the way they do on such a keyboard (just as with regular Klavar the shapes of the chords mimic their shape on the conventional keyboard).

Doug

On 7/21/15 6:24 AM, Antoon Dekker wrote:

I created a new version of Klavarskribo. Like Mirck's version it is pitch proportional. But in contrast to Mirck's version, the placing of the head (up/down) is strictly determined by the the odd or even position within the chromatic scale. Please have a look in my attachments. 

Because of the resemblance between the keyboard and the bars (pattern and orientation) it will be easy and intuitive to read it for keyboard instrument, but also because of the strict equal distance between intervals, the reading of intervals will be improved in respect to other Klavarskribo versions. What do you think of this?

[John Keller]

Yes I like this idea, seeing how the major chord shape is consistent, and how nicely all the clusters fit together. 

By the way there is a little mistake in the last interval. 5th should be tritone or else the depiction is wrong.

Cheers,

John K

Express Stave

[Joseph Austin]

On closer examination of your “full scale” examples, perhaps clarification is needed regarding the exact meaning of  “the placing of the head (up/down) is strictly determined by the the odd or even position within the chromatic scale.”

Of course, there is no “THE” chromatic scale, but 12 different versions.

And in isomorphic ET notation, a “signature” is not strictly necessary.

But it seems it would be necessary to indicate the key on which the stem-side is based,

and presumably the stem-side would remain the same as long as the signature is in force.

So suppose a song temporarily modulates into another key, say from C to G, without changing signature.

In that case, I’d assume you would retain the “C-scale” positioning, which would reverse the side of the notes relative to the key of G.

The other option, of course, is to **always** put Bb C D E F# G#  on say the top and Eb F G A B C# on the bottom, but your examples suggest this is not your intent.

Joe Austin

[Doug Keislar]

Joe,

I believe that Antoon's system is an absolute-pitch system, not a system relative to a tonic or signature.

You wrote:

The other option, of course, is to **always** put Bb C D E F# G#  on say the top and Eb F G A B C# on the bottom, but your examples suggest this is not your intent.

but I don't see any place in the examples where this is not the case.  Can you point it out?

Doug

[Joseph Austin]

Doug,

My apologies to Antoon,

You are correct, all examples are absolute pitch with C on top.

I thought I had checked for that but I must have mis-read it before.

So this notation makes a fixed mapping to a Janko instrument,

which is an advantage for curriculum development.

[Of course, I would prefer a mechanism other than 7-5 coloring to identify the pitches on the Janko instrument,

but that’s another issue.]

Joe Austin

[Antoon Dekker]

In the prelude example I made some mistakes with the head positions (c basses). Maybe that was the cause of the confusion.

I'm wondering whether the c header up position is best for Janko keyboards or that I should swap all header in order to get c header down?

In included the same examples with corrections (still with c-heads up).

Doug,

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[Paul Morris]

Hi Antoon,

Thanks for sharing your new version of Klavarskribo.  It definitely succeeds in making the appearance of intervals more consistent (easier to recognize, easier to read) while retaining Klavarscribo’s close connection with the traditional keyboard.  The lines/spaces and black/white notes still match the traditional keyboard's layout and coloring, and the position of the notes on the stem provide consistent interval patterns.  Basically, your system offers both a 7-5 pattern and 6-6 pattern, whereas standard Klavarscribo just has a very strong 7-5 pattern.  

An extra benefit, that you can see in your illustration, is that you can have pitch-proportionality with no notes colliding (namely E-F, and B-C).  

More below…

On Jul 21, 2015, at 1:49 PM, Joseph Austin <drtec...@gmail.com> wrote:

1. I think the original KS has a lot of advantages for the standard piano, in that it exactly matches the instrument, which is **not** purely pitch-proportional.   

[…]

2. I think your 6-6 version has an advantage for a 6-6 or Janko keyboard.  A primary consideration for the Janko keyboard is distinguishing which whole-tone row the given note is on.  The  “opposite-side-of-the-stem” rule is ideal for this, as it gives an intuitive visual indication.

Hi Joe,  These statements suggest that you may think Antoon’s version of Klavarscribo is better for a 6-6 / Janko keyboard, but not necessarily for a traditional keyboard.  

However, I think using his notation system might really help people learn the traditional keyboard in terms of intervals and interval patterns — helping them read and play by intervals (as opposed to reading and playing by individual notes).  This is a benefit of having a 6-6 pattern (or other isomorphic pattern, like 4-4-4), regardless of the instrument, even if it isn’t pitch-proportional, and maybe especially if it isn’t pitch-proportional.

