Proposal for a joint communication campaign

[Fastgram org]

In this group there is a lot of knowledge and proposals to improve
musical notation, but unfortunately it has no impact outside the
group.

I would like to propose a feasible action plan within the reach of
this group focused on having an impact:

1. A minimum of 5 people from this group should collaborate in
developing the following steps.
2. Select a small set of notations/proposals/recommendations for
improving musical notation on which to focus the campaign (otherwise
people get scattered among all the proposals and it is not clear what
the call to action is).
3. Create explanatory material and examples of these selected proposals.
4. Design a very simple website that contains the above material and
communicates the proposal in a way that is easy to understand and
transmit, allowing it to go viral easily. The website should include a
clear call to action with different levels of engagement (e.g. sharing
the information, joining the advocacy group, implementing the
proposals, developing didactic material, etc.).
5. Create social networks profiles (at least in facebook and twitter)
with the same visual design as the previous website.
6. Prepare a list of media outlets, discussion forums, social media
profiles, lists of academics, musicians, and organisations that will
be the first recipients of the campaign.
7. Coordinate the launch of the campaign on the same day, contacting
the previously selected recipients, and launching the messages through
the campaign's social networks.
8. Follow-up week of the campaign, interacting with all those who
respond to the campaign, and especially inviting all those who react
positively to collaborate actively in the campaign (by joining this
group or a group created specifically for this purpose).
9. In the long term management of people joining the group and
coordination of all contributors to keep the campaign moving and
making it grow and have more and more impact. Coordination of the
people who collaborate more actively in implementing the proposals
(e.g. uploading to the website the new material they produce, inviting
them to record videos, give talks, share their experiences, etc.).
10. Once a certain number of people are actively involved, the long
term survival and growth of the campaign will be ensured.

The FastGram website is a simple example of the first steps 2 to 4. It
is a website focused on a concrete proposal, with an easy to
understand and visual design, and aimed at being shared and
implemented. I don't think this should be the selected proposal, but I
think it can be useful as an example of a campaign website.

The most important factor in any case are the other steps. Having a
minimum group of volunteers who accept the challenge of launching the
campaign and keeping it moving, especially in the first few weeks as
it attracts people until it reaches a critical mass to continue
indefinitely in a sustainable way.

If there is interest to carry out this proposal, following the step 1
I invite anyone interested to express their support and willingness to
participate actively.

Best wishes

[Benjamin Spratling]

Howdy,

I like your drive and determination.  There is a website documenting many of the historical notation proposals associated with this group.

Unfortunately, there are discrete reasons why a desire for a new music notation does not “catch” outside a special interest group.

Let me present some of the problems I’ve encountered over the last couple of years of trying to promote my music notation:

My objective is to increase participation in congregational musical worship.  I spent 5 years developing SingAccord (singaccord.com), which enables non-trained musicians in singing songs they haven’t learned.  In user testing, 85%-90% of people can figure out how it works to their own level of musical skill merely by watching it in use within just 2 songs.  When the test group is professional musicians, the rate is 97%.  Even the most advanced feature that are is esoteric that I thought no one would figure it out, upwards of 35% of musicians figured out with no explicit training; and among those who did notice the feature (non non-musicians even notice it’s there!!!  That’s an amazing success!!) and did have a guess what for that is is, no one guessed incorrectly, (which means that even when people do not figure out what it is, at least they aren’t confused into thinking it IS something else).   Formal training to clear up uncertainty usually takes 12 seconds.  I had designed a 5-minute formal training course, but after seeing 2 song demos, musicians do not need more than 1 or 2 points of clarification, always taking less than a minute.  And yet, it bears no resemblance to traditional music notation.  Since my notation is designed for congregational musical worship, I’ve been showing demos to worship leaders.  40% think it would help a congregation sing along.  At the current level of “social proof”, this blows away expectations from the standard “diffusion of innovation”, which suggests that my adoption rate should be less than 16%, perhaps only 2.5%.  Yet when I show over a dozen testimonials to the “not sure” and “would not help” responders, only 50% of the “not sure” change their minds, and none of the “would not help”s change their minds.  When I ask them why they think it would not help, their answers range from the ridiculous (they think the font size is too small, despite the fact that the app has a font size slider which can easily resize all lyrics and re-line-break the song and re-scale the notation itself to fit for an entire song in 0.03 seconds), to direct contradictions of personal testimonies of users, such as “I think it would be distracting” vs. the reacted statements from ‘regular' people that “it is engaging, but does not distract me from worship".

IMHP, any successful advertising campaign for a new music notation will have to focus on the reasons resistance to a new music notation is encountered, not just the promotion.  You have to start with solving the fundamental messaging, and then focus on the logistics of getting that message out.

So I have spent the last year seeking analysis of why they respond the way they do.  The reasons, of course, vary from person to person, but I’ll give you a big list of all the ones I have encountered.

Here are some factors which I have determined slow the adoption of any new music notation:

1) Most music publishers do not answer the phone or reply to my emails when I contact them to discuss publishing their music in a compatible format, or issuing me a license to do so.  Famous folks suddenly stop replying when I ask for endorsements, even after expressing an affiliation for my notation.  Of the ones who do allow “democratized” licensing, they often don’t have a specific license term set up ahead of time that provides for music notation to be displayed to the masses, that is available as a pay-as-you-go option for less than $5k guaranteed sales paid up-front per song.

2) Music publishers subcontract for engraving and no longer possess the original Finale/Sibelius files, and thus cannot actually easily or inexpensively re-publish works in other notations.  The composer organizations just say “talk to our rights administrator”.

3) The highest-fidelity publicly-documented file format commonly-available for notation export from the leading music engraving apps, MusicXML, is seen by music engraving app companies as a way to lose customers, and thus they do a very bad job with it.  For instance, in Sibelius, if you say “To coda” instead of “To Coda”, there will be no “tocoda” element in the MusicXML export.  Dorico is so deficient at MusicXML export that it is unusable.  Finale does an ok job, but they invented MusicXML.  MuseScore’s import/export is pretty good.  NoteWorthy Composer, the easiest music composition app I’ve ever used has no MusicXML export at all, and the free NWC->MusicXML converter written by the MuseScore guy has a bug in converting alternate rhythms of alternate parts on the same staff.  But I digress.

Since computers cannot display MusicMXL files without a dedicated paid app, but can display .pdf’s, most music notation is sold as .pdf’s, and the available .pdf->MusicXML conversions tools are still not good enough to rely on them to get songs right without needing a professional to fix them up, and the errors are often hard to spot because they ‘look right’ at a glance, and are only recognized as wrong when you play through a song you’re familiar with.

4) Traditional music notation has no agreed upon way in current common practice to indicate section boundaries which do not align to measure boundaries, and in some songs there is no way to distinguish section boundaries other than by understanding the meanings of the lyrics, thus making automated conversion to a notation system which depends on explicitly notating section boundaries involve individual human intervention, creating a $4M problem in my target industry with a library of 100k songs.  My brief sampling indicates 2.3rds of popular songs have pick up beats, and in modern popular music the number of pick-up beats 1) can change between a verse, chorus or bridge, 2) is not reflected in the opening measure, and 3) is not marked by mid-measure double bar lines.

5) Many professional musicians found traditional music notation to be enabling, and allowed themselves to develop & exhibit a skill others didn’t have.  Subsequently, they identified (psychologically) as "a musician" and thus the challenge of learning music notation, now forgotten in their childhood, has become a skill optimized by the brain, thus creating 1) a “curse of knowledge” where many forget how hard it was, 2) a Stockhom effect where they believe their captor (traditional music notation) is more akin to a parent (i.e. enablement).

6) An in-group/out-group dynamic.  An in-group is defined by a group of people who engage in a certain behavior and consider the out-group to be those who do not adopt this behavior.  The in-group considers themselves to be ‘better' than the out-group because of this behavior, and blames their problems on the out-group’s non-participation, whether by choice or by ability.  The in-group can easily become demanding toward of the out-group.  In this case, the in-group is musicians and the behavior is reading traditional music notation.  Any suggestion that people can get along without the in-group behavior is met with derision.

7) A desire amongst musicians that any solution should be “free”, which limits the available revenue for advertising to those dollars magnanimously donated for its cause, which negatively impacts the ability to ‘get the word out’.  For instance, top sponsorships at the Experience conference can run upwards of $25k.  Where do you get that money without a product which can be purchased?

8) A lack of User eXperience design (UX) skills amongst new music notation designers.  For instance, here is my description of 20 reasons traditional music notation can’t be “fixed” (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zro45F9jby4).  Each item I mention makes it “harder” to learn, and in our culture, the UX of products is getting better all the time.  But most of the relevant best-practices of UX I mention are not well-known or not known at all in the classically-trained musician category.  And most new proposals here do not solve most of these problems.  Musicians live under the aforementioned “curse of knowledge”, and having developed socially optimized sets of brain cells to interpret TMN, they don’t consciously realize how big a boundary to adoption years of formal training is for the vast majority of people.  In designing SingAccord, I started with the belief that “no one in the congregation will ever be willing to spend any time formal training for a new visual communication of rhythm and pitch”.  So if you justify your notation with “oh, but someone could learn that”, you are headed down the wrong path, IMPO, “In My Professional Opinion”.

