Re: Custom music notation?

[David Kastrup]

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

> Maybe 18th century to the... Western world. At least 2000 years for
> other places around the world.

Shape music?  Hardly so.  If you choose your own meanings for
well-established terms, communication does not happen.

> Exercising an instrument is just learning to play. Chromatic is best
> matched with chromatic.

A chromatically organised access to notes does not imply chromatically
organised music.  And "best matched" is just hollow words when there is
no notion about the purpose of the match.  There is very little Western
music with a chromatic frame of reference and tonality (the
dodecaphonists may be considered an exception but they cannot avoid
being usually perceived with the hearing of a diatonically trained
listener), so for any musical understanding that does not restrict
itself to the _execution_ on a chromatic instrument, chromatic notation
is not helpful.

For example, transposing music in tablature (execution-based notation
for partially chromatically organised string instrument) is sort of a
nightmare once you want to do more than slide to a different position on
the neck.

> Music is not only harmony "thirds" or natural major or minor.

Strawman.

> Have you heard about Kravtsov accordions:
> http://www.accordionkravtsov.ru/eng/

Looks like combining a loose relation of standard music notation to the
keyboard with the irregularity of a piano keyboard.  Accordions are
about the only instruments where uniform chromatic keyboard layouts have
made it into mainstream, and the overwhelming reason for that is that it
allows to cram a lot of music into confined space.  Another may be its
low acceptance into classical music where sheet music (which maps better
to diatonic keyboard layouts) rather than playing by ear is paramount:
in countries with an active folk music tradition, you'll often find band
members playing button keyboards while ensembles with a classical
repertoire will be more likely seen playing with piano keyboards.

There are other uniform chromatic systems, like the related 2-row based
Jankó keyboard pianos, or the respective 6+6 or Bayreuther system for
accordions.

They've not made it into mainstream.

-- 
David Kastrup