Advantages/Disadvantages of Notation (not Mandolin Specific)

[catmandu2]

Mark my words, std. notation it will disappear in a few generations. It is not keeping up, and it cannot keep up. With the advent of increasingly sophisticated software, the next generations of musicians will have the ability to overcome all these pesky issues, and transit more smoothly between the actual goal -- learning to make beautiful musical sounds -- and the method of transcription of those sounds into something permanent (either on paper, or in silico!), in a way that can instruct other musicians on how to make similar sounds. Meanwhile, as many have advised, folks should still learn to read notation and still learn to read tab, too. I am no snob about such things, and learning is a good goal for life. But notation is already antiquated and inadequate.

It will be increasingly archaic, but I think it will be around, just as other systems of tabulature/notation - which is simply another example of animals attempting to graphically/organizationally account what it is we do .. it's axiomatic that our current means to quantify, collate and compartmentalize our experience will be left in the dust - here as elsewhere ..

I'm going to see if I can find an image to post of the liner notes to Brotzmann, Vandermark et al's "Chicago Octet/Tentet" ..)

*Well I don't see anything readily - this (from the Machine Gun album) is wild .. People use some mighty obscure (to me) notational systems .. Anthony Braxton's - ouch! And Cage of course ..

[objectsession]

The current state of affairs is that majority of the music that the people on our planet hear today has no sheet music available for it! And that doesn't look to be changing in the years ahead.

Sorry. I just don't follow this. I agree that most music doesn't have sheet music available - but this isn't a new thing. It doesn't indicate that standard notation is dying off. It is confined to certain genres/traditions of music as before. Either those genres would have to die off or people working within those genres would have to switch over to not using standard notation. I think you can give some evidence of that change with examples of contemporary classical music that do not fit within standard notation, but people aren't completely abandoning instrumental styles that suit standard notation.

I do agree that standard notation has plenty of life left in it, but let us face some awkward facts: notation is difficult to master (for most), slow and too inconvenient to write (for most), too limited in its ability to capture actual performance (or musical nuance, or musical genre), and mostly able transcribe only the Western Tradition of classical music -- but little else beyond that, except with considerable difficulty or large numbers of non-standard "additions" to the notation. Mark my words, std. notation it will disappear in a few generations. It is not keeping up, and it cannot keep up. With the advent of increasingly sophisticated software, the next generations of musicians will have the ability to overcome all these pesky issues, and transit more smoothly between the actual goal -- learning to make beautiful musical sounds -- and the method of transcription of those sounds into something permanent (either on paper, or in silico!), in a way that can instruct other musicians on how to make similar sounds.

I dunno . . . can you give an example of software based notation that is better even in some of those ways without big trade offs in other areas that even have a small amount of popularity? We can say maybe it hasn't been thought of yet, and that's true, but software capability is pretty advanced now. Seems like if something better is going to kill standard notation in the next hundred years, someone should at least be able to speculate on what it'd be like. Also, even if there is a "better" form of notation, you're supposing that people will tend to do what is rational. People have argued for a long time that the QWERTY keyboard layout is inefficient. Yet, after more than 100 years, it still exists.

A lot of your criticisms of notation can also be applied to certain instruments. I mean, the mandolin is very difficult to master, the double bass is very inconvenient to move and don't suit human ergonomics, the piano is very poorly suited to many non-western tradition styles of expression. There are electronic (and even electric . . . or even acoustic) versions of those instruments that could "fix" all those problems, but I don't think all those instruments are going to die out so quickly. (And 100 years can be pretty quick.)

If standard notation does die out, my guess (which is just a wild guess with no real evidence) is that it'll die out because it is poorly suited for whatever human-computer interface we end up using. Standard notation is especially well suited for writing with paper. Right now, it's easier to learn how to write notation by hand than on a computer and faster in a lot of cases. That could become easier with good handwriting or gesture recognition, but maybe people won't care to simulate handwriting in the future.

So that's my prediction. Let's meet back in 100 years and see who's closer to right.