9) There is missing vocabulary amongst musicians to describe traditional or conventional musical notation.  Sure, it is a written language.  It is also a technology.  But it is not just a field of technology, it is a specific brand, it is a specific product model within the brand.  But musicians’ vocabulary to describe it lacks any brand or product labeling.  Instead they call it “music notation”, as if there could only be 1.  They may also call it "sheet music” or literally just “music”.  Lacking a “product awareness” of the product they use, the concept that there could be an alternative is not in their “wheel house”, i.e. it is not an idea their brain considers.  Most are stunned when I show them books and reports and publications from this heritage of this group documenting over 500 attempts at creating new notations, (all but 4 of which were not good UX).

10) Most financially-successful alternatives to music notation take the form of a “game”.  The definition of “game” varies from person to person.  Two common groups are: an artificial 1) challenge which 2) absorbs the user’s attention and 3) itself becomes joy to the one who succeeds.  For instance, guitar hero, imminently learnable by junior-high students, grabs their attention with record-breaking hits, detailed full-motion background graphics of caricatured rock stars and brightly-lit high-motion “dazzle” effects, while transforming the music timeline “into the screen” giving it a perspective transform but projected on a 2d surface, which makes the velocity of the notes become non-constant and accelerate in a way which is difficult to be processed by the visual cortex.  This creates an artificial challenge (making it harder than it needs be), catches their undivided attention (whereas in worship I need the complex/abstract/logical portion of the brain, the prefrontal cortex, to contemplate the meanings of the lyrics instead of reading the music notation), and becomes their joy through their triumph and glitz.  Once-popular “Smule” games creates an artificial challenge by removing throwing their notes in a limitless continuum with not discernible boundaries between pitches or beats, and both grabs their attention with pulsing glowy bits and by competing against a friend. 

Others define game as “not detailed enough to achieve real goals”, and Smule would be an example in their lack of divisions between pitch and beats, while guitar hero is an example in that it does not have a sufficiently high number of possible notes to reflect the vast majority of popular musical compositions.

11) The other successful non-game music notations are 1) shape notes, which is no longer successful, in my opinion because they solved one problem, relative vs. perfect pitch, by doubling down on another mistake, arbitrary icons.  And if there’s one thing you can never solve without formal training (or at least non-shaming individual interactive guess & check), it’s arbitrary icons.  And 2) guitar tabs.  Yes, I was once an arrogant classically-trained in-group musician who found it absurd to think that there were people playing guitar without learning to read music notation.  “It can’t even describe rhythm, is isn't a ‘music notation’! ”, I would say.  However, after working in UX for 10 years, I put my ego aside and did an analysis and realized that guitar tabs follow a core principle of good UX: making the representation of the thing match the physical object you’re already familiar with.  The lines you see in the tab match the lines you see on the instrument.  And the dots are the touch points.  This is called (a few names, including) an “analogue”.  Analogues, i.e. matching a drawing to the instrument is a core of teaching kids their first notes.  And since the piano is the first cheapest/enjoyable polyphonic instrument that doesn’t get packed-up and carried off with its musician (and is thus seen as an installation in many music venues, and thus a constant in the ethos of music), the piano/keyboard and its graphic analogue are popular amongst musicians seeking to create a for-everyone notation.  Not realizing it the keyboard itself violates a few principles of good UX.

In fact, I even tried to make a human-voice analogue briefly before I realized the human voice 1) cannot be seen and thus has no visual analogue, and 2) has no touch points that make different notes.  And since the human voice ships standard with the human ear and human brain which convert the music from perfect pitch into relative pitch for 96% of the population, I realized that no music notation optimized for voice would naturally be optimized for instruments and vice versa.

12) Amongst worship leaders, many have inappropriately transferred the immutability of God’s nature and morality onto the technology used in musical worship.  And if not amongst the worship leaders, then often amongst the congregation.  Although, that percentage is shrinking.

13) The most popular alternative to traditional music notation is ……….     nothing.  They just write songs filled with repeating tags so people can memorize them in less time and hopefully by the end of the song repeating the chorus 4-7 times they can mumble along to it at least once.  And when your potential customers are just fine getting along without a solution, you have a “low intent” market.  And warning bells should go off that it is not going to be cheap to get any sizable market penetration.

14) From the complaints of the congregants who are actually upset that they cannot participate, but construe the failure to participate on the new method or style, worship leaders have developed "learned helplessness”, which means they often don’t even try new ideas to increase engagement.  To be fair, most of their individual new ideas aren’t particularly successful, because no where in their musical education have they been taught the principles of how to actually help non-musicians.  They mainly just follow trends, justifying themselves with “well, everyone’s doing it this way”.

And #1 most powerful reason of all:

15) Music recording publishers’ business model depends on maximizing the number of listeners and minimizing the number of performers.  One primary way they drive this is by denigrating the musical ability of the masses, and extolling the virtues of their selected artists, inserting new songs and new artists only as fast as needed to drive either market differentiation, compete with other music publishers, or satiate our fundamental finicky attitude towards art of any kind.

Contrast this with the musical instrument manufacturer’s model at the turn of the industrial revolution from the late 1700’s to the late 1800’s, before the invention of radio or record player at the end of the 1800’s and their mass adoption in the early 1900’s.  The musical instrument manufacturer profits from the increased sales of musical instruments, which can’t easily be sold to non-musicians or to people who believed they could not become musicians.  As music teachers were dispatched across the nation to convert the innate desire to hear music into the purchase decision by way of learning to read music. There is a correlated maaaaaaaaaaaasive increase in patents related to “a method for teaching music”.

While I have only recently made this discovery, along with the discovery that news editors were colluding with politicians as early as the 1850’s to promote specific politicians and specific parties (one of whom was the brother of an ancestor of mine, and reading through his writings is how I found it), I suspect it is in fact the largest factor in the malaise in learning to ’read music’.  I suspect somehow they have carefully manipulated popular entertainment, events, messaging and advertising to enhance the difference.  (Many important books on persuasion were written by political campaign strategists and include admissions of examples of working with pop culture leaders to influence popular opinion, such as “The Tipping Point” and “Catalyst”).  Of course, this is a conspiracy theory, all advertising campaigns are a conspiracy.  It’s just usually you know what the conspiracy is for and who is doing it, but HOW they convince you to part with your money they don’t explain.

For instance, the show “American Idol” shows only the best & the worst.  What they want you to believe is that only the a very small number of musicians could ever be any good, and IF they have in fact missed someone’s actual talent, they will altruistically grant them the career they deserve.  While it appears they allow the public to help pick the winner, there are 2 factors going on here: 1) they’re in it to sell to the masses so they want someone the masses like and they don’t know who it is until y’all vote.  2) by asking participants to vote off the ones they don’t like, they give you the implicit message the ones you don’t pick don’t deserve to be there, when the truth is most of the finalists are just fine.  3) have you noticed half of the winners of that show were singers at their churches?  Churches are the last remaining bastion of popular involvement in musical skill, I think largely because the additional desire to praise God through music and the transferrence of immutability of God’s nature and morality onto the tech used in musical worship have for 2 or 3 generations preserved the “everyone learns to read music notation” culture of the 1800’s.   And even that is petering out.

I’m sure there are other obstacles to adoption of a new music notation that I have forgotten, or not encountered or understood or accurately reflected.  If you know of any more, let me know.

If anyone thinks he can actually solve those problems, let’s chat privately about getting you a job as my sales/marketing consultant.  Because most business advisers I interview see that the purchase decision makers (the worship leaders) are not the ones who “feel the pain” of not being able to participate (the congregation) and they tell me “I would not attempt a business in this market”.  And the other half see the "chicken-and-the-egg problem" that the product cannot be used (and thus won’t be purchased) until the copyright owners give me a license to each individual song, and the copy-right owners want to see popular demand before they take the market risk to convert their songs, and they say “I would not attempt to put a solution in this market”.

Only 1 guy so far says there’s any way to be successful despite all these, and it fundamentally hangs on the fact that 85%-90% of regular people find it usable in just 2 songs.  So I’m following his advice, which unfortunately, due to covid is exceedingly difficult.  Unfortunately, he’s so good, he’s so expensive I can’t afford to hire him full time.  So nights and weekends I’m muddling through a lot of work which would best be done by a professionals on weekdays.

In addition to the demos on my website, I have a test service tentatively scheduled on a Sunday evening in east Alabama in late March with a popular band, with (nearly unheard of) unanimous consent of the church’s session, and I just reached a verbal agreement with a band this week.  If you want to come, send me a message privately. (It’s a small venue and we think the student group will pack it out.)

-Ben Spratling

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[drtec...@gmail.com]

Ben,

[Please forgive spurious Capital Letters which are added by Windows.]

 

I have some comments on points 4 and 11.

 

4. RE group boundaries vs. measure boundaries.

I often sign with the tag line:

“Music is poetry; why print it as prose?”

 

My motivation for notation reform is to make the music more MUSICALLY intelligible.

This starts with form, or phrasing, which in songs or hymns corresponds to lyric boundaries.

I believe the simple act of printing the music in lines that match the phrase breaks, like poetry,

Does much to aid interpretation, memory, an understanding of similarities and contrasts among the parts,

Even clues as to where to expect chord changes.

 

I have found some very expensive professional notation software makes a very difficult job of splitting lines between measures;

That difficulty is carried over into XML, perhaps because XML was invented by the same people.

 

I have found the free, open-source system Lilypond is much more amenable to section breaks within measures.

I use it all the time to print my own scores as “poetry.”

 

10. RE shape notes with arbitrary symbols.

I believe in shape notes. I don’t believe in “arbitrary.”  So I have offered a shape note system, Chromatonnetz,  
that is “isomorphic”, “key-neutral”, and I believe systematic rather than arbitrary:
 themsel ChromaTonnetz by Joe Austin - The Music Notation Project

The name comes from Euler’s “tonnetz” or tone-network on which it is based.

