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Old 08-31-2019, 08:37 PM   #361
superblonde.org
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Originally Posted by davetbass View Post
Sorry, I was being a bit of a wise guy!, but I did want to make a serious point: lots of music is created and communicated with no more formal structure than that.
1. Players feel a need to mock this subject of improving the currently horrible music theory, likely due to ego problems. By either making a joke, or trying to tear it down by discrediting the idea or messengers of the idea. You would do the topic a favor by explaining why you feel the need to make it a joke.


2. The music system should definitely allow for incredibly easy communication (written or verbal) of the most prevalent music in the world: pentatonic music (often called "folk music" and mostly derided by ivory tower academics)



Music elements of 1, 4, 5, should definitely be the most straightforward & rapid to notate in a good system. For any mode too.


Song forms (context here, is blues) which use 1, 4, 5, should also be straightforward to describe. Currently they are not. There is the standard 12-bar 1, 4, 5. It is so common and basic that it is boring, so players modify it. So there is also the quick-change, the turnaround, the double turnaround, and a whole bunch of other slight variations with nondescript names or regional names. Playing the wrong form would be completely incorrect. Players give up on attempting to communicate the form because the current music system does not provide a way to do so. They say, "meh, you'll hear it when it comes." That's b.s. Or sometimes they will communicate by naming a song which has the same form, which is fine if all players know that song, but that is not true when the players are not from the same school. "It's the Sugar groove, play Sugar, it's the Sugar" is about all a player has time to say on stage before beginning a jam, and if the bass player hasn't played Sugar before, they will not be able to cop the desired groove (until maybe halfway thru the song, when the players correct each other to gel the sound). These are all examples of a system which is inefficient, incomplete, and broken.

I played with a bandleader/music teacher who used to call the middle-8, "the tween" (as in, "the in-between section"). He would call out, "It's the tween." What a dumb name. I didn't know what he was talking about at first, and then at a later jam I had again forgotten the meaning of his silly direction. Uneducated artists think it's cute to invent their own new names or create mythology around basic concepts. He had another cutsie name for triplets rather than calling them triplets. This obscures the real meaning. It violates basic academic or instructional or teamwork principle. aka: it's dumb. You cant have a group of people working on something and make up unique terms all the time, in a rapidly changing environment like a rehearsal or performance, and expect "it'll come together". Amateurism at its finest. A good system of theory is cohesive and makes sense. It's easy to learn, the grammar is structured, the ideas are concretely communicable. Then everybody uses it, because it gets the job done and done right. Players purposely mostly avoid using or even learning music theory today because it's awkward and horrible.

My assumption in the OP was that players familiar with DAW and technical recording concepts would easily have suggestions or recommendations for improvements in music theory notation. Because they run into it often and are likely more technically minded, and also likely have a forward-looking view. The stereotypical recording engineer in a session of misfits in a rock band faces this lack of comprehension in "teamwork" on a daily basis. It may be a bad assumption if the music education standard is already so low that they also don't even see the obvious flaws as a problem.

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Old 09-01-2019, 05:42 PM   #362
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Song forms (context here, is blues) which use 1, 4, 5, should also be straightforward to describe. Currently they are not. There is the standard 12-bar 1, 4, 5. It is so common and basic that it is boring, so players modify it. So there is also the quick-change, the turnaround, the double turnaround, and a whole bunch of other slight variations with nondescript names or regional names. Playing the wrong form would be completely incorrect. Players give up on attempting to communicate the form because the current music system does not provide a way to do so. They say, "meh, you'll hear it when it comes." That's b.s. Or sometimes they will communicate by naming a song which has the same form, which is fine if all players know that song, but that is not true when the players are not from the same school. "It's the Sugar groove, play Sugar, it's the Sugar" is about all a player has time to say on stage before beginning a jam, and if the bass player hasn't played Sugar before, they will not be able to cop the desired groove (until maybe halfway thru the song, when the players correct each other to gel the sound). These are all examples of a system which is inefficient, incomplete, and broken.
Definitely sounds like you've been to a bunch of jams, that's a great description of my experience also, I would say that system is inefficient and incomplete. However I would say that it works to some degree, because people who have never played together can put together some tunes that the crowd will really like (especially if the crowd is middle age women and the tune is "Mustang Sally", lol)
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Old 09-01-2019, 09:39 PM   #363
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Mustang Sally is a perfect example because it is a crowd favorite and the players hate to play it. (We're all sick of playing it.)

My contention would be, that if the music system were great and players all knew it easily, that when someone in the audience requests Mustang Sally (which they always do in a dive bar blues/R&B jam), then the band would be able to invent a new song with the same musical elements as Mustang Sally but as a new, fresh song to play. But bands never do that- they resort to actually playing the same-old Mustang Sally. The Beatles wrote Birthday on the spot because they didn't want to play the real Happy Birthday, they wanted to invent something new & fun.

Jazz musicians, the "highly trained, ivory tower, Intelligensia Players(tm)" are slightly different, upon the audience request, they would call up a chart of the song on their phone (if they didn't already have it memorized), read thru the chords progression for 10 seconds, transpose it into a suitable key for the vocalist of the moment, and then play a reharmonized version of Mustang Sally which sounds absolutely horrible -- and no one would dance to it.

There is obviously a huge middle-ground missing, the part where the typical gigging musician (non-ivory tower jazz trained snob player) can reinvent standard songs, and bad music theory is a big part of why that is missing.

CCR is another solid example. How many jam bands play the same CCR mashup of Sweet Home Alabama + Green River + Suzie Q (splitting verses of the songs amongst the grooves of each). It's cool and they do it because it is a very easy transition into & out of song parts (same form, same key, similar progression). It makes it sound more fresh & exciting. Some few bands will do a Purple Haze+Star Spangled Banner Hendrix mashup. But what would be reaaaalllly cool, is if music theory were palatable enough and versitile enough to all players so that many more songs can be made into pastiche this way. Entire setlists made into a single long flowing song which seemlessly blend into each other. (And don't say, "Axis of Awesome", that's just trivial joking). Real performance like this adds novelty, it's fun, it keeps the dance floor hopping without pauses in-between songs, it sounds more professional, it's more musical, it's more artistic. Yet tons of daily players simply do not know how to move harmonies to do this interpolation between classic songs.. primarily because music theory is horrible at making these translations obvious.
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Old 09-02-2019, 05:29 PM   #364
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Mustang Sally is a perfect example because it is a crowd favorite and the players hate to play it. (We're all sick of playing it.)

My contention would be, that if the music system were great and players all knew it easily, that when someone in the audience requests Mustang Sally (which they always do in a dive bar blues/R&B jam), then the band would be able to invent a new song with the same musical elements as Mustang Sally but as a new, fresh song to play. But bands never do that- they resort to actually playing the same-old Mustang Sally. The Beatles wrote Birthday on the spot because they didn't want to play the real Happy Birthday, they wanted to invent something new & fun.

