EMUSIC-L Digest Volume 29, Number 2 This issue's topics: Reply to Alt Music Notation (8 messages) Your EMUSIC-D moderator is Joe McMahon. Please send articles to emusic-L@auvm.american.edu (or EMUSIC-L@AUVM.BITNET). Administrative mail should be directed to xrjdm@scfvm.nasa.gov. Digests will be distributed semi-monthly to monthly. For faster response to questions, subscribe to EMUSIC-L@AUVM.BITNET (or emusic-l@auvm.american.edu). The EMUSIC-L discussion group can alo be accessed via bit.listserv.emusic-l on Usenet. Subscribers to this list may send articles to EMUSIC-D@AUVM.BITNET (or emusic-d@auvm.american.edu); they will be reviewed and forwarded to EMUSIC-L. Back issues are available from xrjdm@scfvm.gsfc.nasa.gov. This is a manual operation, so requests for things like "all back issues" will take a long time. ------------------------------ Date: Sat, 1 Jun 91 11:13:43 -0500 From: UUCJEFF@BOGECNVE.BITNET Subject: Reply to Alt Music Notation >> You might want to change pitch classes to numbers on 12-tone works, >> but for diatonic harmony, the present system makes perfect sense, >> and correlates with many heirarchical properties of harmony. >But when you say "makes perfect sense," I think you are speaking >from the point of view of someone who is familiar and comfortable >with the notation. I like the diatonic approach to harmony; I just >think the SYMBOLS we're using are not especially intuitive. Yes, I am, but I think there is a lot of the information which is available from understanding the conventional nomenclature. Such to the point where you could understand some of the alternative theories of tonal organization like George Russell's Lydian Chromatic Concept. This is a CONCEPT based system of tonal organization, there are concepts termed "tonal gravity", "ingoing vertical", "outgoing horizontal" and is based on a variety of scale structures and their modes. But you have to understand the basic things such as scale degrees, intervals, and alterations. This provides information in which you can predict what the next notes are going to be. There are other approaches to tonal organization not using diatonic harmony, Harry Partch, for instance, but that uses 3 dimensional matrices. Ornette Coleman has his harmolodic theory. They may or may not use conventional ideas for some of their theory, but both theories are predictive, knowing the theory and the last few notes are going to predict what the next notes are going to be. Again, I don't know what type of music you like. It is possible to have a good ear and relatively intuitive understanding of harmony where you don't know the terms. Erroll Garner, the jazz pianist, for instance, was reported to have such a good ear that this hindered his ability to learn how to read music. For any improvising musician, having a good ear where you can play what your hear inside your head is paramount. But I really doubt if knowing the conventional notation is going to hinder you in developing your ear. For me, I think it helps. The notation system of harmony and chord constructions help you cover all the possibilities of a chord, so when you hear it, he play it. It is not merely a used for taxonomic description. >> Suspended makes sense because the 4th is supposed to . . . >Again, the terms "suspended," "augmented," and "diminished" make >sense to you because you've developed/inherited/practiced a mental >mapping between the sounds and the words. These terms are really >"visual" analogies of musical concepts. I don't think they are >"wrong" or "bad," but they just don't work as well for me. I don't But these musical events have been around for a long time and you have to name them if you are going to be able to communicate them to others. Otherwise, they would presumably disappear, and you also wouldn't be able to expand on them to more the more sophisticated tonal colours that you find in early 20th century classical (Bartok, Debussy, Ives) and modern jazz. I for one am not going to want to deal with triads all my life. There are other names for some of them, depending on the musical tradition. In jazz, you might call something a Flat 5, or a blue note. >intend to spend a lot of time and energy studying the existing >TERMINOLOGY or NOTATION of Western music; that's a lot of mental >"baggage" I can do without. Instead I'm interested in learning >and exploring the CONCEPTS. A musically experienced person could >sit down at a keyboard and play a sequence of chords for me to >demonstrate a good progression, without saying or writing a thing. And you could hear it without knowing how it fits in notation. But if you wanted to write it and communciate that to other musicians, what are you going to do? Even so, someone once told me that he read somewhere that many people cannot distinguish a major chord and a minor chord. Not that they have to label a chord "major" or "minor", just that they can tell that they are different. If one can't do that, I wonder what kind of concept they have when they listen to music, especially music with any kind of sophistication. You have to be able hear where music is going, and a thing as basic as the distinction between major and minor is very important. >I can't believe that traditional music provides the ONLY means of >communication with other musicians, nor can I believe that if I don't >use it, I have to make up my own system FROM SCRATCH! Go to a music library and find a book by Harry Partch, it is called "The Genesis Of A Music". See how intuitive his system is. Be warned his music dispenses with the