[SincereCorgi]

I agree that it's bold to say standard notation will be gone 'in a few generations', although I guess it depends on what you're calling a 'generation' and how optimistic you are about the fate of composed ensemble music. I think it's a little like saying the Roman alphabet will be gone in a few generations... although I suppose it might be more like what's happened to cursive and shorthand.

Standard notation has many limitations, but, at present, it's still got momentum as a tradition. People who learn classical music absorb it from the beginning of their training, and abandoning entirely it would require devising entirely new ways of learning, say, the violin. It's still the fastest and most painless way to rehearse and perform a five-hour opera and keep everybody together. I don't know whether either of those things are going to be considered a worthwhile use of time and personnel in 100 years.

[k0k0peli]

<snip> this (from the Machine Gun album) is wild .. People use some mighty obscure (to me) notational systems .. Anthony Braxton's - ouch! And Cage of course ..

And they're still within 'Western' music!

As you mention, other traditions eschew notation. Some seem to be mainly notated by musicologists trying to dissect the living beast, or to teach its basics to alien students. But standard notation may be less than useful for such instruction. I whip out my copy of AN INTRODUCTION TO JAVANESE GAMELAN MUSIC by a noted Javanese musicologist at Oberlin College (USA) Conservatory of Music, 1978. The 'scores' are a combination of numeric sequences and rhythmic tablature -- not a staff nor clef to be seen.

If standard notation does die out, my guess (which is just a wild guess with no real evidence) is that it'll die out because it is poorly suited for whatever human-computer interface we end up using. Standard notation is especially well suited for writing with paper. Right now, it's easier to learn how to write notation by hand than on a computer and faster in a lot of cases. That could become easier with good handwriting or gesture recognition, but maybe people won't care to simulate handwriting in the future.

We had a recent thread about notation vs tabs. The question arose, do vocal or piano tabs exist? Yes to both, with piano rolls being an example of the latter -- and we noted(sic) composition software using a piano-roll interface to drive FM and MIDI synths. Damn, I loved the AdLib Composer on my old PC-AT! Slide the mouse around, or poke at the keyboard, and a music score is created. Zow!

I *suspect* future 'notation' systems will be gesture-oriented as we manipulate graphic objects to generate editable data streams. The data stream, a sort of super-MIDI, will be the score, maybe interpreted solely or partly by machines, maybe displayed (via future mutations of Google Glass, or directly via neural link) for human interpretation -- and that display may be a combination of SMN, tab, bouncing-ball ryhthm track, animated images of fingerings / mouthings, other playing instructions, all personalized for each musician. Let's include synesthesia -- the score says, "hot purple watermelon" and you sound the flavor. (I won't even suggest what the teledildonics industry would do with such technology.)

Standard notation has many limitations, but, at present, it's still got momentum as a tradition. People who learn classical music absorb it from the beginning of their training, and abandoning entirely it would require devising entirely new ways of learning, say, the violin. It's still the fastest and most painless way to rehearse and perform a five-hour opera and keep everybody together. I don't know whether either of those things are going to be considered a worthwhile use of time and personnel in 100 years.

"Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic." (Arthur C Clarke) Much current musical technology would be rather incomprehensible to most musicians of a century ago (Percy Grainger excepted). Expect the next century to be even weirder, more disorienting. But antiquarians and revenants and other such pervs will still play acoustic instruments -- unless they're prohibited. When fiddles are banned, only bandits will fiddle.

[catmandu2]

Right on k0peli -

When I talk with my kids about arts, spatial references and conceptions, and various representations, I deeply consider to what extent my words might be relevant to them ahead, so as not to waste my precious breath .. I'll sometimes stop mid-sentence realizing - wait, this won't mean a thing...

[k0k0peli]

When I talk with my kids about arts, spatial references and conceptions, and various representations, I deeply consider to what extent my words might be relevant to them ahead, so as not to waste my precious breath .. I'll sometimes stop mid-sentence realizing - wait, this won't mean a thing...