 

That said, I also have come to believe that the problems with notation actually start with the IDEA of notation,

That is, notation as a substitute for sound, or the idea or memory of sound,

Commonly referred to as “performing by ear”.

 

But let us not focus on problems, but on successes.

We want worshippers to sing praises and petitions to God.

(And perhaps sing on other occasions as well, but as you point out,

Church is about the only place non-musicians sing in public these days.)

It would be a delight to the ears if congregations could sing in harmony,

But at least we would like to sing in time and in tune.

 

So my questions:

1. Does the congregation want to sing?
2. Does the music director want to lead the congregation in singing?
3. Do the band and instrumentalists and choir want to accompany the congregation in singing,
   or do they want to be the star of the show themselves?

If Yes to these questions, then you should have a sale.

               If No, then the other factors may be more excuses than reasons; it’s difficult to overcome emotion with reason.

 

The Gospels themselves outline a successful promotion strategy: 
start with a “ mustard seed”  or a bit of “ “leaven” in a few congregations.

Let the advantages of your system spread by word (or song) of mouth. 
Others will judge the system by its fruits.

 

 

Joe Austin aka DrTechDaddy

“Music is poetry;

Why print it as prose?”

To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/musicnotation/7463DE7E-7AA1-404A-AF6F-6D4140C858AC%40mac.com.

[Benjamin Spratling]

Howdy,

On Feb 13, 2021, at 10:22 PM, drtec...@gmail.com wrote:

This starts with form, or phrasing, which in songs or hymns corresponds to lyric boundaries.

I believe the simple act of printing the music in lines that match the phrase breaks, like poetry,

Does much to aid interpretation, memory, an understanding of similarities and contrasts among the parts, 

SingAccord uses punctuation and rhythm to try to find phrase boundaries when laying out music, and attempts to keep phrases together on a line.  Keeping lyrical phrases together on one line improves clearly fitting the meaning into the brain’s “episodic buffer”, which makes understanding happen more readily.

Of course, given some screens, and some songs and some venues, that isn’t always possible, especially with English composers' tendency to throw guttural words with lots of consonants (like “through") into tiny short notes, but it then focuses on the practicality of the making the line break happen at place that are away from rapid note changes.

I have found the free, open-source system Lilypond is much more amenable to section breaks within measures.

Lilypond doesn’t export MusicXML, right? At least they didn’t the last time I checked.  Hymnary.org did a lot of stuff in lilypond but may be switching to something else,   Lilypond also sees itself as the perfect end to the music, and thus no one should want to export, just like Dorico.  I thought about writing a converter from Lilypond input files, but they picked TeX as their meta format, and I have hated TeX with a passion since I had to write journal papers in it in grad school.  I decided to focus on MusicXML for first launch, and I’ll add other input formats as they make sense.  I have a great prototype MIDI importer, but MIDI lacks good section break information, and has no standard for the lyric character encoding.

At least I have 3 great excuses for not exporting MusicXML from SingAccord:

1) No one composes in SingAccord because there is no notation editor.  (I’m working on changing that and have a proof of concept.)

2) MusicXML can’t represent all the features of SingAccord, like explicitly notating pickup and trailing beats on a per-section basis and:

3) a SingAccord song file contains all the forms of a song, not just one form like a MusicXML file.

My own meta format is json, because every framework on every platform can read json readily.

10. RE shape notes with arbitrary symbols.

I believe in shape notes. I don’t believe in “arbitrary.”  So I have offered a shape note system, Chromatonnetz,  
that is “isomorphic”, “key-neutral”, and I believe systematic rather than arbitrary: 
 themsel ChromaTonnetz by Joe Austin - The Music Notation Project

The name comes from Euler’s “tonnetz” or tone-network on which it is based.

We may have discussed this a couple of years ago.  By “arbitrary” I mean “not shapes they recognize as having meaning from the world around them which can be used to infer the meaning of the symbol in the notation”, which is more like the UX definition.  Under that definition, your notation is still “arbitrary”.  And of course, needing “systems” is one of the UX problems I point out in my video, but not in so many words.  I expressed it in more concrete ways such as eschewing “unwritten rules”, “invisible lists”, and “complicated math formulas”.  I think your Chromatonnetz is both an invisible list and an unwritten rule.  I would also suggest your medium fill pattern uses too much detail in too small an area.  I use sans-serif lyric text as the maximum-allowable density of detail, because any text must be legible, but must be as small as possible to increase the amount of content on the screen so that placing phrases on a line is possible.  By the example you cited, although some use lower density, one of the symbols has 7/5 the density of the maximum density of lyric text, which I would consider to be too much, but you make a note that it could be altered.

To my embarrassment, I have one symbol in my notation.  It doesn’t occur often, in the 5 demos on my website, it appears only in the Sarah McCracken song.

But even that is too many.

 That said, I also have come to believe that the problems with notation actually start with the IDEA of notation,

That is, notation as a substitute for sound, or the idea or memory of sound,

Commonly referred to as “performing by ear”. 

 

But let us not focus on problems, but on successes.

Sorry, I’m an aerospace engineer.  To me, problems get people killed by the dozens, in horrific ways, cost hundreds of millions of dollars in damage and make the news.  I always look at the problems and try to find ways to solve them.  Without recognizing all the problems, you cannot know what you have to solve to achieve success.  I had to tear down my notation and rebuild it from scratch twice in response to user testing.

I am currently moving forward on the assumption that 85%-90% success with ‘regular people’ and 40% “probably would” opinions amongst worship leaders who took my survey is good enough to move forward.  But scheduling test services is expensive, difficult during covid, and a veeeeery slow burn, given that my international patent deadlines are fast approaching and will be very expensive.

We want worshippers to sing praises and petitions to God.

Agreed.

(And perhaps sing on other occasions as well, but as you point out,

And I love a good karaoke bar, but that is of lesser priority, though some suggest it would be an easier starting market.

One worship leader actually told me “[he] didn’t want to turn [his] church into a 'karaoke bar’ ".  I decided not to mention that the people I met in karaoke bars were more friendly than the people I met in his church, and enjoyed themselves more when they were there.  Just didn’t seem like it would help.

Actually used to go to a live karaoke bar in Dallas.  Lots of fun.  Had a buddy who sang almost every time.  I spent up a month working up a Brooks & Dunn song.  But I digress.

Church is about the only place non-musicians sing in public these days.)

It would be a delight to the ears if congregations could sing in harmony,

But at least we would like to sing in time and in tune.

Yeah, I’d like harmony back in there, too.  But at this point, I think managing to get everyone singing the melody would be a massive improvement.

I’m tracking the uses of multiple parts.  So far, I have 1) harmony, defined as the different notes sung at the same time for different singers, but with nearly identical rhythms or pitches, 2) counter melody, defined as radically different rhythms and pitches, sung simultaneously as other singers, and 3) call-response defined as similar notes and pitches but sung by different groups of people at different times, one of which may be a rehearsed singer, and another which is usually not.

Each may have a different expression in SingAccord.  So if you think of any uses of multiple parts other than those, let me know.

 So my questions:

1. Does the congregation want to sing?

Yes; my surveys indicate 95% want to sing in musical worship.  Both from a direct question standpoint, and from a “how do you feel when you can’t” and they give me 75% negative and counter emotions with “frustrated”, “left out” and “embarrassed” being the top 3 totaling more than 50%, and only 10% neutral, and only 15% positive emotions.  And that indicates the level of desire is quite high.  Frustration is defined as a feeling of being unable to do something you want.  It’s hard to imagine people feeling left out of an activity they don’t want to participate in, and it’s also mostly true that you won’t feel embarrassed for not being able to do something you don’t care to do.

Some positives are positive because they have an expectation they will learn the song any minute and be able to participate.  But others I’m counting as positive may actually be experiencing not just a negative or counter emotion but may already be engaging in an avoidance activity and deflecting it with religiosity.  So maybe 1/3 of the 15% positives are like worse than negative emotions.

2. Does the music director want to lead the congregation in singing?

Traditional hymn worship leaders: yes, but still believe traditional music notation is the only way to solve it.

Blended: yes, and will try any style or any tech that actually helps achieve that goal.

Contemporary: Also believe traditional music notation is the only way to solve it, but believe we are in a “listening culture” and that people don’t want to sing.  Others say “well, the main thing that stops them from singing is embarrassment from knowing other people would hear them sing it wrong, so we’ll turn up the music so loud they know no one else will hear them."  Unfortunately, this does not actually enable people to sing, but it does mean when they don’t hear the person next to them singing they don’t realize that person isn’t singing, and now the person believes they are the only one not singing, and that makes them feel left out, embarrassed and frustrated.  It’s very popular right now to find worship leader gurus who say “just increase the desire to sing and people will”, which is bogus.  Right now, while contemporary makes a splash in the PR and news and social media, blended is the most common.  Which for my purposes, is good.  Basically, contemporary-only worship leaders “want to led the congregation in singing” about they way they “want to win the lottery”, they may buy a ticket, but they have no real expectation it will ever happen, and don’t believe there’s anything they can do to achieve it, besides something which isn’t going to happen.

2. Do the band and instrumentalists and choir want to accompany the cxongregation in singing,

2. 
   or do they want to be the star of the show themselves?

If Yes to these questions, then you should have a sale.

I wish the situation were that simple.  I thought it was when I started.  But worship leaders underestimate the impact of failure, and overestimate their participation rates by a few dozen percent based on a few factors:

1) They are never the person who does not know the song and thus can’t sing it.  As business people say, they do not “feel the pain”.

