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Octahedra
Joined: Nov 29, 2008 Posts: 149 Location: Cheshire, UK
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Posted: Fri Oct 02, 2009 1:26 pm Post subject:
Ye olde music notation |
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Continuing something that got started on another thread...
bachus wrote: | I'd be interested and grateful to hear what your thoughts are on improvements/changes/gripes regarding common notation practice. |
I haven't really thought about this properly until now, but we can discuss it here and maybe some of us will come up with something! Sorry, this is gonna be a heavy read!*
I find traditional notation laborious to read, especially with complex rhythms and microtones. I'm really arguing for two things here. Partly a new system of notation that's easier to read & write and supports unusual tunings, and partly that it should be widely used (and supported by software) so that a lot more music is preserved right down to the details of the score - not just finished recordings. In the wider world the situation won't change, but we can always talk about these ideas amongst ourselves...
These days I basically do everything in piano roll in Sonar (having more or less given up on trackers). I find it by far the easiest way to see what the computer is going to play. I can't read normal music notation well enough to play from it, but I have been able to learn useful things about composing from other people's scores and notated examples in books.
I've been making music on computer for a long time, but I at the moment I can still open everything in my current software. Right now I'm remaking a track I did on the Amiga 13 years ago. I've got the OctaMED file, manuscript (melody & chords only, written in my own hopeless tracker-based notation) and the original recording, and I ended up using all of them to find what bits I wanted to copy over into my new Sonar version of the track. What I didn't have was a single complete readable score of the whole arrangement, all in one place, stored in a format that won't go out of date, and printable.
In the classical world this completeness is standard (providing you accept conventional instruments played using techniques that everyone knows the names of, and that every performance will be different). We electronic musicians can't hope to describe our synth sounds and samples in a printable score, but if we could at least consolidate all the really important score data for one piece of music, in one place, readable by human or machine, it'd be a useful backup. A way of recreating the music in the future if the recording or other data were lost. And an easy, accurate source for making new versions of old pieces.
So here's some possible goals to aim for...
• Clear and easy to read/edit in sequencing software, and in printed scores for performers and for people to study.
• Allows composers to specify crazy things that a machine can play, even if a human can't - e.g. time specified in seconds rather than beats, incomplete tuplets, tuplets-inside-tuplets etc.
• Not diatonic by default; allows any equal temperament (including microtonal, nonoctave) with easy transposition.
• Also useable with unequal scales (just intonation, meantone etc.) - standard rules / symbols for defining any scale you can think of.
• Symbols designed according to a simple set of rules; easier to remember but still easy enough to tell apart.
• A given number of beats (or time in seconds if there are no tempo changes) should always take up the same amount of space on the screen/page so you can plot graphs alongside for performance parameters, midi controllers or any kind of graphic score you feel like inventing.
• Standard file format when used in software - something like a midi file but with proper definitions of instruments, time signatures, tuning, tempo, embedded text & graphics etc.
• When working with it on the computer, the bars / sections / parts / part groups in the score behave something like paragraphs in a word processor; it's easy to alter line breaking, page wrapping and content grouping according to paper size when printing and whether the printout is for archive/study (all parts together running parallel) or performance (each part in its own 'book').
So I'll end by paraphrasing Bachus - Let's have all your ideas and comments about current and possible future ways of writing down music!
Gordon
* So, just a typical everyday Octahedra post then. |
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nobody
Joined: Mar 09, 2008 Posts: 1687 Location: Not here
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Posted: Fri Oct 02, 2009 2:38 pm Post subject:
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That'd be cool. I'd like to start by getting a bullet list of the things that can be written down somehow and read by both human and machine, as Octahedra started doing. I'd like to see this list much more concise per item, though.
Also, I think certain elements of standard notation should be kept, and I think the reason for that should be obvious.
Some things might be hard to get around, such as sound designed on specific instruments. You can provide patches, but you still need the instrument to load them.
Notation should include:
Pitch bend (range of wheel and amount of movement)
Aftertouch (sensitivity setting, amount of pressure, when to start aftertouch, how long)
Patch change
Controllers (source, destination, delay, amount)
Envelopes (in conjunction with any other applicable parameter here)
Filter (envelope, delay, frequency, type)
I gotta go do some errands, but I'm sure y'all get the idea. It'd be cool if we could invent a system amongst ourselves. You just never know - it might catch on.
Thought: perhaps synthesis symbols might be included in such a notation (osc, LFO, VCA, VCF), as well as some invented variants of symbols for HPF, LPF, etc. |
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bachus
Joined: Feb 29, 2004 Posts: 2922 Location: Up in that tree over there.