I fear trying to explain to my grandkids (now 4 and 6) what life was like in my youth. The concepts, realizations, attitudes change too fast, too much. An age before personal computers, the Internet, wireless phones, AIDS, expensive gasoline and cigarettes, car seat belts, eXtreme sports, remote-control vibrators, radical Islam, environmentalism, CDs and DVDs, home video, CNN and FOX, gay liberation, and the fall of communism. Huh? What is 'communism'?? 1970 is much closer to 1920 than to 2020.

ObTopic: I'll try teaching my grandkids notation. Hey, it might happen...

EDIT - Consider this article about sexist futurism: http://www.theatlantic.com/technolog...sm-men/400097/

[catmandu2]

And they're still within 'Western' music!

...

"Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic." (Arthur C Clarke)

The concept "Western" et al - will itself be a term of historicity, and its offshoots the lenses through which we study its influences, etc.

http://www.mandolincafe.com/forum/ed...postid=1420591

Granted it's "improvisational" music - (but which also gives rise to the consideration of "what constitutes composition," etc.), but this type of gestural symbolism seems more akin in this music, to me .. anyway

[sblock]

[August Watters]

Geez, what a bunch of skeptics! Standard notation on its way out? I'd say it's on its way back in, at least recently, in the mandolin world.

Maybe this would be a good time to point out that there's more mandolin music -- in standard notation -- being written now, than any time previous? Check out the German and Italian publishers. Major American publishers are publishing more mandolin music too (although sometimes duplicating standard notation with tablature). Probably the largest publisher (Hal Leonard) features the "Hal Leonard Mandolin Method" (by Rich del Grosso), which begins in tablature and transitions to SN. Think about it: American folk tunes being taught for mandolin in SN, not in tablature, except as a beginning point. Just like in the old days, before tablature became popular.

I take it as a sign of the times that Berklee Press published my 160-page book in SN only. Just a year or two earlier, that probably would have been impossible, but they're identifying marketplace trends and saw a place.

You can say SN is classically-based and Eurocentric, but children all over the world learn to read music easily and associate notes with pitches. It's a failure of our music education system that so many students grow up thinking reading SN is difficult, out of reach or reserved for specialists. With the breakdown of social institutions that passed on music reading knowledge (church singing, parlor pianos, music ed for kids) the understanding of SN -- and common knowledge of how to add a few sparse fingerings to make clear which notes should be played where on the mandolin fingerboard -- has declined, but I sense we're learning to compensate for that through software-based learning and virtual interconnectedness.

And then there's the "elephant in the room" of this conversation: the previous generations of mandolin composers who wrote mandolin music in SN, bequeathing to us a clear and concise way to notate music for mandolin, meanwhile leaving a repertoire of music that's just beginning to be recovered. Relatively few of us will be interested in historical styles, but the possibilities for sharing contemporary mandolin music through SN -- seems like we're just beginning to explore that!

[David Lewis]

20th century music pushes exactly what 'notation' is; apart from the above marvellous examples, you have circular music (which dates back to the Renaissance, and even further, (https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/F...ular_canon.gif for example)

Danger Music #17, By Dick Higgins: the notation reads 'Scream, Scream, Scream, Scream':

And here's a performance - my old friend Geoff Gartner is the performer.

https://vimeo.com/25389241

[objectsession]

It's a failure of our music education system that so many students grow up thinking reading SN is difficult, out of reach or reserved for specialists. With the breakdown of social institutions that passed on music reading knowledge (church singing, parlor pianos, music ed for kids) the understanding of SN -- and common knowledge of how to add a few sparse fingerings to make clear which notes should be played where on the mandolin fingerboard -- has declined, but I sense we're learning to compensate for that through software-based learning and virtual interconnectedness.

You know, I don't really understand what's so hard about staff notation either . . but I just realized that I did was taught it from first grade on (well, on through elementary school). That's not typical I guess? Was it more common in the past?

But, really, what's so hard about it. There are a bunch of lines and spaces. You draw a circle in one place to make a note, and if you want to go up the scale, you draw a circle higher up. If you want, you can draw a line next to the circle to make it half as long and fill the circle in to make it half as long again. Now you can write twinle twinkle little star, and then go from there. (Okay, you need to know ledger lines too depending on the clef . . and you need to know a clef.) Harder to explain then tab, yes, but way easier than explaining how you play a single note on the mandolin.