equal-tempored 12 note chromatic scale and replaces it with a 43 tone scale. >Exactly! Why are your "non-readers" that way? I doubt they are >lacking in intelligence, or musically incapable. If there where a >more intuitive music notation system, then 9 out of 10 musicians >would be "readers." What would that be? The one hairbrained scheme I mentioned from Omni related it to the performance technique of the piano keyboard. But I think such a scheme would be a hindrance, you don't want to relate the music to the physical gestures of the instrument. You could not play it on another instrument, and the music would stagnate around what feels comfortable on the instrument. The notation system should provide information about THE MUSIC. When the conventional notation system becomes inadequate, composers have never been shy about dispensing with it, and devising a new one. You only have to look to contemporary classical music, Ornette Coleman, post-Coltrane jazz bands. But you have to remember, these are typically very local performance groups, and the notation is never communicated beyond the performacne group, and even perhaps only applies to the one piece. >First, are there REALLY so many chords? Ignore keys (do it all relative >to a base key), and you've got MAJOR and MINOR chords, each with >variations (7ths,4ths,etc.)... and 6ths, 9ths, sharp 9s, flat 9s, 11ths, sharp 11ths, 13ths, flat 13s. What are you going to do with a major-7/sharp 11? Jeff ------------------------------ Date: Sun, 2 Jun 91 16:26:17 PDT From: "Michael R. Kesti" Subject: Re: Reply to Alt Music Notation >>> Suspended makes sense because the 4th is supposed to . . . >>Again, the terms "suspended," "augmented," and "diminished" make >>sense to you because you've developed/inherited/practiced a mental >>mapping between the sounds and the words. These terms are really >>"visual" analogies of musical concepts. I don't think they are >>"wrong" or "bad," but they just don't work as well for me. Why don't they work well for you? I submit that if you choose to call these concepts by other names, you will very likely wind up with a one-to-one mapping for the existing terms. Why not spend a relatively short time learning the concepts others have discovered and catagorized, so that you can then use that knoweldge as a basis for new discovery, rather than spending a great deal of time having to rediscover and classify old concepts. We often hear the adage about not reinventing the wheel, yet this seems to be your goal. > I don't >>intend to spend a lot of time and energy studying the existing >>TERMINOLOGY or NOTATION of Western music; that's a lot of mental >>"baggage" I can do without. Instead I'm interested in learning >>and exploring the CONCEPTS. Can one explore the concepts of calculus without first learning the terminology and and concepts of arithmetic? Forgive me, but I feel that your quest is one of laziness, in that you are loath to learn the fundamentals, and instead feel you can immediately proceed to advanced topics. > A musically experienced person could >>sit down at a keyboard and play a sequence of chords for me to >>demonstrate a good progression, without saying or writing a thing. This is true, but the problem with this is that one must have that person immediately available to you to play this sequence of chords for you. If you instead share a common language in the form of a notation system, you, and many others can then take advantage of that person's knowledge at your, their, and his or her convenience. > The one hairbrained scheme I mentioned from Omni ^^^^ Forgive me for this aside, but I hate seeing this kind of misuse of the language (which I see as evidence of the failing of our education system). This should be HAREbrained, as in the mental capacity of a member of the rabbit family, which is generally considered to be a bit on the low side. Michael ============================================================================ Michael Kesti Grass Valley Group, Inc. | "And like, one and one don't make mrk@gvgspd.GVG.TEK.COM | two, one and one make one." !tektronix!gvgpsa!gvgspd!mrk | - The Who, Bargain ========================================================================= ------------------------------ Date: Mon, 3 Jun 91 09:36:00 EDT From: "William R(ay) Brohinsky" Subject: Re: Alt Music Notation >If there were a more intuitive music notation system... And here lies the crux of the whole matter. First off, you should get to a music college library (even a non-music school SHOULD have it, but may not) and get John Cage's book on notation. He includes in it a wide selection of possible `intuitive' notations. Try to get a friend to produce something from one of his notations that resonates with your intuitive grasp of music, and see how close your friend's interpretation is to yours. If you are working on aleatoric or random music, intuitive notations work fine, but intuition is not a constant within humanity. Thus, one will have an intuitive grasp of emotions, and another can have an intuitive grasp of spatial translations... Neither of these people will be able to communicate solely on the basis of their intuitions. On the other hand, the idea of diatonic scales is based on the harmonic series. After getting past the open octave, fifth, fourth, major third, minor third, and the sub-minor-third (that makes that next note sound a bit flat to our ears) and the major second, the next eight notes form a diatonic scale. (If you don't understand harmonics, you may be on infirm ground here, but a friend