Jazz musicians, the "highly trained, ivory tower, Intelligensia Players(tm)" are slightly different, upon the audience request, they would call up a chart of the song on their phone (if they didn't already have it memorized), read thru the chords progression for 10 seconds, transpose it into a suitable key for the vocalist of the moment, and then play a reharmonized version of Mustang Sally which sounds absolutely horrible -- and no one would dance to it.

There is obviously a huge middle-ground missing, the part where the typical gigging musician (non-ivory tower jazz trained snob player) can reinvent standard songs, and bad music theory is a big part of why that is missing.

CCR is another solid example. How many jam bands play the same CCR mashup of Sweet Home Alabama + Green River + Suzie Q (splitting verses of the songs amongst the grooves of each). It's cool and they do it because it is a very easy transition into & out of song parts (same form, same key, similar progression). It makes it sound more fresh & exciting. Some few bands will do a Purple Haze+Star Spangled Banner Hendrix mashup. But what would be reaaaalllly cool, is if music theory were palatable enough and versitile enough to all players so that many more songs can be made into pastiche this way. Entire setlists made into a single long flowing song which seemlessly blend into each other. (And don't say, "Axis of Awesome", that's just trivial joking). Real performance like this adds novelty, it's fun, it keeps the dance floor hopping without pauses in-between songs, it sounds more professional, it's more musical, it's more artistic. Yet tons of daily players simply do not know how to move harmonies to do this interpolation between classic songs.. primarily because music theory is horrible at making these translations obvious.
Do you actually have any idea how ignorant and arrogant you are in your musings about music?

Go and learn harmony and try to play with better players than you are and learn from them.
And please learn some humility.
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Old 09-04-2019, 07:16 PM   #365
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Zappa developed his own (sub-) system of music theory which he used to successfully write published songs.

quote





An Introduction to Frank Zappa's 'Chord Bible'.


... a little ‐ known compositional system devised by Frank Zappa for his orchestral music: the Chord Bible. Through a close study of the orchestral works featuring Chord Bible harmony, I will attempt a partial recreation of its contents, focusing on seven ‐ and eight ‐ note chords. This will reveal a hybrid system with important pitch and pitch ‐ class components. Regarding pitch, each chord manifests a precise intervallic spacing (or ‘density’, to use Zappa's term). Conversely, chords are conceived in a scalar harmonic universe derived from diatonic, minor Lydian and octatonic pitch ‐ class collections. These aspects will be described as a merging of features derived from the music of Edgard Varèse and from the scalar procedures characteristic of Zappa's popular output. ...

In the late 1970s and early ’80s Frank Zappa developed a new tonal system, referred to as his ‘Chord Bible’ (CB), on which many compositions from this period are based (see Spurrier [ 17] ).

Surprisingly, the CB has received little attention to date and is discussed neither in any major biography of Zappa nor in his autobiography. It is first mentioned in Zappa's programme notes for the 1983 Barbican performance of ‘Envelopes’: ‘“Envelopes” utilises a new harmonic technique based on seven and eight note chords which generate their own counterpoint as an automatic result of their voice leading. This technique is used extensively in other musics performed tonight’ (Zappa [ 20] , p. 7; emphasis added). Though the statement is useful in some regards, Zappa gave a more specific description of the CB in 1987:

''
Several years ago I made a classification of all my favorite chords plus the order in which I preferred to hear the pitches in the chord arpeggiated. It's all broken down from three ‐ note, four ‐ note, five ‐ note, six ‐ note, eight ‐ note chords. The chords are in different classifications, starting with those chords that have a minor second as the uppermost interval, major second, minor third, blah blah blah blah, all the way down to the fewest chords that have a minor ninth as the upper interval of the chord. There are real dense ‐ voiced chords and chords that cover four or five octaves. (Spurrier [ 17] , p. 28)''

Here we learn that the CB featured chords of three to eight notes and that the chords were classified according to the size of their uppermost interval. Beyond such general information, however, we are left with more questions than answers. What are the principles of harmonic construction? In which tonal system, diatonic or chromatic, are they conceived? And, most important, how are CB harmonies used in musical contexts?

My attempt to answer these questions in the following pages involves substantial challenges. For one thing, the CB itself is not readily available for scholarly perusal. In fact, it has probably never been viewed by anyone outside of Zappa's inner circle, that is, the composer himself and the copyists he employed during the time in question.[ 5] If the CB still survives, it is residing within the famed Zappa family ‘vault,’ which is accessible only to a select few. ...

(... detail ... )


In this article I have offered some findings regarding Zappa's CB and the compositional techniques associated with it. Surprisingly, considering the amount of thought and effort that Zappa put into its compilation and employment, the CB system was utilised for only a brief period in his career. His loss of interest in the CB appears to have coincided with his acquisition of the Synclavier synthesizer/sample in 1983. According to his copyist David Ocker, the contents of the CB were entered into the Synclavier, after which ‘this system [the CB] was soon forgotten’ (Ocker [ 15] ). How much the CB is used in the Synclavier music is not known, but it seems clear that Zappa viewed the Synclavier as opening up broader compositional possibilities than the CB. However, the relatively brief use of the CB should not lead us to relegate the works under study to a position of secondary importance in Zappa's career. Rather, they are significant both historically and stylistically, and they can be counted among his most successful attempts at merging techniques drawn from art and popular music. Specifically, the CB system permitted Zappa to engage his fascination with Varèsian textures and chord structures and at the same time to develop the scale ‐ based procedures characteristic of his popular and jazz ‐ oriented output. Prior to the CB works, these two elements had been difficult to intermingle and were most often starkly juxtaposed in his music. The CB pieces also represent a culmination of these two musical preoccupations, since in Zappa's subsequent Synclavier music their importance is generally reduced in favour of more experimental procedures.

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Old 09-05-2019, 12:38 AM   #366
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The discussion diverted to personal qualifications and subjective opinions. :/
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Old 09-05-2019, 02:37 AM   #367
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1. Players feel a need to mock this subject of improving the currently horrible music theory, likely due to ego problems.
"Currently Horrible music theory"? I think this needs to be unpacked a little.

1. Music theory (I think Adam Neely pointed this out) is a method to describe and analyse what musicians do. Thus (to my mind) eg classically trained musical theorists can bring great insight to music that was produced by musicians with no training or ability to notate their music. It is not per se a prescription for musical creation. Even if the way music is taught and culturally transmitted can privilege certain approaches at any given moment.