2) They are never in the congregation during musical worship, and thus cannot hear individual congregation members.  Typically they are listening to a monitor of themselves.

3) They see mainly people in the front, and mainly watch for moving mouths as a proxy for “participation".

I did some search and discovered 3 reasons people move their mouths during worship:

1) They are actually singing.  It’s usually a minority.

2) They desperately want to sing, and hope to at any moment, so they open their mouths, but no sound comes out until, after 3 or 4 repeats of the chorus they manage to memorize it.  Often they do not report they are memorizing a song, they call it “figuring out the song”, as though there is some rhyme or reason to the way the melody has been constructed and they actually believe they are predicting notes before they happen.  Some are consciously unaware they are memorizing and merely repeating tags.

3) They are so embarrassed they are the only one not singing, they open their mouths to avoid people finding out they aren’t singing.  Of course, most of the other people aren’t singing along either, but they don’t know that.  They’re also looking at mouths moving.

Everyone says they are #1 or #2 until they are darn sure their worship leader will never find out what they said, and then a majority admit they are #3, or a combination of 2 & 3.  I’ve had choir members make me promise I will never tell their music minister they can’t read music or they’ll get kicked out of the choir.  Heck, many people in congregations make me promise I’ll never tell their worship leader what they said in a way that could be traced back to them.

The congregation is faking it to avoid embarrassment of themselves.  And the worship leaders are buying the fake data to avoid the embarrassment of their own failure.  I don’t know if their ego could take it.  Sure, some are level headed.  Most think their participation rates are over 85%, which is unheard of in practice.  Sure, some know their participation rates are 35%.   But they have no workable options to do anything about it.

And worship leaders predicting what would work for their congregations is also often wrong.  In a few situations, I have actually tested with a choir director and members of the choir.  The choir says “I don’t think my choir could track with this”, whereas the choir members says “oh, this is so much easier than traditional music notation”.  It’s called the “curse of knowledge”, as I mentioned before.  As an expert, it’s difficult for them to imagine what people without export knowledge would find useful.  In UX we fight that all the time, so we learn repeatable ways of ridding our minds of biases, but even then we have to test and trust only the test results, not our own biases and assumptions.

Statistically, their interest in finding a new solution trends up when they believe their participation rate is below 70%.    And…. They’re all below 70%, but most think they’re above 85%, which is ….. not correct.

               If No, then the other factors may be more excuses than reasons; it’s difficult to overcome emotion with reason.

^ ++. Definitely excuses.  High among which is the discounting of the obvious failures in participation under the guise that “our real purpose is worship not the music”.  And I’m like “If that’s the case, then just do responsive readings”, but that just makes them even more defensive.  There seems to be a religious-sounding rationalization for all pieces of data indicating they are not succeeding.  One worship leader professor said “The moment you make it about music and not about worship, you have already failed”, another says “our pupose is to escort them into the throne room of God” to which I respond, “would saints feel left-out, embarrassed and frustrated in God’s throne room?”, other says “we’re here to facilitate a dialogue between the church and the Almighty”, at which I just facepalm.  Other say “all we can do is entice them to increase their desire, and if they increase desire, they’ll sing”, which is bogus.  Others say “we can’t give someone a desire, we’re just here to be available when they want to sing”.  Others say “we need to compete with the rock concerts and popular movies special effects with our production quality.”

Pretty much any idea they can put in their heads to avoid the fact that there has not been any way to actually help their congregation other than repetition to induce memorization since the fall of the hymnal.

 The Gospels themselves outline a successful promotion strategy:  

start with a “ mustard seed”  or a bit of “ “leaven” in a few congregations.

Jesus managed to attract thousands of in crowds with miracles.  One guy accused me of needing to work a miracle to achieve my stated success rates, but other than that…. I don’t know how to attract these crowds.  Where do I place ads for that?

I have 4 worship leaders committed to hosting a test service at their church when covid ends.  It’s going to end, right?

One in the works for late March like I said.  It’s taken over a year to get that set up.  Very few worship leaders will listen to advice from or even speak to someone who is not from their local church and is not themselves a famous worship leader.

Let the advantages of your system spread by word (or song) of mouth.  

As far as I can tell, worship leaders talking to each other, especially about how they do their worship leading, is very rare.  Even at conferences, which are few & expensive to sponsor, they don’t talk to worship leaders from other churches.  They mostly listen to the session speakers.  (As far as I can tell, the Getty Sing! Conference isn’t even open to new sponsors/vendors this year.). Seems like everybody and their brother has written a book on worship these days.  Not many of those books offer anything concrete.  I laugh and then hang my head at the number of books for worship leaders who tell them to get people to take a hymnal home or listen to a song on repeat during the week so they’ll be ready to sing it come Sunday.

When my friend who is the worship director at the church I’ll be doing the test service at in March calls other worship leaders at neighboring churches, they do not answer or return his calls.  When my friends who are close friends with famous worship leaders who are potential endorsements ask their friends to take a look at my work, somehow we never hear back from them.  One of them even texted me personally to give me permission to use any one of his songs in a demo on my website for free, but when I send the demo to him and ask him how he likes it he hasn’t responded in 2 years.

When I call christian worship bands and ask what their rate is for a service, 90% never call me back.  Only 4 ever did.  One never got back to me with an actual price.  One seemed like they were going to commit but then ghosted me.  One refused to send me an audition recording and has no videos or recordings on any kind of website.  And the one I’m booking is a friend of an acquaintance.  They’re giving me a friend-of-a-friend discount, but it’s still too expensive for me to hire them to do even ten churches.  Heck, I won’t be able to afford to hire them to do more than 2.

Others will judge the system by its fruits.

Most judge the system by the failures of other systems, and their “learned helplessness” and fear of trying anything new that will upset the delicate worship Cold War and get themselves fired.

Ok, an advisor at a major denomination’s state board told me I had lots of “business acumen”, and I was like “not really, I’ve only read 41 books on business and marketing, it’s not like I have any natural skill or expertise", but realizing it takes me 2 hours to write this email makes me think maybe I have actually learned a thing or two.

-Ben

[Benjamin Spratling]

Sorry, when I said

On Feb 14, 2021, at 1:06 AM, 'Benjamin Spratling' via The Music Notation Project | Forum <musicn...@googlegroups.com> wrote:

1) harmony, defined as the different notes sung at the same time for different singers, but with nearly identical rhythms or pitches

I meant:

1) harmony, defined as the different notes sung at the same time for different singers, but with nearly identical rhythms or LYRICS.

[Benjamin Spratling]

On Feb 13, 2021, at 10:22 PM, drtec...@gmail.com wrote:

If Yes to these questions, then you should have a sale.

Also, in order to have a sale, based on feedback from worship leaders. it would need:

1) to be integrated as a feature into ProPresenter / Ableton Live, etc…

But those guys want me to demonstrate market demand first before they take the market risk to work on adding the feature.

The bottom line is they want to be able to change the order of sections live, and they don’t want to switch presentation apps from one to another.  I think it’s silly for me to build all the slide-show and multitracks features these others apps have gotten good at, so they need to adopt SIngAccord into them.  But Christian slide-show apps are a slim market, with little income, mostly coming from major christian recording / performing artists, who have no desire for everyone to sing along.

2) the expectations that any song they would want would be available in a compatible format.  But like I said earlier, music publishers don’t have Finale files, and the composers just tell me to talk to the publishers, if they talk to me at all.  Sixstep records took 6 months to reply to my email, and said “talk to CCMG”.  CCMG says talks to brentwoodbenson.  Brentwoodbenson says “we only have .pdf’s."

Sure, Sovereign Grace Music sent me all their original Sibelius files after Bob Kauflin saw a demo, but their sheet music is posted for free on their website, there’s no additional market or financial risk to them.  And God apparently arranged a chance meeting to give Bob Kauflin a much better first impression of me than I deserved.

Whereas another popular hymnal publishing house said she would never send me finale files even if she had them.  And I’m like “if I pay you?”  And she’s like “it’l illegal!”, and I’m like “not if you issue me a license, which is the whole reason I called, and frankly literally your job title.”.  She’s all like “but there’s page layout information in there!”, and I said “SingAccord doesn’t have pages, so any page layout information would be gone by the time it reaches my customers.  It would be melody, lyrics & metadata.”  And she’s all like “I’ll bring it up with my boss”, who remained nameless and I was never given an opportunity to have any conversation or input with her boss.  Their decision was “we have insufficient funds to take on another project at this time”, and I’m like “I”M TRYING TO PAY YOU”.

The people who make the decisions are insulated from me by people who do not understand and do not care.

CCLI never called back.

Praisecharts.com never called back.

onelicense.net says they’ll “think about it next year”.

Bethel said they wouldn’t give me a license because they said I wasn’t going to do something that I actually told them I would do.

-Ben

[Musical Supersystem]

On Sat, Feb 13, 2021 at 1:16 PM 'Benjamin Spratling' via The Music Notation Project | Forum <musicn...@googlegroups.com> wrote:

I’m sure there are other obstacles to adoption of a new music notation that I have forgotten, or not encountered or understood or accurately reflected.  If you know of any more, let me know.

 

Right, there are all sorts of reasons, sometimes I have also been tempted to list them, some may be common to all proposals some might be specific to a certain proposal.

Regarding your proposal, a few come to mind.

x1- Proponents claims are exaggerated, if the magic they claim were true, in one way or another (sooner or later) it will be used, because anyone would appreciate singing unknown-music from a score while skipping what it takes to achieve that.

