Re: Custom music notation?

[David Kastrup]

Pashkuli Keyboard <pashkuli.keyboard@gmail.com> writes:

> Indeed, that is why today people simply use MIDI-rolls to make music.
> Yes, it takes HUGE space if you have to write 12 notes for absolute pitch
> (vertical distance), especially if you have to print it out.
>
> Shape notes are older than the "standard" notation.

Shape notes have been introduced late 18th century, standard notation
(why the quotes?) with 5 staff lines has been around since the 15th
century at least.

> You will have a hard time reading 3 octaves of a note, that is at
> least 2+ x 12 vertical spaces, 24 vertical spaces. It is insane, even
> if you had to use 12 notehead symbols.

There is not much of a point in inherently chromatic notation when
things like harmony thirds with their haphazard in-scale alternation
between minor and major thirds are perceived as natural intervals in our
diatonic scales.

Notating material in this tonality in terms of equally-spaced half notes
is an execution-based notation rather than a notation reflecting musical
relations.

I know what I am talking about, playing chromatic button accordion: I
have to translate the diatonic notation into equally-spaced chromatic
keyboard patterns all the time.  Builds character.

Chromatic button accordion is one of the few chromatically organised
polyphonic instruments for which there is _no_ specific tablature in
common use (like it is for guitar, lute, and likely viol).

Walks of in-scale thirds take quite a bit of exercise on that
instrument...

-- 
David Kastrup