2.Various forms of notation were evolved by composers and arrangers to communicate the main aspects of the music sufficiently well to enable people to play it. (I mean in the "western"tradition - other cultures managed perfectly well with aural traditons.) Eventually as we know staff notation proved the most resilient. It's not "perfect" in the sense that certain elements are only approximately indicated (eg directions describing nuances of feeling, dynamics, timbre etc.) and may even leave out notes! For instance the late great Derek Bell wrote that it was silly to think that because manuscripts of O'Carolan's music lacked harmony that one shouldn't play them - indeed it would have been expected. In other words you kinda needed to know the genre to make proper use of the notation.

3. One issue in this time seems to have come from the way that from about the 1950s onwards many (most?) people got their musical education so to speak from recorded music starting with the various folk booms and then rock and roll and the blues revival. (Rather than from published sheet music as was the norm up to the 1930s or so?) At first this was not a great problem as the music was fairly constrained in its structures and scales etc. And the jazz players were mostly managing quite well with traditional notation.

3. Then irritatingly ( &#128521 in the late 60s and 70s music got more complicated (damn you Frank Zappa and Mike Oldfield! https://www.youtube.com/watch?reload=9&v=ow36K1RBKS0) and "knowing the genre" became a moot point. One way to go was back to basics (punk?) - another was to spend hours jamming like Pink Floyd apparently did to evolve the music. (Or be Steve Vai?)

So to answer this:
"My contention would be, that if the music system were great and players all knew it easily, that when someone in the audience requests Mustang Sally (which they always do in a dive bar blues/R&B jam), then the band would be able to invent a new song with the same musical elements as Mustang Sally but as a new, fresh song to play."
For me the key thing here is about what is meant by "music system". I expect that most bands do know (whether or not they could notate it) the structure etc. of the piece. A better "theoretical" understanding would not help (or only very marginally) and in fact when professional musicians are say, improvising I am pretty sure they are not thinking of what "theoretically" they should be doing. What is required is musical creativity and while "theory" can give you some ideas to start with ("hey let's do it in Lydian mode!") there is I suspect no short cut to that.
Oh and at the risk of sounding even more preachy perhaps it is unhelpful to ascribe motives to people you have not met - I am sure challenging the argument will be just as effective in the long run.
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Old 09-05-2019, 05:19 AM   #368
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The discussion diverted to personal qualifications and subjective opinions. :/
The opinion that your keyboard works better than the standard piano keyboard, is very subjective.
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Old 09-05-2019, 06:03 AM   #369
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The opinion that your keyboard works better than the standard piano keyboard, is very subjective.
Technically Pashkuli Keyboard does, but practically it doesn't because none (besides myself) has ever played it.

Technically Pashkuli Notation works better than the standard Staff Notation, but practically it doesn't because none (besides me) has ever tried it out.

With that in mind the opinion:
Quote:
Your keyboard works better than the standard piano keyboard, is very subjective.
is both subjective (only from my experience) and objective (by analysis done by people having way better than my skills on the piano or in Music in general, one of which was Franz Liszt). You see, this idea in its very early form (Dreschke-Janko) is more than 150 years old...

I just used my skills as a Design Engineer to improve it exponentially.

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Old 09-05-2019, 09:11 PM   #370
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The discussion diverted to personal qualifications and subjective opinions. :/
Discussions on this "simple 'How To?' question" thread have been derailed since the very first reply. Which I quote below.

In the meantime none of the flamers have suggested any actual suggestions for How To? improve music notation or music theory.

In a long-past reply you noted that the more correct term to use is music nomenclature. That is completely true. Although I've been using the phrase "music notation" anyway because that should be the term generally understandable by everyone. Really it would be better if everyone understood (or even read) the original first post, where I described the areas of the problem and gave examples of other systems to make it totally clear (like "ABC notation" which started on the internet long ago).

So let's review that very first reply to my original post, which was not only the first reply to my original post but the first post by the replying user ever, after apparently joining the reaper forum way back in Feb 2018, yet only chose this single thread on the forum for a reply:

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And this has what to do with Reaper?

Dude, if you don't want to learn the language of reading music, don't do it. Tons of good players can't read a note. Sounds to me you may be ashamed that you don't know some things. It's fine, there's nothing wrong with asking questions.

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It's a profound statement, "And this has what to do with Reaper?", considering that nearby threads in this subforum at the time were "Best Budget Bass" and "Cheapest midi pad drum controller?" and "Gaming PC" -- a profound statement in it's stupidity. So you can see that the first reply is already diverting and diluting the thread's purpose (and, the above flame is the only post by that user ever, after having an a forum account for 18 months? What's with that? Why not just pass on replying to "the dumb topic" at all?). The next statements in the reply are likewise profound in their stupidity and lack of reading comprehension of the OP. This is a total mystery to me yet related to the topic itself. What is it about this topic which triggers amateur musicians and players? None of the flamers have justified their flames. The players are incredibly eager to spend time on what they consider my "worthless effort" at discussion by wasting their own time making snide comments. I absolutely doubt that a typical thread "How to make a VST that does blah-blah?" would receive such flames or in such quantity and intensity. This thread is up to nearly 400 replies and thousands of views, with no useful information posted by the flamers other than their various insults and vague insistence to "go learn some (blah blah) cuz obviously you don't know" and even more ironically, without a single source cited for How To do so, in their opinion (* I'll post more on this point later, specific examples of bad nomenclature from the theory / harmony textbooks themselves, and admissions by their own authors that the system itself is fundamentally lacking and dubious in usefulness).


Essentially, the flames and diversions are an inescapable part of the topic itself, it's all wrapped up in a thousands-of-years-old tradition of flaming people with better ideas as the flamers don't comprehend the problems being addressed. Although I would have absolutely preferred just a few simple replies with actual suggestions to the "How To?" rather than having any flames at all. There have been only two such replies with actual suggestions of novel new systems, your system and the Tbon system (plus the reminder about Nashville system), not counting my own many replies with other examples. Your system is great in that you had the developed material to post it and the courage to do so (and get flamed by the close-minded). It deserves some in-depth working thru and I'll post more on that point later too.

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Old 09-05-2019, 10:02 PM   #371
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I’m personally open minded to anything that makes the process easier, music theory has been anything but easy for me.

But honestly my opinion as someone who struggles with theory, this is basically trying to reinvent the wheel, and doesn’t address the main problems the majority of people have with learning theory, which is internalizing and associating symbols to pitches and other things. There is no system that is going to bypass rote memorization of all the different pitches, octaves, chord combinations, scale combination, key relationships, intervals, etc.

Maybe It’s possible that there is a more efficient way to map things out, but there really isn’t much that can’t be expressed with notation. you aren’t going to make something that fundamentally changes the speed at which people learn.