It seems to me the role of graphics related to the cognitive processes involved in sight reading music sometimes is exaggerated. Why do the people that look at the keys of a piano and cannot imagine the sounds that they produce could imagine those sounds by looking at a notation?

x2- Proposals are aimed at reading by readers. While some might think: 'so what'; the conventional notation, piano roll notation and chord symbols, which are the most used forms of music notation are valued and used by composers or songwriters; writing has driven the course and destiny of music notation from times of the quill to times of the click and drag.

Imagining music out of graphics is different from knowing what/when to play out of graphics, the first one is usually called 'sight reading' the second we might simply call it reading for the sake of communication.

Your spectacular sight reading claims should raise a flag or even strike a nerve on anyone like me who has spent significant time trying to achieve it, while experimenting all sorts of notations.

 

I agree such graphical cue is of additional help in the process of singing new music specially in the environment you describe, (a leading singer, projected lyrics, musical instruments and others singing around you), sight reading data coming out of that environment does not seem valuable to me, there are better ways to find out if graphics produce sight reading magic.

[Benjamin Spratling]

Howdy Musical Supersystem,

Sorry, I had some trouble understanding the context of some of your comments:

On Feb 15, 2021, at 1:26 PM, Musical Supersystem <mtall...@gmail.com> wrote:

On Sat, Feb 13, 2021 at 1:16 PM 'Benjamin Spratling' via The Music Notation Project | Forum <musicn...@googlegroups.com> wrote:

I’m sure there are other obstacles to adoption of a new music notation that I have forgotten, or not encountered or understood or accurately reflected.  If you know of any more, let me know.

 Right, there are all sorts of reasons, sometimes I have also been tempted to list them, some may be common to all proposals some might be specific to a certain proposal.

Regarding your proposal, a few come to mind.

When you say “your” in this last sentence, are you speaking to “me”, the author of the last quote, and apparent intended recipient of the last paragraph, or the the original poster?

x1- Proponents claims are exaggerated, if the magic they claim were true,

If you are speaking to me, I’m not sure what you meant by “proposal”.  If you are speaking to the original poster, I’m not sure what you mean by “claims”.

And if you are speaking to me, I don’t know why you think my experimental test data is “exaggerated”.  Fee free to visit my website and see people say it for themselves in the videos on the “People Are saying” tab.

 in one way or another (sooner or later) it will be used, because anyone would appreciate singing unknown-music from a score while skipping what it takes to achieve that.

Well, until it’s integrated into the slide show apps, the late-majority and laggards will never use it, that’s just basic technology marketing.  And those companies won’t take the market risk to do so until they believe the customers would be there.

And if the music publishers won’t sell files in a compatible format, the early majority - and early adopters won’t ever be able to use it.

And if the music ministers are worried their congregations will react badly, then not only will they never use it, they won’t even show it to them to find out if they like it.

And the music educators won’t use it, because they’ll say it isn’t “real” or “but they won’t encounter this in the real world”. (And of course, like I pointed out, it doesn’t work well for instruments).  And choir directors will want multiple-part support, but I won’t take the time to write the code to make the multiple-part support until I see it being adopted for the congregation.  I’m remarkably easily discouraged, and all the aforementioned people who never answer the phone or who disable me from proceeding without any rational basis discourage me greatly.

And if the purchase decision makers don’t feel the pain, then they won’t care to even try to make a change.

And if they can’t observe the pain because the congregation’s psychological hang ups won’t let them tell the purchase decision maker about their pain, then how are they going to know there is a problem that needs to be solved?

And if I don’t pay for advertising, and push relentlessly, consistently, inventively for yeeeaaaars, not even the innovators will ever find out it exists.

So I’m sure you’ll excuse me if I think the “inevitability” argument doesn’t reflect the world as I see it.

Your spectacular sight reading claims should raise a flag or even strike a nerve on anyone like me who has spent significant time trying to achieve it, while experimenting all sorts of notations.

Again, I feel like maybe you’re speaking to me, but I’m not sure.  Not sure why you say my “claims” are “spectacular”.  They’re data from testing with real people.

I admit, declaring success at only 85%-90% may be aiming too low from an academic perspective, but from a UX perspective, we would never even try to aim higher than 80% in the first case.

If, during more extensive testing, my rates go as low as 75%-80%, I will still move forward, because amongst worship leaders 75% participation rate is a tipping point of where they start to consider the problem to be insignificant enough and too hard to solve that they aren’t interested in putting more energy into a solution.

It just so happens that many people need to see 2 demo songs before they catch on, so my % after just 1 song are too low to brag about, at least, amongst non-musicians.  And it’s super hard to list fractions of songs, especially when some of the demo songs are 50% longer than others.

And music actually has very little to do with it.  In mobile app design, people give a new app maybe 45-60 seconds to figure out 1) what it does, 2) whether they want that, 3) how to make it do that.  If they don’t get those answers in that time, most just delete the app.

I had originally planned to design a notation that non-musicians could get within just 1 minute, and musicians would need perhaps a 5 minute training course to understand half steps vs. whole steps or how back out the perfect pitch.  I was originally distraught that it took 2 songs.  I had this sinking feeling of failure inside, and wondered if I should just drop it.  My bias is toward building things that never fail.  However, I realized in a typical worship service, there are 3 to 4 songs, which means before the person has a socially-acceptable opportunity to bail out and express their incredulous dissatisfaction to the worship leader, they have been able to participate in at least 1 song, and that gives them hope for the future.  I consider that a practical success, if not a theoretical or academic success.

I can speculate why about a third of people need that second song, but in the end, whatever the assumptions predictions and theories, the only thing that matters is hard test data with real people singing along with real songs.  And since I have that, speculating on the reasons is only marginally helpful.  I do usually insist on seeing a correlation of theory and test data to be sure of myself.

And yes, I would suggest that if this strikes a nerve or a flag, check out my YouTube video in which I describe 20 reasons traditional music notation can’t be fixed, which I referenced in my first reply to the original poster.  If any of those reasons seem like new ideas to you, or seem too ethereal or too silly to bother with, then I think maybe that’s a flag that you need to investigate.  To be frank about it, they don’t teach many of these skill sets in school.  While I did get some basic skill taking visual art classes in grade school and architecture in college, much of what I learned in the field I had to get by reading the research papers directly.  They certainly don’t teach this stuff in music curricula.

Now, of course, this was waaaaaaay harder than mobile app design.  I couldn't have any interaction, everyone had to see the same thing regardless of their skill level.  That’s like tying two arms behind my back.  It took me years and starting over from scratch multiple times before I got something that worked above 80%.  But a degree in physics  and six years of therapy helped me to learn to question my assumptions, drop my ego and dig deeper.

 I agree such graphical cue is of additional help in the process of singing new music specially in the environment you describe, (a leading singer, projected lyrics, musical instruments and others singing around you), sight reading data coming out of that environment does not seem valuable to me, there are better ways to find out if graphics produce sight reading magic.

Steve Jobs may have called it “magic”, but it’s neuroscience, physics, psychology, time-and-motion studies, industrial design, and graphic design, all merged into a field that didn’t even exist until 1995, called “User eXperience”, which I have been studying and practicing as an amateur, academically, and professionally since 2001.

UX is why a cat can play with an iPad but not a Windows CE device, and a lack of UX is why your VCR’s used to blink 12:00 all the time - they let the engineers design the user-interaction.  UX is why an AppleTV remote has 6 buttons, and a lack of UX is why the remote that came with your DVD player has 45 - they let the engineers design the remote.

And on top of that expertise, I added my insights from a detailed analysis of the specific use cases, and my own non-obvious inventiveness based on postulating a few principles of human perception no one has documented yet.  Then design, build, test, learn, scrap, redesign, build, test, learn, scrap, redesign, build and test and voila!

-Ben Spratling

Sent from my iPhone.

[John Keller]

Hi Ben,

I enjoyed listening and watching your hymns on https://www.singaccord.com

It seemed very intuitive and impressive.

But on your YouTube channel all i could see were testimonials.

Why no more hymns?

All hymns had the keynote in the middle of the vocal range except one with the doh at the bottom. 

I was interested to work out the logic of the background ‘stave'. 

Doh is always a line; me and soh a band (space)?

But each octave the ‘colour' swaps?

How do you notate minor songs? (Or are there none in worship music?)

Does B/ mean B flat?

Are some songs not in the key indicated?

Best wishes for success in promoting your system.

John Keller

Express Stave

(Piano notation)

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[Douglas Keislar]

Hi Ben,

I, too, watched with interest some of the videos on your site. Like John, I'd be interested in an actual explanation of the "staff." It seems that "so" (sol) lies in an uncolored band when above the tonic (which I think is always on a line), but in at least one video "so" lies in a colored band when below the tonic, which I found puzzling. And perhaps I'm confused, but it seemed that some videos were actually in the same key despite having different apparent key names at the beginning of the notation.

Best,

Doug

To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/musicnotation/CB934D0D-E730-4718-ACCE-C63E3F1B8C36%40bigpond.net.au.

[Benjamin Spratling]

On Feb 15, 2021, at 6:25 PM, John Keller <jko...@bigpond.net.au> wrote:

Hi Ben,

I enjoyed listening and watching your hymns on https://www.singaccord.com

It seemed very intuitive and impressive.

But on your YouTube channel all i could see were testimonials.

The demos songs are on my website singaccord.com.  The YouTube link I posted was directly to a video which describes why TMN can’t be fixed.  Did it not come through?  It’s https://youtu.be/zro45F9jby4. Browsing my YouTube channel isn’t really a supported activity.

Why no more hymns?