Having a close correspondence with a particular instrument (like tablature does) is particularly helpful in the earliest stages, when you are still learning the mapping between the notes on the staff and the notes on the instrument.  Once you have learned that mapping, that correspondence isn’t as important.  In the long run, it’s more important to be able to clearly see the interval relationships between the notes, which gives you more insight into music and its patterns.  (In a sense it lets you read and play at a higher level of abstraction.)  At that point music notation becomes a tool for thinking, a means for understanding and internalizing music, in addition to a means for playing the right notes.  

Ok, getting off my soapbox now…  just wanted to say that close correspondence between notation and instrument is not necessarily always a good thing.  It is arguably more important to have a close connection between notation and interval patterns, even when playing instruments that aren’t isomorphic, and maybe especially for those instruments.

Ok, really stopping now!

Cheers,

-Paul

See also:

http://musicnotation.org/tutorials/reading-playing-music-intervals/

[gguitarwilly]

Hi Paul,

You describe one of the many difficulties in the quest for alternative notations; there are different motivations for people to occupy themselves with AN. Some may simply want to an easy way to write down which piano key to hit when. Others take a more theoretical point of view, or want to extend the possibilities of communicating musical ideas on paper. And as you write, a beginner has different requirements than an advanced musician, say a jazz piano player or a composer. For more advanced players, seeing structure and doing away with redundant visual information becomes important.

Yet another requirement might be the use of a single notation on different instruments. I started out using Clairnote for Janko, but tried it as an alternative for guitar TAB. And although at the moment Tab is easier to read, the Clairnote transcriptions have made me play my guitar pieces on Janko keyboard, which I wouldn't be able to do using Tab.

I also found that on my other uniform keyboard (C-system accordion), the interval-based Clairnote notation really helps finding your way around the keyboard. As a matter of fact, I may start out on any note and play the piece, and never bother which note names I'm playing; I'm simply hopping from interval to interval, making Clairnote a completely self-transposing notation.

For a Janko keyboard therefore I would recommend Clairnote or another uniform notation over any Klavar-like notation. Imagine someone starting out musical education on Janko piano; why use anything resembling a piano keyboard as notation template?

cheers, Willem

Op woensdag 22 juli 2015 16:52:52 UTC+2 schreef Paul Morris:

[Joseph Austin]

Antoon, 

I also thank you for sharing your version of KS (DKS).

You may know that I recently acquired a Janko keyboard (of sorts) and so have more than a theoretical interest in notations applicable to Janko.

The positional relation to the Janko whole-tone rows is directly analogous to the positional relationship of the rows themselves, which I believe is an even stronger than the color or shape relationship used in some other notations.  My only reluctance, and this is not meant as criticism, is that every note requires two note-widths of space.  (Well, maybe not every note, but I think it would end up easier to always allow two widths than try to determine when one was enough.)

As for your question of whether C should be on top or bottom,

the original 6-row Janko piano appears to have CDE on the bottom row and FGAB on the top row;

Daskin and Lippens have C on the bottom.

But Roy Pertchik’s Vibraphone and the Chromatone use the opposite order.

Whichever you pick, half the scales will be “upside down”.

I don’t know how you could come up with a “rational” argument for one vs. the other,

but I’ll vote for CDE on the bottom and FGAB on the top!

As for your KS for the piano, I agree with Paul, that it is worthwhile to show intervalic relationship even for a 7-5 instrument.  What makes your notation so useful in that regard is the head position conveys the intervalic info while the color retains the traditional keyboard relationship.

I’m also quite a fan of Roy Pertchik’s tri-color notation and believe a tri-color version of DKS would be quite useful for his instrument, and theory presentations as well. Of course, tri-color would remove the connection to the piano.

So, is there software available to create DKS?

You may know that I had tried to create KS as a text file.

I suppose I’ll get around to trying again,

but I’ve been favoring my own notation, ChromaTonnetz.

Joe Austin

[Doug Keislar]

I don’t know how you could come up with a “rational” argument for one vs. the other,

but I’ll vote for CDE on the bottom and FGAB on the top!

I vote for the opposite (CDE on top).  Here is my "rational" argument:

For a multi-row (Janko) keyboard it is probably arbitrary; there may not be a rational argument.

But when designing a two-row 6-6 keyboard, there is an analogous question of whether CDE should be in the top row or the bottom row.
Putting C in the top row leaves 7 of the 12 keys in the same position as on the traditional keyboard.  Putting C in the bottom row leaves only 5 keys in the same position as the traditional keyboard.  If you already know how to play the traditional keyboard, it is easier to learn the arrangement that has more keys in the same place.  (Or if you don't already know it, it's easier to learn it, later, after learning this arrangement.)