It’s just the nature of languages, theory has the difficulties of any other language. Spanish may be easier to learn compared to English or French, but that difference is nominal compared to the difficulty of learning languages in general.
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Old 09-06-2019, 12:47 AM   #372
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It’s just the nature of languages, theory has the difficulties of any other language. Spanish may be easier to learn compared to English or French, but that difference is nominal compared to the difficulty of learning languages in general.

Perhaps refer to my prior reply about Esperanto, which one of the flamers used as an example of 'a failed system' yet if looking up the rapid-learning-pace of the language, it is said to take 1/4th to 1/10th the time as learning French, etc. I don't know anything about Esperanto really, but it can be seen as a "new system which has been measured to have better/more rapid learning success". The difference is not nominal, that improvement is really significant. The problem with music is that as I mentioned in a recent reply and another reply agreed, the 'schooling of' or 'training of' music has been lost due to the failing education system and so it seems the standard level of music-literacy is sinking to the lowest common denominator (the excuse of: "meh, I can play, and make new songs by playing what sounds good, so I dont need that written system stuff or need to 'understand' music!").

What I see as a fundamental error in the music system is in having to count with letters. A,B,C,D.. it is not natural to count with letters: "ok, a 4th from C is.. uhh..ok got it F". Counting is done with digits. It would seem to be better to say "ok, a 7th from 8, is..15". Yes, there are all kinds of mental tricks to be used to get "F from C" in fast ways, just like there are mental math tricks to get the sum of all 1+2+3+4+...+99=?. If you know the trick, and if you practice the tricks. But why have these tricks at all. "I get F from C because the 4th is a degree higher than a 3rd which is the second note of the chord of C which is E therefore the note higher than E is F, so the answer is F," etc. That is a lot of thinking to arrive at an operation which is repeated frequently. Then add roman numerals to the mix, it's just bad. Hence the reason players say, "meh, its better to just spend time practicing the playing and forget this theory stuff, aint no time for that."


Here is an example from a music system for learning pitch, and solfege. I bet most people have never heard of it. It was also measured in the past to be measurably better in teaching & learning music, how accurate that is, I dont know, but these things have been worked on with usable results.


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Old 09-06-2019, 06:40 AM   #373
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Essentially, the flames and diversions are an inescapable part of the topic itself, it's all wrapped up in a thousands-of-years-old tradition of flaming people with better ideas as the flamers don't comprehend the problems being addressed.
Again, an arrogant and ignorant statement.
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Old 09-06-2019, 06:52 AM   #374
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What I see as a fundamental error in the music system is in having to count with letters. A,B,C,D.. it is not natural to count with letters: "ok, a 4th from C is.. uhh..ok got it F". Counting is done with digits. It would seem to be better to say "ok, a 7th from 8, is..15". Yes, there are all kinds of mental tricks to be used to get "F from C" in fast ways, just like there are mental math tricks to get the sum of all 1+2+3+4+...+99=?. If you know the trick, and if you practice the tricks. But why have these tricks at all. "I get F from C because the 4th is a degree higher than a 3rd which is the second note of the chord of C which is E therefore the note higher than E is F, so the answer is F," etc. That is a lot of thinking to arrive at an operation which is repeated frequently. Then add roman numerals to the mix, it's just bad. Hence the reason players say, "meh, its better to just spend time practicing the playing and forget this theory stuff, aint no time for that."
Pffff....
Again sounds arrogant to me.
And it seems clear that you get lost in music theory.

Music is a language.
Of course it is difficult.
You forget how difficult learning a new language is for most people and how long it takes to master one.
And luckily there are a lot of different languages. What a feast of worlds of possible greatness.
Any language that is developed over centuries is complicated and rich.
You don't say French is difficult, let's do away with it. Learn esperanto.
Humanity would loose a lot of its cultural richness.
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Old 09-06-2019, 07:01 AM   #375
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So let's review that very first reply to my original post, which was not only the first reply to my original post but the first post by the replying user ever, after apparently joining the reaper forum way back in Feb 2018, yet only chose this single thread on the forum for a reply:




It's a profound statement, "And this has what to do with Reaper?", considering that nearby threads in this subforum at the time were "Best Budget Bass" and "Cheapest midi pad drum controller?" and "Gaming PC" -- a profound statement in it's stupidity. So you can see that the first reply is already diverting and diluting the thread's purpose .
And surely, this thread and the others you mention, belong in the Lounge forum.
They have nothing to do with Reaper.

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Old 09-06-2019, 08:47 AM   #376
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And surely, this thread and the others you mention, belong in the Lounge forum.
They have nothing to do with Reaper.
Actually nothing to do with this forum as well. They are more suitable for Music academics and Music school curriculum and activities.

Anyway, there are many points to improve on this imposed medieval system that still prevails today. Back to the roots would be the best approach both metaphorically and scientifically speaking.

That is what I did with it and with the awful piano keyboard.
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Old 09-06-2019, 09:03 AM   #377
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It was my original hope in the OP that after some very brief suggestions were made for improving the current system of music notation & theory, that the discussion would then include suggestions for a Reaper script as I have already stated in prior replies that Reaper has multiple views for music, waveform, MIDI roll, and now guitar tablature.

For example, Reaper could easily have a viewing mode for the hand signal method of solfege which I just mentioned, with a MIDI instrument as input (using project settings of Key and Time Signature as inputs). That is literally the point of this thread, the How To? Reaper could also have a viewing mode for adXok's notation system. Reaper already has music theory-based scripts, for example the one that kind of mimicks the behavior of band-in-a-box. Reaper could have a Nashville view if it does not already have a related script. "What does this topic have to do with Reaper?" is simply a dumb position to hold.


I still do not know why the flamers on this thread choose to openly deride the ideas posted by the proponents and especially direct personal attacks at the messenger, and worse, without adding anything of value to the topic. It is as if they are deliberately trying to destroy the thread (for what purpose? unknown! Would they do it for some VST discussion for example? No! ).



Fact: many, many musicians, perhaps even the majority, do not like the current system of music theory notation (for many reasons previously posted), just as many, many guitarists do not like reading staff notation and prefer to read and write tablature. It it very likely the fact that the majority of musicians have such dislike for the current system of theory that they purposely avoid learning it.
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Old 09-06-2019, 09:14 AM   #378
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The OP, which I quote in full :

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Music notation is terrible to understand and confusing (eight note names A,B,C,..., sharps, flats, use of roman numerals in capitals and lowercase, numerals 1,2,3,.. for scale degree and/or chord number). It seems to exist in its present state because musicians themselves are too overwhelmed with practice & performance to improve the system. The current notation system overtook the few competing systems pretty much because other cultures didn't write music down and then through the western church which destroyed everything else. Music theory is limited to describing music within the outmoded notation system, so music theory is terrible too. It's no wonder that most musicians choose to remain musically illiterate, it's easier to play "what sounds good" than try to understand the terrible system.