who does can demonstrate quicker than I can explain, especially since you are in the process of rebelling against standard notation, which is the way I usually go about explaining it...) It is worth noting that these intervals, octave, fifth, fourth, thirds, seconds, unisons, are naturally occuring in nature in the harmonic series. Attempts to name them and use them in systems other than our `standard' notation are common---in other cultures. Anyway, my example of a six-line staff was intuitive, to me. In standard notation, we use a five line staff, and the octave repeats from a line to a space (for instance, in bass clef, the bottom line is G, and the g above that is the space under the top line. The GG under it is also on a space, under a ledger line, but that gets messy 8^) If you used a six-line staff, each semitone would have its own line or space. The twelve tones would take up six lines and six spaces, and octaves would repeat at the same kind of place: if the bottom line were G, then the next g up would be on a ledger LINE above the 6-line staff. However, as good as this system might be for 12-tone scales, it is miserable for diatonic intervals: whereas, in a standard system, all of the intervals of a Cmajor scale have pride of place, and each chromatic semitone is notated by a sharp or flat, in the 6-line 12-tone staff, each diatonic note would simply be a line or space, with empty lines or spaces between some, and not between others. For instance, on the 5-line staff, the Cmajor scale notes would lie like this: (using treble clef, and omitting mention of whether lines or spaces are within the staff or are ledgerlines): line, space, line, space, line, space, line, space On the 6-line 12-tone staff, it'd look like this: line, line, line, space, space, space, space, line The fun part comes when you have to make an inverval like a 6th. The 6th is the distance of five diatonic whole and half steps, in this case, from C to a: line, space On the other hand, on the 6-line staff, it is line, space so it looks like there isn't much difference. However, the distance is greater (becase each line and space marks a semitone difference, rather than either a semitone or a whole tone, with wholetone spaces being predominant.) But here's the nice part of standard notation: in this region, the notes neighboring on a are both on lines. In the 6-liner, the diatonic notes neighboring a are all spaces. So, when we see this while trying to read the music, we must decide if the distance is large enough to justify knowing that the next note will be an a, or is it actually a g or a b? This differentiation is more intuitive than the homogeneous 12-tone notation for diatonic music, just as a copyist will try to avoid having bar lines directly in-line on sheet music. (If all lines were divided evenly, so that you could lay a ruler accross them all, you'd have less differentiation to let you know that you were on the right line, and not re-reading the line you just finished.) Yes, I am familiar with standard notation. I have been reading it since I was 10. On the other hand, my defense of it is not a knee-jerk reaction to an upstart with a better idea that I didn't invent, either. I've been a professional copyist, I read manuscript (in performance, sight reading) and I've taught a number of people to read standard notation (including my sister, who resisted learning to read music until she was 35! And she was the `star' piccolo player for the 5th Army in Europe! She'd get another flutist to play or sing her her part, then she'd play it better and more correctly. She just couldn't play ANYTHING she hadn't heard.) If you put a small portion of the energy you are putting into creating a new system into learning the old one, rather than rejecting it because it's half as old as war, you might see some of its benefits. On the other hand (I seem to be weighing things this way a lot today) you do have to consider who will use your notation. (Sadly, things like `what is already in use' do have to be considered when changing a notation system.) Will they be able to access any of the older literature? And then again, consider how many of us communicate using Loglan or Esperanto. Both are, actually, better ideas than English, and yet, every 7th person in the world uses English to communicate in some way. Each had to pay the gate to get to where they could do it, and each now reaps the rewards of the work they did. I wish I could say that I believe that there is a better way to notate music than Standard, or a more acceptable way to notate ALL forms of music in a universally understandable fashion. I don't think there is. It's not a mere matter of efficiency, since the most efficient way to make music is to apply yourself to your voice or instrument in the study of what has gone before, and then apply your talent and inspiration to creat new stuff. Since we now have the benefit of recording, this kind of application (of energies) can result in something that can be preserved. Then, if others wish to play that music, they can listen, work, learn, etc. If you wish to come to the point where you can learn other's works, notational invention is out-of-place. If they notate at all, learn their notation. If you wish to leave your work for others to learn from, make it readable for them. Notice, Shakespear and Dickens didn't write in a futuristic jargon that was not recognizable to their contemporaries, neither did they re-invent the alphabet nor re-design English. What they did with what was there was their