In January Andrew Wagner  set up a Git repository to help organize and facilitate future work on adding support for chromatic staves to Lilypond.  The most recent version of Kevin Dalley’s code is now hosted there, including the Mark Hanlon’s updates to it. This will make it easier for developers to work with the code, keep it compatible with newer versions of Lilypond, and eventually contribute our code back to the official Lilypond application.  Read more about it on the repository’s wiki and our Lilypond and Alternative Notation Systems page.  A big thank you to Andrew for his work on this!

In other software news, a third application for Klavar notation has been brought to our attention.  It is called  KLAVAR!, and has been added to our Software page where it joins  KlavarScript and Klavar Music Writer.  KLAVAR! was originally written in GFA Basic for the Atari ST.  Marco Mascioli has started work towards porting it to MS Windows, Apple Mac OS X, and Linux.  He is affiliated with the KlavarScore website.

Website News

We have moved our blog from Google’s Blogger software over to WordPress.  This reason is that Blogger will be dropping support for FTP publishing on March 26th. While working on the blog, our webmaster was inspired to give our site a visual refresh in terms of its design/layout.  Here is a screen shot of the old layout just for the record:

A screenshot of the old site layout.

In addition to the revised layout, our site’s Intro (home) page has been streamlined and improved.  The text in each section is now more concise, but with the option to reveal more discussion on each topic, according to the visitor’s interest.  An audio clip has been added to let viewers hear the chromatic scale illustrated at the top of the page. (This uses the new HTML5 audio tag in browsers that support it, or reverts to Flash for those that do not.  We will be moving to this approach for all audio on the site, reducing compatibility issues and making it more accessible for our visitors.)

The Music Notations section of the site has also received various refinements including making it clearer that the notation systems are ordered primarily by line spacing, and then by the number of lines per octave.

Community News

Our new wiki is off to a good start.  It now has eleven pages that have been created by members of our community since it was launched back in November of 2009.  Our Forum (Google group) membership has broken into the triple digits with 107 members, and we now have 153 fans of the Music Notation Project on our Facebook page (at the time of writing).  (See Community.)

Our forum already provides an easy way to share and discuss such material and keeps a chronological archive of posts that can be easily searched. However, the wiki will complement the forum and the rest of our site by providing a more robust platform for collaborating and topically organizing this community-generated content. Organizing this material in the wiki will make it more accessible to new visitors browsing our site, and increase the breadth and depth of content available on our site.

Our wiki runs on the same open-source MediaWiki software that powers Wikipedia, and so its interface may be familiar. However, our wiki’s purpose is not to provide another comprehensive encyclopedia. It is to simply provide a collaborative space in which to collect and organize the content being created and shared by our community.

Over the long term, the most significant role of the wiki may be as a place to collect examples of sheet music in alternative notation systems. Building such a collection will make it much easier for anyone to really experiment with various alternative notation systems (and ultimately start using them).

Please feel free to contact us if you would like to contribute to the wiki and need help getting started. We look forward to seeing the wiki grow with your help. Let us know what you think.

Numbered Notes (notes-only and numbers-only versions) by Jason MacCoy

MacCoy’s system is notable for its staff with lines that are a minor third apart. Although this possibility has been discussed, to our knowledge this is the only system that has implemented it. As its name indicates, Numbered Notes emphasizes the use of numbers for identifying pitches. More information on Numbered Notes is also available from the Numbered Notes website.

Express Stave (6-6 jazz font version) by John Keller

This is a version of Keller’s Express Stave that has a 6-6 pitch pattern through a variation in the slant of the noteheads. Half of the noteheads are sharply slanted while the other noteheads lie flat. This 6-6 pattern is “overlayed” over the 7-5 pitch pattern found in the solid and hollow noteheads, making it one of only a few systems that represent both (other examples are Diatonic Twinline by Leo de Vries and perhaps 6-6 Tetragram by Richard Parncutt).

TwinNote by Paul Morris

TwinNote is Morris’ version of Twinline by Leo de Vries. It is similar to the versions of Twinline by Reed and Keislar, but uses solid-oval and hollow-triangle notes to highlight the 6-6 pitch pattern and make notes easier to identify. This is also similar to Sotorrio’s Bilinear notation. Using solid-ovals gives quarter notes, eighth notes, sixteenth notes, (etc…) a more consistent appearance when switching back and forth from traditional notation. More information is also available on the TwinNote Music Notation website

Expanded TwinNote by Paul Morris

Expanded TwinNote is designed as a companion notation for use with TwinNote. They share the same line pattern and solid-or-hollow notehead pattern making it easy to read either system interchangeably. The only differences are TwinNote’s vertically compact staff and use of triangular noteheads.