* Note I'm completely ignoring staff notation because that is a whole other set of pictograph problems in time (how to indicate simultaneous notes and how to indicate rhythm). When I say music notation, I'm just talking about written notation for theory and composition, I'm not talking about notation for real-time reading during a performance, although there is some overlap of usage, since charts contain both staff music and chord names, etc.

In software languages and software notation (aka markup), there have been hundreds of languages and language systems, it is a constant state of improvement, the language systems have unique benefits and drawbacks and those systems which have more drawbacks than benefits are quickly abandoned, with the benefits morphed into the next new language. Imagine if everyone were forced to program in original IBM BASIC for the entire duration of humanity. Yuck. This is really, really obvious problem to computer programmers who immediately fix the problem by creating new systems to fit the purpose (Microcode to Assembly to BASIC to PASCAL to C to NextStep Objective C to Java to Python etc etc, plus on the scientific side, LISP to MATLAB to R etc, etc, plus on the engineering side, various CAD basic-like script, boolean languages ABEL, VHDL, etc etc). One test of the usefulness of a software language being: can a compiler be developed in the language and then compile itself. Another test of the usefulness of a software language being: how does it physically look, how simple, how elegant is it, to write the most basic program which simply prints "hello world" on the screen, does it take a million confusing symbols or does it only take four short human-readable lines.


In music notation, the current system developed for church music, with only two modes (major and minor), is now extended to jazz and modal music so my charts are a mess of "EbMajb5#11/B" or something - what the actual?? If there were ever a sign that a system should be discarded, that is it ! Why wouldn't this chord be indicated with a single letter or digit and a single token modifier, if the notation system were sound and free of most exceptions, for example: "9w"


The idea that the music notation is terrible seems horrifying to musicians (who say either, "meh who cares I just play what sounds good," or, "Don't mess with what I have because it took me 4 years to learn this and I don't want to change my charts") and entrenched academics (who say, "don't you dare threaten my elitism by proposing something more understandable by the public where I can't continue to pretend to be the rare in-demand expert"). "Don't mess with tradition!" Therefore the result is a non-productive flamewar circular argument which goes nowhere. I am not much interested in nonsensical arguments on why a malfunctioning system should be kept. The current western music system for 99% of the music made today is dramatically flawed. If you don't like the discussion then opt out of it. It's also not productive to bring up edge cases like microtones which the majority of musicians don't use today and 99% of music theory is not concerned with.


At rehearsal, the musician says, "Play the five." That is really ambiguous and depends on a lot of context. Does it mean the fifth note in the scale? Or does it mean the fifth chord in the scale, and if so, what mode of the chord, what form of the chord? So the musician says, "I mean, play the dominant." That's not much better. Then the musician says, "I mean, play the second inversion F major no five." Wait, play the five but play no five? It's no wonder that musicians completely give up on verbally describing anything about music in the broken system: "Shuddup and play, you'll hear it."


What are the replacements to current musical notation? Here are a few alternates but they are not complete systems either. What are the others? Who is working on this?


1. ABC notation. This was developed on USENET decades ago for typing and sharing non-copyright melodies, archiving them, transposing them, and running computer analysis on them. It uses note letters and apostrophies for octave (a''', b''', ..., a', b', ... A, B, C, ...). The language is strict and has software error correction. It is compilable. The drawback is that it still uses base-8 (8 letter names). I dont believe this system has chords. It is for single-line melodies only.


2. Dozenal. There are 12 notes so the notation system should use 12 unique tokens (not just 8 like A,B,C..). There are base-12 notations very loosely discussed. Consider how well hexadecimal math works with computers which are base-2 extended to base-16 (0 1..9 A B C D E F). Music using base-12 would use twelve tokens (0 1..9 T Q) to represent the 12 notes in music. What remains is how to describe chords, scale degrees, etc.



3. MIDI note numbers & messages. This isnt great for humans. But all notes are given their own digits, with middle C being 60, so sharps and flats are eliminated. This isn't great for readability since humans reading or writing a string of multiple digits is difficult ("60 62 65 67"). No musician is going to say, "The melody goes, sixty sixty-seven sixty-two sixty-five sixty".


4. There's some neo-musical methods from the 50s onward using graphical techniques and matrixes (tone rows etc). I have seen a little of this but don't know much about these - other than they can be very fast to write new music after choosing the desired scale, etc. The trouble with using a matrix or diagram is that it is hard to quickly talk about. The difficulty could be compared to describing how to play a Novation matrix instrument.

5. Solfege - is a system used by vocalists for scale degrees of melody, often as the primary music theory known by a vocalist; in these cases there's no "A, B, C, .." only the solfege syllables, of which there are two incompatible subsystems used in different "schools of music", relative pitch and fixed pitch.

6. Nashville Number System - is a popular chord charting system which allows easy transposition and does not rely on the traditional note alphabet nor does it use fixed pitch. For example, "C=1, D=2, E=3, F=4, G=5, A=6, B=7. In the key of B♭, the numbers would be B♭=1, C=2, D=3, E♭=4, F=5, G=6, A=7." As this is an industry-used system (vs. academic/theorist-made system), it has minor variations to it, although it sounds like it has become more standardized over time. Most importantly it does use relative pitches successfully and specific players seem to prefer it. But as far as I know this is not a complete music system, it is intended for chord charts similar to jazz charts, not complex harmony description etc.


What others are there? It is surprisingly rare to find alternative systems.


Personally I have thought that a truly great system would incorporate both the musical note tuning ratios as well as use base-12, while still allowing a single token (letter or number) to be used for chord names and a single other token for a modifier (mode type or etc).

Great composers have proposed some systems since about the 1950's, such as the below.

Music set theory with 12-tone integer notation





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Old 09-06-2019, 11:35 AM   #379
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For example, Reaper could easily have a viewing mode for the hand signal method of solfege which I just mentioned, with a MIDI instrument as input (using project settings of Key and Time Signature as inputs). That is literally the point of this thread, the How To? Reaper could also have a viewing mode for adXok's notation system. Reaper already has music theory-based scripts, for example the one that kind of mimicks the behavior of band-in-a-box. Reaper could have a Nashville view if it does not already have a related script. "What does this topic have to do with Reaper?" is simply a dumb position to hold.


I still do not know why the flamers on this thread choose to openly deride the ideas posted by the proponents and especially direct personal attacks at the messenger, and worse, without adding anything of value to the topic. It is as if they are deliberately trying to destroy the thread (for what purpose? unknown! Would they do it for some VST discussion for example? No! ).


.