[JeffD]

So much music is completely beyond the,realm of SN -

To respond directly, you are correct. But I was, at least in my mind, including all of written music. Standard notation is just one way of writing it out, but having it written out is the key.

[JeffD]

But face it: standard musical notation is, slowly, going the way of the dodo bird. Music is all about listening, and about performance. The well-known limitations of standard notation, in being able to "record" things, will ultimately drive folks to finding much better ways to capture and convey music in the digital era.

Not at all.

If we are not counting individual recordings of the same thing, or individual written sheets of music of the same tune, as you describe, then written music is still winning. There is likely very little music "only" available in a recording. Everything of significance, (meaning being played or listened to beyond the original composer) is likely also available in written form, likely standard notation and tab, or very shortly will be. OTOH there is a ton of music in written form that is not and has not been recorded.

I don't see that trend declining. Pieces of paper may become less (though the paperless revolution computers promised the world has resulted in more stored paperwork, not less), but if you include PDFs and images of written out music, I see that standard notation will co-exist with various types of tab, and be around for a long long time.

A funny example would be ABC notation. Designed for computers, it has become a type of written notation that (many) folks read directly.

It is a fact (undisputed) that music is all about the sound, listening, and the performance. It always has been. It is not more or less so today. If that fact produced any kind of limit on the production of written music, written music would never have been written at all.

The human need to "write down" human experience in symbols, whether music or speech or whatever, is not going to decline any time soon.

[objectsession]

It is a fact (undisputed) that music is all about the sound, listening, and the performance.

Since you said it's "undisputed", I feel like I should dispute this statement. There are many composers (and listeners) that don't care about how the music is performed. A lot of electronic music isn't performed by a person at all and some, like soundscape compositions, might not really have any sort of performance by computer or electronics, either. And their are composers like Tom Johnson whose music really isn't about sound at all (I think I saw an interview where he said something like that but I can't find the quote). The sound is just how you hear the composition, which is a mathematical process, and that's what it's all about.

[catmandu2]

August; objectsession - I agree, a very elegant system with great utility - I don't dispute its efficacy in the world of mandolin music/pedagogy; simply that future systems will no doubt evince which will facilitate 'notation' of given forms with greater efficacy. Anyway, just my sense -

[JeffD]

Since you said it's "undisputed", I feel like I should dispute this statement. .

Well I guess I should have said, "sound: listening and/or the performance". What I mean is that there is no music which was meant only to look good on a piece of paper. And while music is composed on paper all the time, it is intended to be heard at some point.

[catmandu2]

... there is no music which was meant only to look good on a piece of paper..

I think I can provide examples that will surprise you in this regard - I'll try to endeavor to find those some time ..

But basically, there are all manner of approaches to composition - following all manner of devices , systems, heuristics etc...yes, even visual aesthetic-driven ..

[August Watters]

You know, I don't really understand what's so hard about staff notation either . . but I just realized that I did was taught it from first grade on (well, on through elementary school). That's not typical I guess? Was it more common in the past?

Oh yes, many ways to measure that. Ask any old church choir member how hard it is to find people who know how to read harmony parts in a hymnal. Or look at the music printed in early 20th-Century general-interest music magazines (like Crescendo). Or look at what used to be required music curricula in public schools: Here in my little New Hampshire town, a 1905 town report bragged about the musical skills required of fifth-graders -- and the description sounded a lot like what my fourth-semester Berklee classes are doing (leaps to and from chromatic tones). It stands to reason that before sound recording, there was more demand for music reading skills.

But to answer your question about "what's so hard," the difficulty is real for people who didn't have your background -- a social situation where people get used to sightsinging, i.e. associating pitch with spelling. There are parts of the world where children still learn sightsinging skills as required curricula, but it's the exception to the rule now in the USA. Thus the rise in tablature?