art, and it lives. raybro *** Nieder mit den tueten! Freiheit Fuer Gummibaerchen! *** ------------------------------ Date: Mon, 3 Jun 91 10:45:14 edt From: Tom_Gutnick@DGC.MCEO.DG.COM Subject: Alternative Music Notations Although I prefer to use our standard notation, you might be interested in an alternative I encountered when living in southern Africa many years ago. They call it "Tonic sol-fa" notation. Basically, each note is indicated by its position on the scale (do-re-mi, etc.), with modifiers such as apostrophe or comma to indicate up or down an octave, and some other markings to give indication of rhythm. Once you had the base note of the scale, you just did everything relative to it. Where this was used was with school choirs. The kids (who typically never saw our "normal" notation) could sight-sing the notes of the scale; once they had mastered the tune of their part, they would go with the real words. Works great with four-part choral works, provided not too many accidentals. ------------------------------ Date: Mon, 3 Jun 91 12:25:00 EDT From: bwg@SESCENT.ATT.COM Subject: Non-traditional notation Andy, I thought I would take a minute to reply to your rejoinder, although we should soon drop this topic to avoid dominating the net with an iconoclastic flame-war. In reponse to my: > ... traditional music provides a means of communication with other musicians. > If you never have to work with other people... >> I can't believe that traditional music provides the ONLY means of >> communication with other musicians, nor can I believe that if I don't >> use it, I have to make up my own system FROM SCRATCH! I don't believe it is the only means either, but you would have to agree that it is the best, because it is accepted by MOST musicians. If you decide to move to Pakistan, you can inform everyone there that their language is not the most intuitive, and is difficult to learn, but you will be talking to yourself. > I have a band that is 1/2 reading musicians and 1/2 non-readers. > It takes us 3 times as long to learn songs by ear than bands I have > been in with all readers. >> Exactly! Why are your "non-readers" that way? I doubt they are >> lacking in intelligence, or musically incapable. If there where a >> more intuitive music notation system, then 9 out of 10 musicians >> would be "readers." The non-readers are not that way because of the inferiority of the traditional system. They were unfortunate not to have learned it while they were young, and so struggle through the music we are playing rather laboriously. If we don't rehearse or play a number often enough, they forget how it goes, etc.. If I were to ask any one of them if they wished they could read, they all would reply in the affirmative. The bottom line is: you cannot write music that other musicians can read without taking time (a lot more than it takes to play it on the keyboard, or hum a melody), regardless of the system of notation you use. Your focus in later posting on chords (I ii7 V7 I) does not address melody, or voicings, and you would have to have a "system" to do that. It is hard enough with all the different notation systems in the present to determine what the author intended, why muddy the water? The following can all be the notation for the same chord: Gmaj7 GM7 Gma7 G^7 .... aaagh! Unfortunately, somebody has to come along and say "Well the first one is right." , or we will spend a lot a time being confused. + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + Brian W. Gardner att!sescent!bwg + + Analysts International Corp. brian@sescent.att.com + + AT&T Network Systems, Columbus Ohio voice: 614-860-4681 + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + ------------------------------ Date: Tue, 4 Jun 91 15:06:50 EDT From: Jeffrey R Kell Subject: Re: Alternative Music Notation Systems? On Fri, 31 May 91 10:58:25 EDT David Van Allen said: >example: key of G > > I IV V7 ii vi V7 :| > ( G C D7 Am Em D7 repeat) And some variations where the chord formation is noted, such as using a delta (triangle) for maj7, plus/minus for augmented/diminished, greek "mu" character (squiggly u) for the Steely-Dan-ish mu-major forms, and so forth... /Jeff/ ------------------------------ Date: Tue, 4 Jun 91 15:43:15 EDT From: ronin Subject: alternative notation i think that i understand the original questioner's position, being an impatient iconoclast myself. he is right, of course, in that the current notational system has more than a little of the arbitrary about it, and that this has been imbedded into it by a weight of convention that makes it unwieldy in many ways. unfortunately for him, what he is seeking does not exist. there is no equivalent alternative. the system now in use is old, and has been approached *as a theoretical construct* for longer than any other notation system that i know of. to our apparent disadvantage, this means that we are saddled with the accretions of centuries of rethinking which have nonetheless maintained an extraordinary degree of continuity. this continuity has been necessary, since the purpose of notation has always been to communicate and instruct, and only secondarily to archive or even actually compose. so we start at C on the scale, for reasons that are irrelevant, but which we are behooved to live with. on the other hand, this intensive development has resulted in a system which is wonderfully dense. a very great deal of information is represented efficiently. any system, in order to be considered as an alternative for the current one's level of facility, would have