Because all the proposed systems are totally irrealistic.
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Old 09-06-2019, 11:43 AM   #380
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Fact: many, many musicians, perhaps even the majority, do not like the current system of music theory notation (for many reasons previously posted), just as many, many guitarists do not like reading staff notation and prefer to read and write tablature. It it very likely the fact that the majority of musicians have such dislike for the current system of theory that they purposely avoid learning it.
This is not true at all. This is such subjective nonsense.
I have been teaching music for 20 years and the system we use today works very well with any player/student who invests enough effort in learning it. It works very well.

I have been playing professionally for 35 years.
The great majority of professionals I encountered ( like 98% or so) are fluent in the current systems being used and see no reason to change, as for as I know or heard.

That is why this thread is ignorant and arrogant babble for the most part.
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Old 09-06-2019, 12:08 PM   #381
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The OP, which I quote in full :
Haha, the OP quoting himself as OP.
Yeah well....
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Old 09-06-2019, 12:08 PM   #382
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I have been teaching music for 20 years and the system we use today works very well with any player/student who invests enough effort in learning it. It works very well.
The experience you have is greatly respectable.
You know that the system with the geocentric model system worked pretty well for 1500 years, proposed by the aforementioned by me astronomer Ptolemy (who also had a music notation system long before the medieval one we use today). It fitted precisely with the view of "the Holy (Inquisition) Church" to be the Centre of everything. Surprised?

The so called Staff is a tremendous failure from a Design perspective. Because it is a consequence of terrible Nomenclature of the building blocks of the Music elements - tones, notes, intervals, scales, chords... derived from a blatant special case!
The so called standard piano keyboard (suitable for the Staff) is also an undeniable consequence of bad design decisions (or lack of pure technical skills) back in the old times.
* I am not talking about the Hammer Action (capstan, jack, rep. lever, roller, drop pin, escapement doly) - those are brilliant pieces of engineering and great Design!
Heck... it's layout has not been suited at all for the topology of the human hand (fingertips). This is a failure in great proportions... as we see.

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Old 09-06-2019, 12:21 PM   #383
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The so called Staff is a tremendous failure from a Design perspective. Because it is a consequence of terrible Nomenclature of the building blocks of the Music elements - tones, notes, intervals. scales... derived from a blatant special case!
The so called standard piano keyboard (suitable for the Staff) is also an undeniable consequence of bad design decisions (or lack of pure technical skills) back in the old times.
Heck... it's layout has not been suited at all for the topology of the human hand (fingertips). This is a failure in great proportions... as we see.
Weird than that these tremendous failures do work so well for most serious musicians.
Really, in practice they work very well.
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Old 09-06-2019, 12:37 PM   #384
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Weird than that these tremendous failures do work so well for most serious musicians.
Really, in practice they work very well.
Yes, the dial phone as well works (eh, worked) marvellously well.
The vinyl records work well too. Many people will swear to the Almighty that vinyl is the best working solution for recording and archiving music.

The thing is that the world evolves. Probably one day, when Virtual Reality becomes integral part of our daily life at home, work, spare time, music instruments will be just a romantic way of spending time alone for the sake of goofing off like we do now by getting on a wagon or carriage.

some crazy machine learning and VR

They work well and people in the early 20th century were genuinely afraid seeing an automobile cart in motion... without a horse! How can this even work or be controlled!? None could manage to drive that with such an ease like it is with a horse.

Evolution... by solution.

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Old 09-06-2019, 12:48 PM   #385
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Yes, the dial phone as well works (eh, worked) marvellously well.
The vinyl records work well too. Many people will swear to the Almighty that vinyl is the best working solution for recording and archiving music.

The thing is that the world evolves. Probably one day music instruments will be just a romantic way of spending time alone for the sake of goofing off like we do now by getting on a wagon or carriage. They work well and people in the early 20th century were genuinely afraid seeing an automobile cart in motion... without a horse! How can this even work or be controlled!? None could manage to drive that with such an ease like it is with a horse.

Evolution... by solution.
Yes, I am all for evolution.
But where is the need?
I have played with literally hundreds of piano players.
Not one had a problem with the design of the keyboard or expressed the need to have a different layout of the notes.

And for the rest, noone says you cannot use your keyboard.
It is a free world.
Maybe people will follow you in the millions.
I can’t see it happening, but good luck to you.
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Old 09-06-2019, 12:56 PM   #386
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[...]Entire setlists made into a single long flowing song which seemlessly blend into each other. [...] Real performance like this adds novelty, it's fun, it keeps the dance floor hopping without pauses in-between songs, it sounds more professional, it's more musical, it's more artistic. Yet tons of daily players simply do not know how to move harmonies to do this interpolation between classic songs.. primarily because music theory is horrible at making these translations obvious.
What you describe there is what machine-assisted DJs do each night. For many, automatic beatmatching and "mixed in key" (a relabeled circle of fifths) labels are enough, plenty wouldn't know A minor from C major but can do their DJing job just fine.

For realtime instrument playing musicians, I would argue that the problem is in cognitive abilities rather than theory and notation. Some can learn the symbols and do the processing on the fly, and some cannot.

Granted, staff notation is a cumbersome charliefoxtrot of extended standards, and requires huge amount of memorization (and realtime recall skill) to be used effectively. But there's plenty of professional musicians who manage it well, so we know it's humanly possible - just not for all of us.

***

The current situation with DAWs and DJ software is a good predictor of future, I think. After 3 decades of DAWs, we now take for granted things like automatic tempo sync and Melodyne DNA. Scanning sheet music and translating it into MIDI or tabs is already a function in some notation apps, and will probably come to all DAWs in a few years - if not natively, then through plugins.

Give it 30 more years, chances are that people will use AI assistance to make music as easily as building LEGOs, with only limit being their ability to judge the quality of results. That and the fact that once generative AIs are developed far enough, the situation in making music will be similar to using looms vs. hand weaving in making clothes.

As for human players - anyone who isn't a virtuoso born with high cognitive abilities, will end up a machine-assisted cyborg in some way. Maybe with AR goggles displaying the next chord, or whatever.
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Old 09-06-2019, 01:03 PM   #387
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Yes, I am all for evolution.
But where is the need?

Maybe people will follow you in the millions.
I can’t see it happening, but good luck to you.
Imagine waking up one day and you go to your students and they say... we are sick of this piano keyboard. Not going to happen, because the crowd has never created an idea, a concept. Ideas come from individual research, sacrificing small (and big) joys of life, for the sake of a couple of "crazy" ideas.

You know Mozart... the guy was literally pissed off by the harpsichord and its stiff keyboard (clavichord was even worse). He didn't invented the piano-forte though... neither did his father, neither Hoffmeister, Haydn, Salieri... etc.

It was Bartolomeo Cristofori - who had not seen Mozart. Mozart was born a few decades after his death.