Licensing for contemporary christian worship songs is handled by YouTube, YouTube detects the song, places ads and sends the funds to the copyright administrators.

Licensing for recordings of hymns, even public domain hymns, requires waiting for weeks for Music Services to get back to you, then paying their “minimums” which are far in excess of their per-song prices.  I did that once, and it was a nightmare.

Almost all the songs available in my webstore are public domain hymns.  And I’m starting to add some Sovereign Grace Music songs.

I was interested to work out the logic of the background ‘stave'. 

As you go up to a line, it’s a half step up; up to a bar it’s a whole step up.

All hymns had the keynote in the middle of the vocal range except one with the doh at the bottom. 

The range of the song is up to the composer.  The SingAccord app adapts the display of the scale to accommodate the song range.  It extends the scale in all direction to the next line for visual consistency.  Because most popular songs seem to center around the key line, extending it to the next octave in both directions is just overkill.

Doh is always a line; me and soh a band (space)?

Because it is a relative notation. western music almost always has the last interval in the scale be a half step, so the root of the key is typically a line.

But each octave the ‘colour' swaps?

The colors restart at each line, and then swap going up for each bar to enable contrast without needing to draw a line in between the bars.

How do you notate minor songs? (Or are there none in worship music?)

Songs in a “minor" key still have corresponding major key signatures.  The emphasis here is on the function of knowing the relative interval from note to note, and then giving the few people who have perfect pitch the key note so they know where the others are.

Does B/ mean B flat?

Yes.  Congrats, only 35% of musicians get that without being taught.  But then I just say, “it’s a slash, and if you slash your tires, they’re ___” and people say “flat”.  As I mentioned, this is the one arbitrary symbol in my notation, which will be an eternal embarrassment.  Sorry, but I just gave up when I got that far.

Are some songs not in the key indicated?

The app always labels the root of the key signature.

To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/musicnotation/CB934D0D-E730-4718-ACCE-C63E3F1B8C36%40bigpond.net.au.

[Douglas Keislar]

It seems that "so" (sol) lies in an uncolored band when above the tonic (which I think is always on a line), but in at least one video "so" lies in a colored band when below the tonic, which I found puzzling.

I see now that that fact is explained by your answer to John:

As you go up to a line, it’s a half step up; up to a bar it’s a whole step up.

There has been research showing that non-musicians don't really distinguish between the size of a half step and that of a whole step; they just hear that something is the next note in the scale. So perhaps using a line to indicate a half step isn't so crucial (and, by extension, perhaps having the same coloring in each octave would be helpful).

Doug

[Benjamin Spratling]

On Feb 15, 2021, at 7:03 PM, Douglas Keislar <douglas...@gmail.com> wrote:

Hi Ben,

I, too, watched with interest some of the videos on your site. Like John, I'd be interested in an actual explanation of the "staff." It seems that "so" (sol) lies in an uncolored band when above the tonic (which I think is always on a line), but in at least one video "so" lies in a colored band when below the tonic, which I found puzzling.

Yes, the tonic is always on the line.  The “band” colors just alternate up from the line.  The colors of the lines or “bars” as I call them, can change to fit better with the background artwork.  When you add background artwork, the app analyzes the colors and decides whether a white-primary or black-primary color scheme works best.  The only extra decision the user has to make is which color the notes will be.  The app then picks the lyric color, either white or black, to maximize contrast with the notes.

As I mentioned in my half hour “why traditional music notation can’t be fixed" video, the vast majority of people have relative pitch, not perfect pitch.  Modern UX focuses on what most people are going to be able to get, and deemphasizes what only experts can use.  Since my intended users are untrained singers, I focus on and emphasize the relative pitch.  The intervals are drawn directly from the key signature.  Half steps being lines, whole steps being bars.

For the few who have perfect pitch, I notate the key note on the left of the scale.

And perhaps I'm confused, but it seemed that some videos were actually in the same key despite having different apparent key names at the beginning of the notation.

I used the recordings available for purchase, and used the lead sheets available for purchase.  If they don’t match, well, that’s up to the publishers and/or/ the praise band.  Truth is, very few people would even notice, although the people who do notice will be ticked off immensely, I’m sure.

-Ben

To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/musicnotation/CAO-VhJp0xW1CaUwAGCHgkf8nNn2fXp22dyQVuHxpsi98%3DNksmw%40mail.gmail.com.

[Benjamin Spratling]

On Feb 15, 2021, at 7:14 PM, Douglas Keislar <douglas...@gmail.com> wrote:

It seems that "so" (sol) lies in an uncolored band when above the tonic (which I think is always on a line), but in at least one video "so" lies in a colored band when below the tonic, which I found puzzling.

I see now that that fact is explained by your answer to John:

As you go up to a line, it’s a half step up; up to a bar it’s a whole step up.

There has been research showing that non-musicians don't really distinguish between the size of a half step and that of a whole step; they just hear that something is the next note in the scale. So perhaps using a line to indicate a half step isn't so crucial (and, by extension, perhaps having the same coloring in each octave would be helpful).

Well, a couple of things here.  It actually is the same color in each octave.  Since the color of the bars resets at each line, and the octaves always start at a line, each octave does have the same color pattern, for a given background.

Second, you have to do something about the “texture" effect of the neurons in the retinas, which I pointed out in my half hour youtube video of reasons traditional music notation can’t be fixed.

It’s true that most non-musicians don’t recognize steps vs. half steps, that’s one reason I don’t put so much energy into distinguishing that as other features, like rhythm.

But had I used the same height for both, the scale would have become one giant illegible texture, like in Smule or Guitar Hero’s singing interface, or most chromatic notations, or the traditional music staff.  I had to insert some non-regularity in there to stop the eyes from optimizing it all away.  Of course, it’s not the first thing anyone notices, but it’s not supposed to be the first thing anyone notices.  The notation is designed for progressive revelation.  Which is tough to do given that there’s no interaction or feedback.

Even while it is still too much visual information, it still prevents the texture optimization, and enables the person to know if a note is the same height as another one, from several notes away.

I never figured anyone, even musicians, would get that right away, but 35% did, which is half of the people who figured out that it showed the intervals some how.

The order of the knowledge in order of usability and noticeability is:

What is the next lyric I should sing?

When do I start or stop singing this lyric?

Is the pitch the same as another note I sang recently?

Is the pitch higher or lower than another note?

Is the pitch a little higher / lower  or a lot higher / lower than another note?

Is the pitch very high or very low?

What is the approximate relative interval between the pitches?

What is the exact relative interval between the pitches?

What is the perfect pitch of the note?

With no other data, I would expect 95% to get #1, 90% to get #2, and 80% to get #3-4, and only 4% to get # 9, with a rapid fall off in between.

But I’m getting 85%-90% on #5.

Amongst musicians, I’m getting 35% on #8, which is really high, given they have only seen 2 song demos.

And I’m kind of skimming over the details of the perfect pitch there, and those stats are also amazingly good.

-Ben.

[Musical Supersystem]

On Mon, Feb 15, 2021 at 3:19 PM 'Benjamin Spratling' via The Music Notation Project | Forum <musicn...@googlegroups.com> wrote:

Howdy Musical Supersystem,

When you say “your” in this last sentence, are you speaking to “me”, the author of the last quote, and apparent intended recipient of the last paragraph, or the the original poster?

It was an answer to your post in a generic way and has nothing to do with the original post that as usually in this group we are sort of diverting.

In this group we usually call proposals, others call them essays to what you present as SingAccord.

Maybe the misunderstanding is mutual, so let's start over, if singaccord is not about sight-singing please let us know what is about, but if that is its purpose we'd better use that terminology and let us know how you test that somebody is able to sight-sing and how long it takes the average person without previous musical training to sight-sing.

 

--

[John Keller]

I don’t get why you say doh is the same colour in each octave.

In “His Name is Jesus”, bottom doh is a white line, top doh is a black line.

Also it seemed to me there must be an inconsistency if each line has a semitone below but a whole-tone above. 

Specifically, the whole tones doh-ray and fah-soh are visually smaller than the other whole-tones. You can see this in songs featuring d r m, where r-m is a larger step than d-r.

I really like the idea but the background stave needs to be consistent with its pitch proportion.

Not sure if there is a solution unless some ribbons are wider?

Also, do hymns sometimes include chromatic notes? How would these be shown?

Cheers, 

John

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[Benjamin Spratling]

Lol, totally forgot.  I used to have every line be the same color and then reset the bar color to alternate above it.  But to improve contrast / visibility I changed it to just always alternate from each adjacent bar to line.

And if by “needs to be consistent with its pitch proportion” you mean equal vertical space for each half step, then no.  I tried that, and it was an imperceptible mess.  It seems theoretically like it would have been a good idea, it just doesn’t work in practice because of how human brains process images.

When you say, “would some show chromatic notes”, I’m not sure what you mean.  Do you mean, how are accidentals shown?  The Sandra McCracken song has some examples.

-Ben

Sent from my iPhone.

On Feb 16, 2021, at 3:23 AM, John Keller <jko...@bigpond.net.au> wrote:

I don’t get why you say doh is the same colour in each octave.

To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/musicnotation/B52D0C90-D6CF-417B-B86B-5D65491CB191%40bigpond.net.au.

[Musical Supersystem]

Fastgram, sorry if we have diverted from your original post, it happens all the time here in this type of informal conversations, and the focus shifts from one thing to another easily, but it happened and I find now worst abandoning it in the middle of confusion.

Ben,

When I read:

Merely by watching it in use in just 2 songs, 85%-90% of people can learn to read SingAccord to their level of musical skill.

It is confusing that message for me, it looks like carefully drafted to say nothing, what is the value of that, what is its importance?

Then I mentally translated it to my language or what I considered could be an important and meaningful message:

"Merely by watching 2 videos of songs in the Singaccord notation,  85%-90% of people can sight-sing in that notation."

With that translation/interpretation in mind I answered your post.

 

YY.

[Benjamin Spratling]

Howdy,

My original reply was about pointing out the challenges to promoting any music notation, not submitting a proposal for mine.  I merely briefly described what I was doing as a context for understanding how and why I encountered some of the challenges myself.  And then I got wrapped up talking about it, because it’s been all I do nights and weekends for 6 years now.

And also to see if anyone could actually solve those challenges, to bring them on board to help me.

it looks like carefully drafted to say nothing, what is the value of that, what is its importance?

Because in the context of a congregation, each person comes in with a different level of musical skill.  As I pointed out in a message here yesterday, there are at least 9 distinct questions in order of how far their musical skill will carry them. (There are more, but I skipped a few because I wanted to have more clarity in the ones I wanted to point out, and I got tired of typing.)

I do not take an “all or nothing” approach, that results in too much failure.  In modern UX, we take a “take what you can get” approach, allowing the individual user’s desire/skill level drive their depth, but still allow the vast majority of people with low intent and low skill to get something more than they have been with alternatives.  We often use the “80/20” rule as a starring guide: “80% of the people will use only 20% of the features”.  Currently traditional music notation is at “20% of the people use 80% of the features”, which is a corollary of the 80/20 rule, but for “experts only”.  I don’t thinking aiming for a 100/100 rule is doable, or even 96/96. 

The bottom line is, by the time someone becomes an adult, the chances they will even attempt any kind of formal musical training is close enough to zero to ignore the possibility.  I have to work with people with what they already know.  I’m not entirely sure what you meant by “sight-sing”, but in my gut it feels like a 96/96 rule, and I wouldn’t try for that.  But yes, the goal here is non-trained singers singing along to new songs the first time - to their level of musical skill. 

Those who are truly interested but not sure about some things will come forward and reach out for any clarification, as a few here have done.  Be guy even recognized something I did better than I remembered.  Of course, I wrote that code 2 years ago, and have been spending the rest of the time doing user testing, so no wonder I forgot.

-Ben

Sent from my iPhone.

On Feb 16, 2021, at 1:27 PM, Musical Supersystem <mtall...@gmail.com> wrote:



To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/musicnotation/CAARA0-9yX9U4FoMxNWtvmzxvBhH3wPgfTxgUHJUV3mR%2B_brLcQ%40mail.gmail.com.

[Musical Supersystem]

On Tue, Feb 16, 2021 at 1:57 PM 'Benjamin Spratling' via The Music Notation Project | Forum <musicn...@googlegroups.com> wrote:

  I’m not entirely sure what you meant by “sight-sing”, but in my gut it feels like a 96/96 rule, and I wouldn’t try for that.  But yes, the goal here is non-trained singers singing along to new songs the first time - to their level of musical skill.

That is a standard definition, which has a meaning for people related to music, sight-reading I think is like the umbrella of sight-playing and sight-singing. There are musicians who can sight-play but do not sight-read or sight-sing and many (I would say most) professional singers do not sight-sing, just to have an idea of what we are talking about.

Knowing the correct terminology is important to google e.g. scholar papers and communicate better, 

https://scholar.google.com/scholar?hl=en&as_sdt=0%2C10&q=sight-singing&btnG=

Some years ago I decided to train sight-reading in the piano roll notation, which is close to what you show, but I took special care to be sure that I was not cheating myself, even a midi file with the name of the music is cheating, having the lyrics is blatant.

So I named the tracks with sequential numbers and saved them in folders with names that the meaning was only if the tracks were single notes or piano or something else, I also made tracks of excerpts, cutting from the middle or somewhere not to know if I was at the beginning of a song or somewhere else, I usually moved and renamed the files randomly in folders, it might seem a paranoia but I am quite aware of how big is the capacity of ALL humans to deceive ourselves.

 

 

To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/musicnotation/7211F70B-71DB-4801-BA70-B0300F6911EF%40mac.com.

[John Keller]

Hi Ben, 

So did you try to make each diatonic step in the scale an equal vertical distance? 

But found it wasn’t workable, so allowed d-r and f-s to be the smaller rise?

(You do have the semitones t-d and m-f  as the smaller rise actually.)

Can you give a link to the Sandra McCracken song with accidentals (chromatic notes)? 

I can’t see it in the demo songs list.

Thanks,

John

To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/musicnotation/E066A9AE-900F-45FB-BC32-6D9AA19D1C24%40mac.com.

[Musical Supersystem]

However I do think that we could be talking about a different category of sight-singing that for the sake of communication we might call 'assisted sight-singing' (or other word), over the years there has been many claims that some systems work for massive sight-singing like numbers in china, tonic solfa with letters, shape notes, transposing to relative do of the conventional notation and others.

In many cases those systems have been used for collective singing like in churches, and all it takes is a lead singer (I used to be) or the introduction of a few piano chords that hit right a few notes that quickly activate the short-term memory to work, while a visual component immediately start making its contribution, that scenario might create some type of illusion that should not be confused with the ability of learning to sight-sing in 10 minutes or so.

I think it is fair if you claim that your visual component is an improvement over some previous ones for the activity and environment that you describe.   

But it is a complete waste of time and it might work against your project the unnecessary criticism of the conventional notation for a lot of reasons, but specially because the problem oriented presentation approach has totally failed when it comes to music notation reforms or alternatives, you should move to a solution oriented presentation though it might require changing your mind set.

[Musical Supersystem]

My experience has turned me skeptical of "sight-singing for the masses" for several reasons, at least of the real one, (future generations it might change) and think of it as a kind of grail that becomes elusive simply because it does not exist.

But the "other" sight-singing like a semi or pseudo sight-singing, well if people perceive that it works, it works, who am I to disagree.

YY 

[Benjamin Spratling]

On Feb 16, 2021, at 8:37 PM, Musical Supersystem <mtall...@gmail.com> wrote:
>
> But it is a complete waste of time and it might work against your project the unnecessary criticism of the conventional notation for a lot of reasons, but specially because the problem oriented presentation approach has totally failed when it comes to music notation reforms or alternatives, you should move to a solution oriented presentation though it might require changing your mind set.

I’m curious, which one of my “criticisms” of “conventional notation” did you find to be “unnecessary”? And what is meant by “unnecessary”? Do you mean, I didn’t need to say it here, because everyone knows? (I think they don’t.) Or I didn’t need to analyze it that in depth because I had enough reasons already? (Perhaps, and I’m considering using an abbreviated list.) Or some of the criticisms were incorrect? (I strongly disagree). Or spending a half hour pointing out in detail with examples the failures isn’t a great way to convince a worship leader that my solution is a good idea? (True, which is why you’ll notice I haven’t managed to work it into my website or any of my advertisements. Besides, step 1 in marketting is looking for “champions” in the “innovator” segment of the “diffusion of innovation curve”, who are, in part, defined by their existing “problem awareness” and avid search for a new solutions, and thus presenting a detailed list of reasons the current products fail is unnecessary.)

> problem oriented presentation approach has totally failed when it comes to music notation reforms or alternatives

“Failed” at what? My stated goal was not to propose a music notation, I tried that in this group 1.5 years ago and was shot down immediately, but to point out additional psychographic and value-network problems that need to be solved, or at least expertise sought to help solve, before the publicity steps the original poster had suggested. In as much as everyone jumped on the details of my music notation, and haven’t addressed, what, any? Of those issues... the “tech daddy” commented on like 2. .... nor has anyone accepted his invitation besides me, I guess no one here has any quick answers to those issues either?

> you should move to a solution oriented presentation

Do you mean, my email in here? Or my website where I show demos and testimonials? Or in the test service I’m arranging where I’ve found a church, found a band (which took 4 months), and stayed up till 4 am last night reviewing their set list suggestions and compiling the lyrics to submit to the church pastor for review so we can ink a contract for a special worship service where they can come experience SingAccord in the real world?

> though it might require changing your mind set.

If you have any references to books or trainings on how to do that, please let me know. I’ve read 41 books on business, marketting, advertising and sales in the last few years, yet I still feel like I don’t have a good grasp on it.

[John Keller]

Hi Ben,

Your half hour video where you end up marking TMN with100s of red crosses, is entertaining but over-manic, and I agree with YY would likely put people off taking you seriously.

All that is required in my opinion to sell your worship app, is fix all the wrong notes so that the notation of every demo song agrees totally with the audio. I liked the songs and the videos a great deal and enjoyed singing along. But finding wrong notes was very disappointing. Can they be edited?

Also, why not indicate the keys the usual way (Bb instead of B/ - And what about sharps?) And correct the keys where necessary to agree with the audio, so professionals have no complaints.

I also think your background stave could be improved so that the notes rise and fall in exact pitch-proportion.
I sketched a few ideas.

Regards,
John Keller
Express Stave

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[Musical Supersystem]

On Wed, Feb 17, 2021 at 10:09 AM 'Benjamin Spratling' via The Music Notation Project | Forum <musicn...@googlegroups.com> wrote:

On Feb 16, 2021, at 8:37 PM, Musical Supersystem <mtall...@gmail.com> wrote:
>
> But it is a complete waste of time and it might work against your project the unnecessary criticism of the conventional notation for a lot of reasons, but specially because the problem oriented presentation approach has totally failed when it comes to music notation reforms or alternatives, you should move to a solution oriented presentation though it might require changing your mind set.