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Posted: Fri Oct 02, 2009 8:29 pm Post subject:
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I think the assertion that traditional music notation is ill suited to "complex rhythms and microtones" is correct. However, traditional music notation is very well suited to the kind of music I have been doing. So my approach has been to treat time as the fundamental domain that maps to various concurrent dimensions of musical abstractions. Standard Notation is one partial view of those underlying abstractions. IMO a different notation for, say, decimal time should be able to run with and relate visually to lines of metered time just as snare and fife are correlated by time in performance and vertical registration in printed score. I would make an argument that mixing them in the same line/voice destroys the meaning of the metered component.
But turning to "completeness" I think standard "classical" notation is a kind of shorthand that is completed by the performer who (hopefully) brings to the score a massive context, and deftly places the composers notes in it, adding tremendous amounts of time domain data in the process. So to my mind "classical" printed score is actually quite vague.
And printing has problems. As audiodef's list suggests, there are many continuous dimensions to encode if you want something printed that allows the reproduction of the life giving details of a performance without a musician to do the details. What do you see as the compelling utility of printed score?
BTW I write in Sibelius and dump (transform) the score to MIDI to load into sonar to manipulate the MIDI event data with my own cal routines -- for many hours on end. I have been working on a notation composition tool that would integrate those functions and provide an elementary vocabulary of musical objects/abstractions and "operations" on such as an API. And which could be used to build higher level abstractions and processes. It's been through several attempts and isn't very far along in its current conception. I'll look at providing tuplets within tuplets.
In any case, thank you for the thoughtful reply. I'm still thinking about parts of it. _________________ The question is not whether they can talk or reason, but whether they can suffer. -- Jeremy Bentham |
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Octahedra
Joined: Nov 29, 2008 Posts: 149 Location: Cheshire, UK
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Posted: Sat Oct 03, 2009 4:06 am Post subject:
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bachus wrote: | But turning to "completeness" I think standard "classical" notation is a kind of shorthand that is completed by the performer who (hopefully) brings to the score a massive context, and deftly places the composers notes in it, adding tremendous amounts of time domain data in the process. So to my mind "classical" printed score is actually quite vague. |
Maybe I overstated the 'completeness' thing - especially as the instruments and the interpretations have changed over the hundreds of years that music has been written down.
But I'd like to think there could be an easier way of archiving our old work without losing too many details. Some of my old music is written on paper, but that only includes the basic stuff like melody and chords. The complete arrangement only exists in a commercial file format that is laborious to read off the screen. Only tracker diehards (or ex-tracker-diehards like me) would find this easier to read than ordinary notation. There's still software on the market that will read and play those old files (if you know where to look) but I've found that it tends to lock up and crash when exporting it to a midi file.
As for continuous controllers and graphs in the score, you're right - there would be an accuracy problem using a printed score as your archive copy. In that situation if you tried to scan a printed score back into the computer and use OCR to convert it back into a working sequencer file, you could easily lose too much detail.
Gordon |
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nobody
Joined: Mar 09, 2008 Posts: 1687 Location: Not here
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Posted: Sat Oct 03, 2009 4:38 pm Post subject:
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I had an appointment today during which I did some waiting. While waiting, I got some paper and fooled around with some notation ideas. Will post later, somehow. I don't have a scanner at the moment. I may try taking a photo of my handiwork.
I think we would have to keep in mind that just like with traditional acoustic instruments, we could never dare to hope to encode every last detail. Lots of stuff will always be up to the performer at the moment. However, I think it's quite plausible to come up with a system in which the basic (read: important) parameters are encoded for performance reproduction. Pitch bend, mod wheel, aftertouch, and such. |
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bachus
Joined: Feb 29, 2004 Posts: 2922 Location: Up in that tree over there.
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Posted: Sat Oct 03, 2009 5:35 pm Post subject:
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audiodef wrote: | I think we would have to keep in mind that just like with traditional acoustic instruments, we could never dare to hope to encode every last detail. |
Personally I'm in favor of encoding every last detail. I call such an encoding a performance score, still an abstraction, still possessing a mapping to standard notation but far more concrete than traditional score by virtue of many parameters/dimensions. How to display/notate these other dimensions is somewhat of an open question. _________________ The question is not whether they can talk or reason, but whether they can suffer. -- Jeremy Bentham |
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elektro80
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Joined: Mar 25, 2003 Posts: 21959 Location: Norway
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Posted: Sat Oct 03, 2009 6:04 pm Post subject:
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I dunno about this. I´ve several times thought about a better way to notate music, but how to do it depends a bit on the real purpose of it. And we might even have such formats available, like the project file format for Logic or Pro Tools or what have you. You open the file and Voila, there you have it just like you left it. Personally I find these formats far from perfect as they lack really informative meta info tracks and the instrument/track/mix/asset views could be way more informative.