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Old 09-06-2019, 01:08 PM   #388
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Imagine waking up one day and you go to your students and they say... we are sick of this piano keyboard. Not going to happen, because the crowd has never created an idea, a concept. Ideas come from individual research, sacrificing small (and big) joys of life, for the sake of a couple of "crazy" ideas.

You know Mozart... the guy was literally pissed off by the harpsichord and its stiff keyboard. He didn't invented the piano-forte though... neither did his father, neither Hoffmeister, Haydn, Salieri... etc.

It was Bartolomeo Cristofori - who had not seen Mozart. Mozart was born a few decades after his death.
Rather arrogant again.

“ the crowd never created an idea”
And linking yourself to Mozart.

Way to go.
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Old 09-06-2019, 01:20 PM   #389
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Rather arrogant again.

“ the crowd never created an idea”
And linking yourself to Mozart.

Way to go.
There was not such thing as "linking me to Mozart" at all. It was a plain fact of his short life and it was about the piano hammer action, not the keyboard! I can rather link my work (not as a musician) to much later time around Chopin and Liszt, because that was the time when Dreschke and Janko published their ideas (mentioned before in the thread).
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Old 09-06-2019, 01:23 PM   #390
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Imagine waking up one day and you go to your students and they say... we are sick of this piano keyboard.
I'd tell them that if one cuts off (mentally or physically) the lower part of piano keyboard, so that only upper part [where black and white keys are of same width] remains, it matches the logarithmic semitone scale, which is how human hearing perceives the distances between pitches.

Standard piano keyboard fits 12-tone equal temperament perfectly and is a good guide for any other tuning as well, even microtonal, since pitches can be easily imagined to be between the keys.

For this reason alone I'd never give up the piano keyboard nor the equal-spaced piano roll. They're a tremendous help in composing, even if one is not aiming for proficiency as a pianist.
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Old 09-06-2019, 01:33 PM   #391
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...[where black and white keys are of same width] remains, it matches the logarithmic semitone scale, which is how human hearing perceives the distances between pitches.
1. they are not of the same width (only the black keys are)

2. there are no semi-tones, those are individual tones you are talking about... a semi-tone is an awful term regarding the interval between two adjacent notes/pitches of that logarithmic scale (chromatic was its earlier name, because it was related to colours in the times of Pythagoras)

3. logarithmic is the 12-TET based on the '²√2 divisions and it is not at all how humans perceive distance between pitches - it is simple mathematical approximation - a compromise, but fair enough precise
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Old 09-06-2019, 02:22 PM   #392
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1. they are not of the same width (only the black keys are)
In the upper part they are, for all practical purposes. I've made composing helpers (to place above the keys and move sideways when chords, scales etc. change) for many different sizes of piano keyboards, and distances between each key to another key are the same, as are usually all the key widths.

There are small differences in manufacturing standards and tolerances of actual key pieces. Usually they're sub-millimeter, insignificant to players and composers.


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2. there are no semi-tones, those are individual tones you are talking about... a semi-tone is an awful term regarding the interval between two adjacent notes/pitches of that logarithmic scale (chromatic was its earlier name, because it was related to colours in the times of Pythagoras)
Indeed. But semitone is nowadays an accepted and widely understood term so I'll rather use that.

The important part is that semitone and octave distances of a standard piano keyboard (and equal-spaced piano roll) are proportional. In other words, one can overlay a piano keyboard image onto a log scale spectrum analyser and understand what's going on in a way that is not possible with other kinds of instruments.

This is actually where I think the equally spaced piano roll (and upper part of piano keyboard) are superior to staff notation, as far as visual representation of heard material goes.
But as symbolic instruction for players of specific instruments, staff notation has the benefit of taking up less space on paper, agreed upon standards for articulation signs, and so on. I haven't yet heard of professional instrument players preferring to read piano rolls over staff.

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3. logarithmic is the 12-TET based on the '²√2 divisions and it is not at all how humans perceive distance between pitches - it is simple mathematical approximation - a compromise, but fair enough precise
Human hearing of pitch is logarithmic, that is what I meant. No matter which tuning, the piano keyboard - upper part of it - with 12 semitones/octave helps very much in visualizing what is heard, especially when shown as spectrum analyser overlay such as in Ableton Live, some Melda plugins and an EQ in Cubase.
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Old 09-06-2019, 02:44 PM   #393
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Indeed. But semitone is nowadays an accepted and widely understood term so I'll rather use that.
That is a perfect description of my greatest fears about this subject...

Well, octave is another "special case" term that is... wrong.

By the way, just came to my mind that we can use S-J instead of H-W to designate the intervals in a scale. Thus a natural major would be:
(X) - Jump - Jump - Step - Jump - Jump - Jump - Step (X↑)
(X) - 2 - 2 - 1 - 2 - 2 - 2 - 1(X↑)

Whole-Step and Half-Step are totally redundant and misleading/confusing.







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This is actually where I think the equally spaced piano roll (and upper part of piano keyboard) are superior to staff notation, as far as visual representation of heard material goes.
That is understandable... but all piano rolls are faced towards the front side of a standard piano-keyboard panel (every DAW is like that and you can see the overlapping misalignment).

Well... if you name the black keys (a certain pentatonic scale actually they represent) and give accidental symbols to the white keys, the Staff will take even less space!

I think you mismatch Audible Range represented as Logarithmic Scale (FFT) as visual compact reference than the Linear (which would squash the lower and lower-mid freq and they are the worst to handle so we need to see them). Whilst the human hearing range is more sensitive around 2-3kHz and decreases exponentially after 16kHz.
This has nothing to do with the piano keyboard layout as any keyboard layout that covers 12-TET will be equally suitable, especially the uniform ones, but not the grid ones (block type and surface pad layouts).

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Old 09-06-2019, 04:10 PM   #394
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The current situation with DAWs and DJ software is a good predictor of future, I think. After 3 decades of DAWs, we now take for granted things like automatic tempo sync and Melodyne DNA. Scanning sheet music and translating it into MIDI or tabs is already a function in some notation apps, and will probably come to all DAWs in a few years - if not natively, then through plugins.
Yes, about tech enabling apps to be music theory assistants, specifically, today's jazz players using song chart apps which do automatic transposing for live performance, so the jazz player has no problem when the vocalist (usually the vocalist) requests the change of key. Even if the jazz player could take a moment to do it mentally and perform in the new key from memory, or write some quick note in pencil, the music theory skill is being relegated to an app. That has been the reality for a few years now and becoming more common.
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Old 09-06-2019, 04:20 PM   #395
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Evolution... by solution.

You are in good company because many players derided the Seaboard, yet it won many design awards. (Many of those seaboard flamers I assume are the typical, old close-minded guys, who also shout at clouds, "i've been playing and teaching for 35 years!!11!1" because they can't see or accept innovation to save themselves)
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Old 09-06-2019, 04:28 PM   #396
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Well, octave is another "special case" term that is... wrong.
Indeed, "eight" though nowadays we have a standard of twelve, and theoretically one can split the doubling of frequency into arbitrary number of intervals of arbitrary size.