When I teach someone new to SN, I start with the sound -- most students can sing a major scale, since most of our music is based there (ok, a culture-specific assumption, but usually it works). Next we associate those sounds with numbers 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 1 or else Do Re Mi Fa Sol La Ti Do. Once they get the idea of moving the scale around with 1 as the starting point (yes, "moveable do" only), then we start spelling in the key of C major, and noticing that major scales fall into a w-w-h-w-w-w-h pattern. And then it's easy to move to other keys.

Folks who haven't had instruction in sightreading often make the mistake of beginning with fingerboard mechanics instead of the sound (OK, that's a D and the D is played here and that's an F# and it's there. . . .). For that matter, there are plenty of musicians who studied instrumental methods the same way -- especially in the classical world there's no shortage of methods that teach reading through finger mechanics. It's not a bad idea, if balanced by an ear-first approach.

If you can hear intervals, it's a short step to envisioning them on the fingerboard.

[catmandu2]

I think I can provide examples that will surprise you in this regard - I'll try to endeavor to find those some time ..

But basically, there are all manner of approaches to composition - following all manner of devices , systems, heuristics etc...yes, even visual aesthetic-driven ..

I'm still not recollecting where it was that I encountered a score with this (visual element as primary) particular feature, although works like Alvin Lucier's "Queen of the South" - apparently deriving from cymatics (study of "visual sound") - may equate. Earlier artists like Kandinsky were also investigating these methods...Cage likely delved into this arena as well. While not exactly equivalent, Zorn's "game theory" is a compositional method predicated on sets of rules that determine when and who plays, but not what the sonic result will be. I'm sure there are others - maybe I'll run across them ..

[objectsession]

There are also compositions that are impossible to play. There's "Celestial Music for Imaginary Trumpets" by Tom Johnson with impossibly high pitches and Clarence Barlow's "Stochroma" with impossibly long durations.

[JeffD]

That said, sheet music sales are not tracking, proportionally, with overall recording sales, and they haven't for a long time now. So sheet music is increasingly becoming rare compared to the availability of music.

Wouldn't that be because fewer people play music. Most people who buy music buy it to listen.

The current state of affairs is that majority of the music that the people on our planet hear today has no sheet music available for it!

I don't believe that at all. Except for some esoteric exceptions, most of the recordings one can purchase are available in some tune book or sheet music somewhere, or soon will be. Not exact note for note transcriptions, but tune books for guitar, and or piano, come out all the time for all kinds of popular to not so popular music.

And notation is difficult to master (for most), slow and too inconvenient to write (for most), too limited in its ability to capture actual performance (or musical nuance, or musical genre)

Playing a musical instrument itself is difficult to master, slow and too inconvenient to express our real time emotions, too limited in its ability to capture the actual depth of our feelings, and well... you get what I am saying.

But notation is already antiquated and inadequate.

One man's antiquated is another man's venerable I guess. And in the ways it is inadequate it has been from the start.

[David Lewis]

There are also compositions that are impossible to play. There's "Celestial Music for Imaginary Trumpets" by Tom Johnson with impossibly high pitches and Clarence Barlow's "Stochroma" with impossibly long durations.

Sadly with sampling and synthesising these are no longer impossible. But not as good either when played synthetically.

[JeffD]

There are also compositions that are impossible to play. There's "Celestial Music for Imaginary Trumpets" by Tom Johnson with impossibly high pitches and Clarence Barlow's "Stochroma" with impossibly long durations.

Lets not define the argument by the outliers and esoteric. Lets not abandon something because it doesn't do everything everyone wants it to do.

[objectsession]

Lets not define the argument by the outliers and esoteric. Lets not abandon something because it doesn't do everything everyone wants it to do.

Yeah. I'm not trying to contribute to the argument with those examples. Just thought some people might be interested in those esoteric pieces. And both composers write really good audible pieces, too.

Sadly with sampling and synthesising these are no longer impossible. But not as good either when played synthetically.

Actually, I don't even know if that's true in practice. I think the Tom Johnson piece needs a sampling rate of millions of Hz. For the Clarence Barlow piece, the synth would have to run for billions of years.

[DavidKOS]

I'm very happy that Mr. Watters' new book is in SN only, I do not like having to skip unnecessary tabs when reading music.