And having the CDE above the stem in Dekker's notation allows the notation to visually mimic what I have just argued is the superior design for a two-row 6-6 keyboard.  The higher position makes the notes and chords look similar to how they appear on the keyboard, viewing the keyboard from the front rather than with a bird's-eye view.  (This is analogous to a reason for having the black keys above the stem in Klavar.)

I realize that some people have argued that a two-row 6-6 keyboard should have C in the bottom row.  Their only rationale seems more sentimental and less rational than mine:  people like to find C on the bottom row, as it is on a traditional keyboard.  I would argue that it's more important to make the keyboard easy to learn than to make it appealing to traditionalists at first glance. (On a second glance, they'll discover that F through B are in their usual places.)

Doug

[Doug Keislar]

My only reluctance, and this is not meant as criticism, is that every note requires two note-widths of space.  (Well, maybe not every note, but I think it would end up easier to always allow two widths than try to determine when one was enough.)

Joe, do you mean "two note-heights of space," rather than note-widths?  It's a vertically oriented staff.  Your comment confused me, but then I realized it makes sense if you're talking about the fact that simultaneous notes from different whole-tone scales don't appear at the same vertical position in the score.

In Klavar, the note's timing is determined by the stem position, not the notehead's position.  As John Keller and others have observed, this can make melodies look rhythmically strange to anyone accustomed to looking primarily at the noteheads (as in TN).

Doug

On 7/22/15 2:50 PM, Joseph Austin wrote:

[Antoon Dekker]

Hi Joe,

Actually there is a program, Klavarscript, that can read midi and xml. The data is transformed to KS and can be edited. The data is only stored in midi with KS specific symbols.

Since I can't add my own graphical data, and some edit functions are too cumbersome, I decided to make a converter (in C++) that converts MusicXML to svg graphical data.

I will try to add a KS midi read option as well,

It will be a piece of cake to modify the output for DKS.

I'm interested in the way you create KS. Can you give me a hint?

Cheers,

Antoon

[Joseph Austin]

do you mean "two note-heights of space," rather than note-widths?  It's a vertically oriented staff.

Yes, for a vertical staff, I should have said “two notehead heights”.

it makes sense if you're talking about the fact that simultaneous notes from different whole-tone scales don't appear at the same vertical position in the score.

Now I’m not sure if I understand your comment.

My “reluctance” concerns the amount of music I can put on a page,

that is, using my technique of printing a line of Klavar 

(all the notes struck at a given time) as a line of text.

 

I would like to get a simple song or hymn (e.g.16 measures of eighth notes) to fit on one page:

2 columns of 64 note-events or 4 columns of 32 note-events (landscape legal).

Noteheads on both sides of the stem in principle requires twice the space in the time-dimension

in order to achive 2:1 compresssion in the pitch-dimension,

which matters if, like me, one is doing time-proportional as well as pitch-propotional.

Now I think I can put both notehead positions in one line of text.

e.g a 9x5 dot letter box could have 2 4x4 “noteheads” and a central stem—

I will have to tinker with the font and see if I can come up with something readable.

Joe Austin

[Joseph Austin]

Doug,

I’d assume Roy Pertchik agrees with you, as that’s the way he built his Vibraphone,

and the way I built my Glock, for the same reason.

Now, if we could just get the people building keyboards to agree…

Joe Austin

[O.E. Soriano]

Hmm, this has potential. 

I'm a fan of vertical notation systems (I think of notes increasing in pitch more in terms of left and right then in terms of up and down) in general, and a big fan of klavarscribo, specifically.

The areas of improvement I have seen in Klavarscribo are:

1) be pitch proportional

2) convey more information about symmetrical scales

This version addresses the second issue -- it conveys notes' relationship to the whole tone scale.  The other symmetrical scales (which are personally more important to me as a musician) are the diminished scale and the dim7 arpeggio.  Joe is trying to get you to address that scale by embracing Roy's tri-chromatic scheme, which may indeed be a solution.

With that said, I'm come to disagree with the premise that coloring keys black and white is a waste of time.  Its useful, if for nothing else to assist someone transitioning from a diatonic piano. On the other hand, painting notes black and white may be overkill if we consider that the vertical lines *already* tell you where you are on the diatonic scale. Hence, we can find another use for painting notes whatever colors we will paint them.

But +1 for this system.

[gguitarwilly]

Hi Joe,

If we  could only make the people building keyboards actually building keyboards.....

As a janko midi keyboard will be programmable, the question on which row C should be is pretty academic, since users will decide for themselves.

However, when using the fingering suggested for a major scale on Janko, placing C on the bottom row would mean you would have to play your C-scale starting on the third row, counting from the bottom. This would be an argument for placing it on the second bottom row.

Willem

Op donderdag 23 juli 2015 18:39:55 UTC+2 schreef Joseph Austin: