Musical Six-Six Newsletter

[Douglas Keislar]

As mentioned at http://musicnotation.org/mnma/, the predecessor to the Music Notation Project (MNP) was the Music Notation Modernization Association (MNMA). Before Tom Reed founded the MNMA, and before he started publishing Music Notation News, he published Musical Six-Six Newsletter, starting in 1972. Here are scans of the first four issues:

https://www.dropbox.com/sh/20u4h99p01uc9rb/AACj3mNPjKYmCu0x4FFQ2KU_a?dl=0

Hopefully in the not-too-distant future, more scans will become available (of this newsletter as well as Music Notation News).

As you can see, Reed was interested in isomorphic keyboards (a term that wasn't in use at that time), specifically ones having two rows of whole-tone scales. He coined the term "6-6" to describe this pattern. He was a violist and piano technician who either acquired or at least had access to a Howe-Way upright piano. (A Howe-Way grand is shown on the cover of the first issue.) That piano's inventor also created a corresponding notation system (http://musicnotation.org/wiki/notation-systems/howe-way-music-notationby-hilbert-howe/). That might have been Reed's first exposure to alternative notation systems (but I'm just speculating).

I mention all this to give some background in light of Enrique's recent post about the MNMA's bias toward chromatic notation systems. It is definitely true that the founder of the MNMA, like the founders of the subsequent MNP, were interested in isomorphic systems (notations as well as instruments). This may explain the MNMA "screen" requiring notation systems to have pitch-proportionality (though there was no screen requiring the systems to be 6-6).

Doug

[Mark Gould]

Interesting that if you take away the stave and keep only the octave lines, you get Equiton....

Regards isomorphic keyboards, we should also remember this also applies to the Bosanquet-Wilson type and all the different tuning schemes possible on it, not just 6-6.

Mark

[Musical Supersystem]

Doug,

Again thank you for contributing so that information does not get lost and help us understand better within the context that they happened.

It is impressive how hardworking Reed was putting all that information together with the resources of the time in three languages, How many people worked on this?

Enrique.

--
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 to musicn...@googlegroups.com
To unsubscribe from this group, send email to musicnotatio...@googlegroups.com
For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/musicnotation?hl=en
---
You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "The Music Notation Project | Forum" group.
To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to musicnotatio...@googlegroups.com.
To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/musicnotation/CAO-VhJqArwCS0MOq4OhQmhf2k7-aq2P_NtpE3gXjbd1uwB-R%2BA%40mail.gmail.com.

[Douglas Keislar]

Interesting that if you take away the stave and keep only the octave lines, you get Equiton....

Yes, Howe-Way (http://musicnotation.org/wiki/notation-systems/howe-way-music-notationby-hilbert-howe/) is like Equiton with added staff lines. (I don't know whether Hilbert Howe was aware of Equiton, which seems to have predated Howe-Way by six years, at least in terms of publications.) In the past I've referred to these as 6-degree 6-6 systems. There are others: http://musicnotation.org/systems/more-notation-systems/#six

Regards isomorphic keyboards, we should also remember this also applies to the Bosanquet-Wilson type and all the different tuning schemes possible on it, not just 6-6.

Absolutely. In fact, a later issue of Musical Six-Six Newsletter had a short item about the Motorola Scalatron. The implications of microtonality for music notation were never deeply explored by the MNMA, though. The MNP site does list Bosanquet and Wilson (http://musicnotation.org/wiki/instruments/isomorphic-instruments/).

--

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 to musicn...@googlegroups.com
To unsubscribe from this group, send email to musicnotatio...@googlegroups.com
For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/musicnotation?hl=en
---
You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "The Music Notation Project | Forum" group.
To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to musicnotatio...@googlegroups.com.

To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/musicnotation/e394a8d0-eb7d-4850-8c4f-b6c0b687d5adn%40googlegroups.com.

[Douglas Keislar]

It is impressive how hardworking Reed was putting all that information together with the resources of the time in three languages, How many people worked on this?

Page 2 of the newsletter lists the staff. Tom Reed did the great majority of the work. He had translators for the Chinese and Esperanto, but after a few years the translations were dropped and the newsletter was published only in English.

 

To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/musicnotation/CAARA0-9%2BNhZbj%3DirjOo9fRT5GeJsrRDk9bvYLxSFftjTKCemWQ%40mail.gmail.com.