But since the usage of a word defines its meaning, when majority uses "octave" and "semitone", it cannot be helped. If one wants to be understood, the acceped terminology must be used, doing otherwise is (usually) fighting windmills.

Or, in other words, "terminology will remain irrational longer than one will stay sane"

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Well... if you name the black keys (a certain pentatonic scale actually they represent) and give accidental symbols to the white keys, the Staff will take even less space!
Yep. Staff notation can be thought of as a compression algorithm, in a way. I used to be hugely annoyed by that, as well as the fact that black lines on a staff do not correspond to black keys on a piano.
Then I came to conclusion that it's unreasonable to expect rationality from a standard with 400+ years of extensions, when even in current era standards can be developed irrationally over just a few years.


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Originally Posted by adXok View Post
I think you mismatch Audible Range represented as Logarithmic Scale (FFT) as visual compact reference than the Linear (which favours the lower and lower-mid freq).
No mismatch - what I mean here is the perception of pitches, harmonics, octaves etc., not sensitivity in different Hz areas. I'm aware of Fletcher-Munson curves and human range of hearing, it has nothing to do with what I mean in regards to this.

To illustrate what I mean, attached is a crop of a screenshot from Ableton Live's Spectrum with ST (semitone) overlay showing a saw wave.

I find it extremely convenient that the piano keyboard/roll is exactly proportional to the analyser, and that the distances on horizontal scale correspond to how human hearing works. It is especially useful in sound design, additive synthesis, mixing and mastering.

This is where I think that piano keyboard/roll is unsurpassed in its simplicity and convenience.
The only enhancement I can think of is eliminating lower half of keyboard entirely, but it'd make playability worse. Considering that original designer and subsequent developers of piano-type keyboards did not have spectrum analysers (but were probably aware of some math behind that), the piano keyboard ended up as a surprisingly good compromise of playability by human hands and visualization of physics behind the sound.
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Old 09-06-2019, 05:04 PM   #397
coolbass
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Originally Posted by superblonde.org View Post
(Many of those seaboard flamers I assume are the typical, old close-minded guys, who also shout at clouds, "i've been playing and teaching for 35 years!!11!1" because they can't see or accept innovation to save themselves)
Hahahaha.....

Ok, you win.
I am finally done with this thread.
Have a good life.
Try to learn some harmony and maybe you will become a better player.
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Old 09-06-2019, 07:11 PM   #398
superblonde.org
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Originally Posted by coolbass View Post
Rather arrogant again.

“ the crowd never created an idea”
And linking yourself to Mozart.

Way to go.

...

Hahahaha.....

Ok, you win.
I am finally done with this thread.
Have a good life.
Try to learn some harmony and maybe you will become a better player.
1. I'm surprised you havent been banned from the forum based on your numerous attacks here which completely lack addition of anything of substantial value to this thread, and your numerous one-liner off-topic dismissives.


2. you're a liar. anyone who has actually been teaching music will have at least a short list of complaints against the current awkward notation because complaints are so common; anyone who has actually been teaching music will know that notation has changed over time, including within the past fifty years (which I have posted many examples of, and you have unsurprisingly ignored); anyone who has been playing music will have run into players who are unable or unwilling to read/write notation as described many times in this thread or have run into notational awkwardness themselves, or contradictions in notation. Anyone even partially trained in music knows that there are multiple systems in use such as solfege, the existing notation of harmony is not etched in stone tablets, and your continued insistence that "no other system works" is false, since many vocalists learn solfege and nothing else other than solfege.


3. you're a close-minded person yet a useful idiot. due to your numerous trite & insulting flame replies, this thread has grown in size through bad controversy escalated by others, and continued to be at the top of the list of threads and thus attract useful replies from other forum members rather than disappearing down the list. congrats for getting trolled.



The primary textbook for harmony studied around the world, written by Piston, has many specific complaints against it or within it because of the failings of music notation exacerbated by "The Church's" legacy system, including:

- He uses roman numerals in all-uppercase regardless of mode. The major chord progression for example is notated as I - II - III - ... the notation used literally says: "Three chords are minor: II, III, and VI".

- He mixes uppercase and lowercase letters instead to denote mode, like C d e F G.

- He does not use any notational convention to distinguish numbers used for scale degrees from other textual usage of numbers.

- He even acknowledges in the text that chord symbols and other notational symbols can be confusing.


The problem is well-known for anyone paying attention to music. It is a fact.

What remains, is to discuss various improvements and work on the How to's, based on principles of music available today (rather than continue to rely on The Church's tradition of a system created to support its own ancient music & legacy music preferences). And after that, to create a presentation system (such as Reaper plugin) to demonstrate the new improvements by internally translating existing music.

Many other replies here have had very good suggestions and stated preferences to score toward potential improvements.

In particular I would like to see an end to the use of roman numerals and instead adoption of another common alphabet (single character per token), one which is available on modern keyboards and available for typesetting (publishing in textbooks). Then, better use of unique & minimal superscripts to indicate alterations.
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Old 09-06-2019, 07:17 PM   #399
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The notation of compound chords.


Last edited by superblonde.org; 08-24-2020 at 01:40 PM. Reason: fix image link
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Old 09-06-2019, 07:30 PM   #400
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Originally Posted by superblonde.org View Post
[...]Entire setlists made into a single long flowing song which seemlessly blend into each other


Quote:
Originally Posted by n997 View Post
What you describe there is what machine-assisted DJs do each night. ...

For realtime instrument playing musicians, I would argue that the problem is in cognitive abilities rather than theory and notation. Some can learn the symbols and do the processing on the fly, and some cannot.

For modulating in realtime, that's one skill. A different skill is arranging multiple songs together and rehearsing that way. (from a chart, etc). I wrote the above in relation to a bar band playing common covers, and to me it seems like it would be a tremendously beneficial skill because it keeps people on the dance floor -- rather than walking off because their favorite groove stopped -- and keeping bodies on the dance floor means more bar money. So to me, it's a mystery why the skill is lacking, other than the musicians don't know how or can't easily do it. I've seen enough bar bands cover The Rolling Stones yet none of them create that "DJ-like continual dance mix" of the Stones like a good DJ would do.

It's a good comment about machine-assisted tech for DJ's nowadays to allow DJ's to pull this off, but waaay back when DJ'ing was actual picking vinyl & spinning & scratching, there were highly talented DJ's who were amazing and mixing and merging songs into long-form arrangements. I guess the difference is that those DJ's spent lots & lots of time practicing, and many of them must have had great ears.
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