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Old 08-17-2019, 10:39 AM   #184
superblonde.org
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Quote:
Originally Posted by brainwreck View Post
How about time notation? Is there real benefit to using differing noteheads, flags, and dots vs. more directly using numbers to notate time divisions?
The origin of typesetting features of notes has more to do with ink quills than anything else. The notation for quarter-note-rest being the difficult squiggle that it is, is because the ink quill makes that pattern with a wrist motion(*). The use of dots is from the ease in making ovals (they're not supposed to be circular).

(*) and it's different in France

Therefore staff music today is essentially limited in functionality because some monk had to sit in a cavern hand-writing with an ink quill. A completely outdated system. Music has not caught up with modern typesetting, fonts, graphical user interfaces, etc.


Note stems have a variety of ad hoc rules defined by player preference for speed of reading. Groupings, stem direction, flags. It is a notational system which evolved yet still has many ingrained kludges. Ask any drummer!

Last edited by superblonde.org; 08-17-2019 at 10:45 AM.
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