The old standard paper notation system that I use is quite OK for most purposes, and what it won´t easily support can be added by writing additional comments and shit. That´s why most of my pieces won´t easily fit in a standard shoebox.. well.. some duct tape will help holding the lid down though.. And how do you stack those boxes well when they all look like sumo wrestlers?? _________________ A Charity Pantomime in aid of Paranoid Schizophrenics descended into chaos yesterday when someone shouted, "He's behind you!"
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Stream Operator
Joined: Oct 13, 2007 Posts: 6221 Location: near Austin, Tx, USA
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Posted: Sat Oct 03, 2009 11:31 pm Post subject:
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I've tried to read this thread yet only skimmed because it's too in-depth for me, but I get the gist of it. I'd say what is needed is a structure in C, or a data class in ChucK for example. The contents of this data class would be a variable for each parameter that is desired by the composer. For example one could be like this:
Code: | class note {
int octave;
int note;
int shift;
} |
where note denotes 0=A, 1=B, 2=C etc. and shift is -1 for a flat, 0 for the note, and 1 for a sharp. Then a song could be an array of notes. If you want to add other parameters to completion and form a standard, well that's ok but you might not be able to come up with a complete list. So I'd say the composer uses whatever parameters suit the needs of the composition.
Just my two cents.
Les _________________ "Let's make noise for peace." - Kijjaz |
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Antimon
Joined: Jan 18, 2005 Posts: 4145 Location: Sweden
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Posted: Sun Oct 04, 2009 4:04 am Post subject:
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Yeah the programming language thingie comes to mind when reading this discussion. My first thought was: XML. Then: Oh no!
Programming languages are good for telling a computer what to do. If you ever want to show the stuff to another human, or be able to read it yourself a couple of years down the road, I think you want to structure the notation with a different kind of focus.
/Stefan _________________ Antimon's Window
@soundcloud @Flattr home - you can't explain music |
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Stream Operator
Joined: Oct 13, 2007 Posts: 6221 Location: near Austin, Tx, USA
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Posted: Sun Oct 04, 2009 5:05 am Post subject:
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Antimon wrote: | Yeah the programming language thingie comes to mind when reading this discussion. My first thought was: XML. Then: Oh no!
Programming languages are good for telling a computer what to do. If you ever want to show the stuff to another human, or be able to read it yourself a couple of years down the road, I think you want to structure the notation with a different kind of focus.
/Stefan |
I'd imagine the notation would be specific to the data structure used, for example in the above notation would be like this: 1A# for A sharp in the first octave, or 3Ib for note I in the third octave with a flat on it. If you have other data in your structure you just define a similar encoding for it. That makes it human readable.
Les _________________ "Let's make noise for peace." - Kijjaz |
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Stream Operator
Joined: Oct 13, 2007 Posts: 6221 Location: near Austin, Tx, USA
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Posted: Sun Oct 04, 2009 5:09 am Post subject:
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Also in the class or structure that contains the data, you add related functions as needed by the composition. For example if you need a MIDI number for controlling an instrument from your special notation, you write a note2MIDI() function and put it in the class or structure. But you only have to define the functions that you need for that composition.
Les _________________ "Let's make noise for peace." - Kijjaz |
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bachus
Joined: Feb 29, 2004 Posts: 2922 Location: Up in that tree over there.
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Posted: Sun Oct 04, 2009 5:48 am Post subject:
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While the example, 1A#, is human readable the goal of music notation is to make the data readable in real time. At least I assume that is its goal though that characteristic has not been mentioned in this thread. _________________ The question is not whether they can talk or reason, but whether they can suffer. -- Jeremy Bentham |
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Stream Operator
Joined: Oct 13, 2007 Posts: 6221 Location: near Austin, Tx, USA
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Posted: Sun Oct 04, 2009 5:58 am Post subject:
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bachus wrote: | While the example, 1A#, is human readable the goal of music notation is to make the data readable in real time. At least I assume that is its goal though that characteristic has not been mentioned in this thread. |
The data can be displayed in any desired format according to the capabilities of the programming language. For example, a guitar program could output tab. Or a piano program would output sheet music. It's just a matter of defining an appropriate output function. If there is a need to customize a special symbology for a given data structure, then one can do that as well.