I’m curious, which one of my “criticisms” of “conventional notation” did you find to be “unnecessary”?

   

I moved quickly on your video, nothing in particular, I spoke in a general way and no longer even care if criticism is right or wrong.

If what you propose does not have "some appreciated merit on its own" it does not matter how much you criticise the other one, what matters is if they value yours.

I studied Gregg shorthand many years ago when I was learning English, and it was not because of criticism of the English spelling, which is still a nightmare for me.

Many professionals that use the conventional notation sometimes prefer the piano roll notation or chord symbols for certain activities.

What you want is that people use your (special-purpose) notation, not that stop using the other one.

Use your time to find out how to make others appreciate your solution, if you cannot find it, hardly anyone will.

You are not completely trapped by walls, there is a hole that was made by tablatures, klavar, piano roll, chord symbols, maybe others that have demonstrated that there is space for specialized complements if people value them, use that fact.

What has failed, is the battle for reforming the conventional notation, or replacing it with something similar without the so-called unnecessary complications, and your notation has nothing to do with that.

The conventional notation did not evolve for occasional use or to be learned in a few minutes, and it is what it is. Many musicians have a completely different point of view about it, and defend it passionately. 

> you should move to a solution oriented presentation

Do you mean, my email in here?  Or my website where I show demos and testimonials? 

 

I was thinking while you are making presentations of your system in any way, especially to potential users or those that have the responsibility to decide if giving it a try or spending money.

A while ago I found some interesting arguments about not thinking about the problems of an existing solution but instead use the time to think about solutions directly, when we focus on problems of solutions (not in a goal) we more likely are going to come up with variations of that solution, limiting ourselves, and I was like what.... is this guy talking about music notation, because that is a large part of the history of music notation reform proposals.

What I mean is that that approach somehow could be used also while presenting the solution, why should people go through the process of understanding the problems of other solutions to value yours?

 

 

> though it might require changing your mind set.

If you have any references to books or trainings on how to do that, please let me know.  I’ve read 41 books on business, marketting, advertising and sales in the last few years, yet I still feel like I don’t have a good grasp on it.


-Ben

Sent from my iPhone.

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[Benjamin Spratling]

> On Feb 17, 2021, at 1:02 PM, John Keller <jko...@bigpond.net.au> wrote:
>
> Hi Ben,
>
> Your half hour video where you end up marking TMN with100s of red crosses, is entertaining but over-manic, and I agree with YY would likely put people off taking you seriously.

I’m not sure what you mean by “over-manic”. If you mean I went through them quickly, I did that to try to reduce the time you need to spend watching it. I really hate it when you tube videos drag maybe 45 seconds of content out into 10 minutes. So I went through them as quickly as I could. If that’s not what you meant, I’m not sure what you’re referring to.

Not sure why it puts people off taking me seriously. Is there a mistake in there? Am I saying some thing you where unaware of? Or hadn’t considered? Or think is too persnickety? Or do you just not like the fact the the cables dangle from the screen, the background is obviously a generic apartment beige, the brightness of the screen keeps flickering due to using my iPhone as a camera, that I have a little hair standing up on the back left of my head, that I apparently subconsciously do the Barney Fife thing when trying to make a point, or that I’m 80 lbs overweight?

Many people have told me that I’m an "acquired taste". Never understood why. But hopefully if you know you can tell me and I can work on it.

> All that is required in my opinion to sell your worship app, is fix all the wrong notes so that the notation of every demo song agrees totally with the audio. I liked the songs and the videos a great deal and enjoyed singing along. But finding wrong notes was very disappointing. Can they be edited?

I edit them in Finale before importing them into SingAccord. I am building an editor for SingAccord songs where you can directly edit the SingAccord notation, but that is not complete. The fact that you noticed some of the notes were wrong is encouraging, it means it’s working for you. If you happen to know which notes in particular are incorrect, please let me know; there’s a lot of them in there. Mainly I take their publicly-sold finale orchestrations or lead sheet .pdf’s and transcribe them in finale, then sync their iTunes store recordings. Sometimes I fix obvious mistakes, but most of those are related to the original engravers doing remarkably poor jobs of using their original tools. If I have to hire people to do that for all Christian worship songs in english, that will cost about $4M.

> Also, why not indicate the keys the usual way (Bb instead of B/ - And what about sharps?) And correct the keys where necessary to agree with the audio, so professionals have no complaints.

Remember, for untrained singer, there is no “usual way”. “b” and “#” have known meanings to those users which aren’t applicable to music. In relative notation, there is no need for both sharps and flats. “/“ maybe isn’t the best choice; I considered about a dozen other ways of doing accidentals and flats. At least it’s used to cut a whole step into half, and “/“ is known for being involved in fractions. Needing even 1 symbol is profoundly embarrassing for me.
I could say I ditched sharps instead of flats because the notation is based on increasing pitch when moving up to a new interval, either a whole or half step. So the only accidentals are when you move up to a whole step, but not all the way.
But I think we all know that it’s because I’m a low brass player, and my subconscious mind will accept any rationalization to prefer flats over sharps. Either way, one had to go, and it could theoretically have been either.

> I also think your background stave could be improved so that the notes rise and fall in exact pitch-proportion.

No, I did that originally. Almost no one could tell the difference between half steps and whole steps. Sure it sounds good theoretically, but I’ve found several reasons it doesn’t work in practice. "Over-emphasizing" the distinction between whole steps and half steps solved several problems.

[John Keller]

I was hoping to update my Express Stave entry on the music notation website, so as to show my most recent version, which i have settled on for a long time now.

This would be instead of the current entries which are organised chronologically.

I feel it is better to just present the one final version for clarity and to avoid people being confused.

All my Wiki examples are in this final version.

Paul Morris, is this possible?

My health has not been the best lately and I start chemotherapy tomorrow, so i am very concerned to tidy up my online resources for Express Stave as much as possible.

I enclose a PDF of the version of ES i have settled on. It has two fonts, ‘classic' for printed music, and 'jazz font’ which more clearly differentiates the two whole tone scales and is used when handwriting.

I also would like the name to to have a subtitle of 'Pianoforte Notation’ so as to convey less ambition than of replacing all traditional notation.

Cheers,
John Keller

[Mark Gould]

Dear John,

I hope Paul can get back to you soon, but in the meantime wishing you all success with the chemotherapy.

Mark

On 21 Feb 2021, at 01:10, John Keller <jko...@bigpond.net.au> wrote:

I was hoping to update my Express Stave entry on the music notation website, so as to show my most recent version, which i have settled on for a long time now.

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<ES noteheads classic plus jazz.pdf>

[Douglas Keislar]

John, I'm so sorry to hear of your health problems! Wishing you all the best with your chemotherapy.

Regarding Express Stave: I think what we should do is to indicate very clearly which versions have been superseded by your preferred version. The site is intended to be as thorough as possible regarding the history of different proposals, even ones the inventor later abandoned. That way, other people don't reinvent the wheel, thinking they've come up with a novel variant. Also, people can learn from the evolution of an inventor's thinking. Other inventors similarly have a number of systems represented on the site, even though they're no longer promoting them. For example, Paul Morris has four and Richard Parncutt has five.

Doug

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[pa...@paulwmorris.com]

Hi John, I'm really sorry to hear about your health situation. All my
best as you start your treatment. I hope it goes well.

I'll work on updating the MNP website with the latest version of Express
Stave (and adding the "Pianoforte Notation" language). Thanks for the
PDF. As Doug mentioned, we like to keep a record of different proposals
that have been made, but we can make it very clear which one is the
canonical and preferred version.

Cheers,
-Paul

[John Keller]

Thanks Paul,

Can my latest versions with the two fonts be the first and most complete entry? Then i am very happy to show the various evolution of my ideas clearly dated coming afterwards.

Im pleased to say I got through the over 8 hours of the first chemo session with minimal discomfort, and the drugs I had to take on subsequent days made me feel like a superman! So thus far Im mostly feeling fine and the nodes in my neck are even starting to shrink and soften already. I still have some trouble with nausea and tourettes while trying to sleep, which they think is unrelated.

This all began when I was evicted from my music school just as Covid started and I was given a month to move everything out. As a result my garage and kitchen is full of music school gear, even though a lot has now been sold. Depending how i feel in the next weeks i will decide how many students to let go and the rest teach over video phone, but I want to keep more time for my own piano practice.

Check out one of my recent recording of a Nikolai Kapustin piece.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q-SpsQ4tXsQ

Thanks for your support, and stay safe everyone!

Cheers,
John Keller

[Bob Stuckey]

John

Thanks for sharing this piece of virtuosity!

My teaching practice has also shrunk through covid to a few online but your brain has to work twice as hard guessing whats really going on at the other end.

Best wishes from London.

Bob

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[Douglas Keislar]

John,

Thanks for the update on your health and your teaching.

I enjoyed your video -- virtuosic, indeed, as Bob said!

I couldn't tell from the video whether the sheet music you're reading is in TN or Express Stave -- I suspect the former.

I see, via Wikipedia, that someone wrote a dissertation on the Kapustin jazz preludes:

https://randycreighton.com/music/kapustin/KapustinFinalComplete.pdf

Best,

Doug

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[John Keller]

Hi Doug,

I was reading the Kapustin from Express Stave!  Here is the sheet:

http://musicnotation.org/wp-content/uploads/2013/03/Nikolai-Kapustin-Prelude-ESclassic.pdf

Thanks for the reference you found. I’ll have a read!

Cheers,

John

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