to be equally dense. and as i think jeff has pointed out, it would take just as long to learn. any system that attempts to express such a great amount of detail with such a degree of abstraction is going to be 'non-intuitive'. now, there are more 'intuitive' methods that might express some limited subset of ideas, and some of them have been gone into here. but what good will it do in any but the shortest run? on a slight tangent, i think this is why i am so attracted to jazz. it requires a thorough *understanding* of musical nomenclature and structure, but for the most part one only has to *read* charts. the rest of it is in the head, hands, and heart. --------------------------< Eschew Obfuscation >------------------------- Eric Harnden (Ronin) The American University Physics Dept. Washington, D.C ------------------------------ Date: Wed, 5 Jun 91 10:46:16 EDT From: Andy Moore Subject: Alt Music Notation (Die Harder) I'd say this topic is a dead horse, but I feel compelled to get a few last licks in. First, my sincere thanks to all who participated in this discussion, and my apologies to any toes I might have stepped on. My intent was not to attack traditional concepts or start a war, but to stimulate thought and look for the reasons behind our assumptions. * I am not looking for an alternate music SYSTEM, but just an alternate music NOTATION. No, I'm not doing anything exotic that the current system can't represent. I am perfectly happy with 12 tone, diatonic music. * I do not want a "new standard" or a replacement for standard music notation. I want a simplified notation for my own use during composition; it does not need to capture the density of information that standard music notation contains. My criteria are that it should be simple, use only alphanumeric characters (no fancy symbols, please), and express notes and chords relative to a base key. * The primary purpose of what I'm looking for would be to sketch musical ideas during the composition process. I would also use it when studying other people's music, to notate the structure, patterns, chord progressions, and basic melody and bass parts. Note that communication with other musicians is NOT one of the uses I would have for this. * What I'm looking for represents a middle ground between traditional sheet music and "playing by ear." The former involves a process of translation that requires much training and practice to master; the latter does not allow the fundamental concepts to be mapped and studied, and is complicated by different people's interpretations of music. * Some folks seem to suspect that I am into "weird" music, but that isn't the case. What I listen to and attempt to create is a mix of rock, jazz, classical, pop, and 'New Age'. In no particular order, I like Suzanne Ciani, Tangerine Dream, Patrick O'Hearn, John Tesh, Sting/Police, Rush, Danielle Dax, REM, Bangles, Peter Kater, Andy Summers, Wendy Carlos, Tomita, Synergy, Genesis, Peter Gabriel, Beatles, J.S. Bach, P.D.Q. Bach, Mozart, ELP, Jean-Michel Jarre, Yes, Steely Dan, Mannheim Steamroller, etc. * Arguments along the lines of "it has been this way for a long time," "everyone does it this way," and "don't reinvent the wheel," surprise me coming from electronic musicians, whom I would have thought would be the least constrained and least willing to submit to tradition. My approach is to use and adapt what I can from musical traditions, but to explore new concepts and possibilities as well. * No, I am not lazy. I am ready, willing, and even eager to learn the fundamentals of music. But I am learning music on MY OWN TERMS; I am not willing to be told that a Gm7 is the right chord to use here, "because that's how it's done." I want to know WHY! I've been studying the physics of music, looking at how frequencies and harmonics work in the chords we all know and love. Yes, I know people have already done this, but there is value in discovering some things first hand. * I think there is also value in approaching music from a child's point of view. My son recently asked me why one of my songs was "sad." He doesn't know about minor or major chords, but he knows the emotional mood of a minor chord. Similarly, as I've been learning names for chords, I recognize many of them and have used them intuitively without knowing their formal (and in my opinion, artificial) names. * I don't agree that one must take years of lessons, practicing all your scales, etc., to be allowed to participate in modern music and learn from "the masters." There are many routes to the same destination... * I agree that this discussion should have been in ALLMUSIC, but it seems to be dominated by heavy metal rockers. Anyway, EM has a proud heritage of exploring musical frontiers; I thought you folks might have some insights. * I will find those books by John Partch and John Cage, as well as the Tonic sol-fa notation of southern Africa. If anyone knows of any other literature on music systems and notations, or is interested in a Reader's Digest summary of what I discover, please let me know. Thanks! ________________________________________________________________________ Andy Moore ZMATM@SCFVM.GSFC.NASA.GOV | [ with heavy Ital. accent ] -----------------------------------------| "Laugh while you can, ST Systems Corp | | Monkey Boy!" 4400 Forbes Blvd | 24015 Santa Anita Ct | - Dr Lizardo, Lanham, MD 20706 | Damascus, MD 20872 | Buckaroo Bonzai Across 301-794-5355 | 301-253-2080 | the 8th Dimension ------------------------------ End of the EMUSIC-L Digest ******************************