Les _________________ "Let's make noise for peace." - Kijjaz |
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bachus
Joined: Feb 29, 2004 Posts: 2922 Location: Up in that tree over there.
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bachus
Joined: Feb 29, 2004 Posts: 2922 Location: Up in that tree over there.
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Posted: Sun Oct 04, 2009 7:24 am Post subject:
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The channel viewer screen shot above is displaying only diatonic channels (which are not to be confused with MIDI channels). In the system I am developing one can choose which channels will be shown together in a viewer window. Channel types could be as diverse as "figured base", dissonance quotient, or Carlos-beta. However, creating a channel view of Carlos-beta would require at least as much programming effort as creating a diatonic viewer, which is substantial. But I have not been able to figure a way around this "problem". _________________ The question is not whether they can talk or reason, but whether they can suffer. -- Jeremy Bentham |
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chuck
Joined: Apr 26, 2005 Posts: 58 Location: cincinnati, oh
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Posted: Fri Mar 26, 2010 6:15 am Post subject:
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I see that this thread as been idle since early Oct '09. I'm just back to this so I'll revive this (maybe).
As I read this discussion it's clear that we are talking about many things at one time. Some questions that come to mind, hopefully to direct a focus here.
1.) Why do you think you need to notate? Who will read your notation and what will they do with it? Is notation necessary to understand your music?
2.) If the sounds are all electronically produced, what equipment is used? The instrumentation of a symphony orchestra has been fairly intact for over a hundred years. Electronic sounds are still very much in their infancy by comparision. As the equipment changes, so will the needs of notation. i.e. Giovanni Gabrieli's music is, today performed on brass instruments that were not in existence in 1612. If tone color was the issue in that music, the notation would be unusable.
3.) Chicken and egg. As music and instrumentation developed over the years, notation developed with it. In other words, the music came first and then the desire to notate so others could play the same thing, came later after instrumentation was more or less standardized or understood.
4.) With comment #3 in mind, what do we lose with notation? With 'standard notation' we have a closed palette of pitch, and rhythm. When we start imposing really complex rhythms and microtones on standard notation the system begins to creak a little. Additional considerations of tone color and sound durations really put the old stuff to the task. Do we inhibit our music by considering standard notation before we compose? or do we 'put a round peg in a square hole' by forcing our music concepts on a system ill equipped to handle them?
5.) Why do we have trouble accepting a record version of the music as the 'score'?
6.) Isn't it possible that by trying to reproduce someone else music with no other direction than our ears, we might just create something different that is useful? _________________ Never confuse beauty with the things that put your mind at ease.
Charles E. Ives |
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bachus
Joined: Feb 29, 2004 Posts: 2922 Location: Up in that tree over there.
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Posted: Fri Mar 26, 2010 2:14 pm Post subject:
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chuck wrote: |
1.) Why do you think you need to notate? Who will read your notation and what will they do with it? Is notation necessary to understand your music?
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Personally I "need" to notate because of my utter lack of physical coordination.
And personally I want to produce an open source program that encourages people to develop an understanding of standard theory and notation, functional analysis etc., because I much prefer to listen to music that comes from those who have a foundation in this material (whether they use it or not) and whose music involves some process of symbolic analysis and reflection. Again that is nothing more than a personal preference, but one for which I would like to recruit.
chuck wrote: | 2.) ... As the equipment changes, so will the needs of notation. i.e. Giovanni Gabrieli's music is, today performed on brass instruments that were not in existence in 1612. If tone color was the issue in that music, the notation would be unusable. |
My project has an object oriented architecture that is virtually extensible without limit--though not without effort. And being open source my hope is that others will, in fact, extend it in diverse directions.
chuck wrote: | 4.) .... Do we inhibit our music by considering standard notation before we compose? or do we 'put a round peg in a square hole' by forcing our music concepts on a system ill equipped to handle them? |
I think that issue is easily resolved, as every set of tools and media has its strengths and weaknesses. It's simply up to the artist to choose those that fit their needs. _________________ The question is not whether they can talk or reason, but whether they can suffer. -- Jeremy Bentham |
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chuck
Joined: Apr 26, 2005 Posts: 58 Location: cincinnati, oh
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Posted: Sat Mar 27, 2010 7:30 am Post subject:
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bachus wrote: | chuck wrote: |
1....by considering standard notation before we compose? |
I think that issue is easily resolved, as every set of tools and media has its strengths and weaknesses. It's simply up to the artist to choose those that fit their needs. |
Yes, as long as we realize that point. I teach music composition to young children, most of whom do not have any previous musical training. They are amazingly open minded to all kinds of concepts and organization. However, other teachers at the school are often very rigid in their approach and will hold that a person who does not read music cannot call themselves a musician (and other such nuggets of nonsense that I'll spare from this discussion). _________________ Never confuse beauty with the things that put your mind at ease.
Charles E. Ives |
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ark
Joined: Mar 06, 2008 Posts: 679 Location: New Jersey
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Posted: Sat Mar 27, 2010 7:47 am Post subject:
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chuck wrote: | Why do we have trouble accepting a record version of the music as the 'score'?
| Because it contains no directions for the performer(s).
Consider Terry Reilly's piece In C. If you look at the score, you will see that any recording of this piece is just one of an unbounded number of possible performances. |
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blue hell
Site Admin
Joined: Apr 03, 2004 Posts: 24079 Location: The Netherlands, Enschede
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Posted: Sat Mar 27, 2010 8:11 am Post subject:
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ark wrote: | If you look at the score, you will see that any recording of this piece is just one of an unbounded number of possible performances. |
Sorry, no .. I had to read the text for that _________________ Jan
also .. could someone please turn down the thermostat a bit.
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chuck
Joined: Apr 26, 2005 Posts: 58 Location: cincinnati, oh
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Posted: Sat Mar 27, 2010 8:51 am Post subject:
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ark wrote: | chuck wrote: | Why do we have trouble accepting a record version of the music as the 'score'?
| Because it contains no directions for the performer(s).
Consider Terry Reilly's piece In C. If you look at the score, you will see that any recording of this piece is just one of an unbounded number of possible performances. |
Actually I know that piece well, I once did a arrangement (or 'set-up might be a better word) of that for HS concert band. And its an interesting example here.
I would summit that to transcribe "In C" by hear would be a task of some order. But since there are a number of performance possibilities, there are also a number of notation possibilities. The score of "In C" is just one possibility of the realization of the concept. (I suppose you could say the same thing of many works... although condensing Beethoven 9th into a 'concept' would be challenging) A group of musicians asked to jam repeated short figures all within the key of C (there are some Bb's in Riley's score, I recall) could pretty much present the same feeling in performance.
My point here is that the beauty and art of "In C" are in the concept more so than the details of the written score. Quite a different situation with the Beethoven example. And in comparison, the message is, know your tools and don't be used by them. _________________ Never confuse beauty with the things that put your mind at ease.
Charles E. Ives |
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bachus
Joined: Feb 29, 2004 Posts: 2922 Location: Up in that tree over there.
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Posted: Sat Mar 27, 2010 1:01 pm Post subject:
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ark wrote: | If you look at the score, you will see that any recording of this piece is just one of an unbounded number of possible performances. |
Isn't that true for virtually all notated compositions? The dimensions that are varied are fewer and more subtle in, say, Beethoven; but an enumeration of all aesthetically distinct realizations of any such music would still be pretty awesome _________________ The question is not whether they can talk or reason, but whether they can suffer. -- Jeremy Bentham |
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bachus
Joined: Feb 29, 2004 Posts: 2922 Location: Up in that tree over there.
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Posted: Sat Mar 27, 2010 1:17 pm Post subject:
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chuck wrote: | bachus wrote: |
I think that issue is easily resolved, as every set of tools and media has its strengths and weaknesses. It's simply up to the artist to choose those that fit their needs. |
Yes, as long as we realize that point. .... However, other teachers at the school are often very rigid in their approach and will hold that a person who does not read music cannot call themselves a musician |
I suppose my view is that any artist that can be constrained by convention might as well be. As for your tunnel visioned comrades -- the majority of people will ever be thus and you have my sympathy. _________________ The question is not whether they can talk or reason, but whether they can suffer. -- Jeremy Bentham |
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ark
Joined: Mar 06, 2008 Posts: 679 Location: New Jersey
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Posted: Sat Mar 27, 2010 2:09 pm Post subject:
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bachus wrote: | ark wrote: | If you look at the score, you will see that any recording of this piece is just one of an unbounded number of possible performances. |
Isn't that true for virtually all notated compositions? |
Of course.
And that's my answer to the question asked earlier: "Why do we have trouble accepting a record version of the music as the 'score'?" |
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blue hell
Site Admin
Joined: Apr 03, 2004 Posts: 24079 Location: The Netherlands, Enschede
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Posted: Sat Mar 27, 2010 2:38 pm Post subject:
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ark wrote: | And that's my answer to the question asked earlier: "Why do we have trouble accepting a record version of the music as the 'score'?" |
If you'd replace it with samples and then add the same text, why would that not work for you? _________________ Jan
also .. could someone please turn down the thermostat a bit.
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