To visit our public profile, follow the link under the new Community heading on our website. If you are a Facebook user we encourage you to show your support and help spread the word by becoming a “fan” of the Music Notation Project. To do this simply click the “become a fan” link on our public profile. You might consider inviting any friends you think would be interested to become a fan as well.

Here are some quotes from the Facebook website about public profiles:

“A Facebook public profile gives a voice to any public figure or organization to join the conversation with Facebook users. Since November 2007, bands, sports teams, artists, films, brands, non-profits and businesses have been using public profiles (formerly called Pages) as free, customizable presences on Facebook.“

“As a Community or Non-Profit, with Facebook public profiles, you can create an authentic connection with current and potential supporters, students, alumni and donors. There are already over 100,000 non-profits, universities and religious organizations using Facebook to stay connected to their constituents.”

On this new page you can select the characteristics you prefer, and it will filter and display only those systems on our site that have them. Characteristics like:

• Lines per octave
• Line spacing (intervallic distance between lines)
• Use of bold and dashed lines
• Use of solid and hollow noteheads (for pitch or rhythm)
• Use of different notehead shapes
• Vertical space required

Eventually we will be able to add other characteristics (especially their approaches to rhythmic notation). Are there any others you would like to see that are not in this list? If so, let us know.

As was possible before, you can still sort the systems by line pattern, by 6-6 and 7-5 pitch patterns, and by date. Now this sorting works together with the new filtering function.

We have also updated the Music Notations Guided Tour page. It now features larger images of a chromatic scale in each system. These illustrations now include the note names under the notes. They are also now presented one at a time under each category, to avoid overwhelming new visitors with too many systems to take in at once. These changes should make the guided tour even more informative and engaging for those who are new to alternative music notation systems.

(And if you have not seen our Intervals Tutorial recently, it has also been updated with new dynamic, interactive illustrations.)

Let us know what you think!

New Enharmonic Equivalents Tutorial – on the representation of enharmonically equivalent notes in traditional notation and in alternative notation systems. (February 2009)

6-6 and 7-5 Pitch Patterns Tutorial – revised with clearer illustrations of these two approaches to music notation design. (February 2009)

Lilypond and Alternative Music Notations, Info for Users, and Info for Developers – expanded documentation of Kevin Dalley and Mark Hanlon’s work towards supporting chromatic staves and alternative notation systems in Lilypond. (Most of this originally appeared on Dalley’s website, and has been updated and revised.) (December 2008)

Our site was given a visual refresh, including rearranging it so that the main navigational headings appear horizontally across the header, with subheadings listed vertically in the column on the left. (December 2008)

More Music Notation Systems – a listing of additional alternative notation systems with links to their websites. This page expands upon the systems that are presented more fully on our site. It organizes and adds to the list that was formerly found at Related Websites. (October 2008)

Intervals 1: Traditional Notation – now includes discussion and illustrations of chromatic intervals in traditional notation (scroll to the bottom of the page). (October 2008)

Supermusicology is Ernest Moore Hume’s book about his alternative music notation system “SuperMusic” and how it seeks to improve upon traditional music notation. It is written in a conversational tone with many helpful illustrations. I particularly enjoyed reading the history section of the book and its account of the use of various staves with different numbers of lines in western music history.

The thoroughness and effort that Hume has put into his book comes through in his attention to certain details. For example, a brief and intriguing passage that is of general interest refers to the Human Engineering Laboratory and their work on isolating and identifying particular human aptitudes. This now-defunct organization (formerly based in Boston, Massachusetts, USA) identified three basic aptitudes relevant to musicianship: tonal memory, rhythm memory, and pitch discrimination. Hume notes how these are different skills from those needed to read music, since reading music, the “ability to discern changes in written material” is an unrelated “accounting aptitude” (page 27). One could have excellent aptitude(s) for playing music, but still struggle to read music notation since that is a separate and unrelated skill.

Supermusicology gives Hume’s account of the problems with traditional notation. These are largely the same issues identified by the Music Notation Project (see our Intro), although he does not emphasize the inconsistent appearance of intervals in traditional notation. To these issues he adds the difficulty of reading notes with too many ledger lines, a judgment with which I and I assume most supporters of the Music Notation Project would concur. Hume goes on to describe his SuperMusic notation system and how it addresses these issues.

Hume notes that SuperMusic introduces two major modifications to the way music is written: A) a seven-line chromatic staff, and B) “pitch bars” that indicate the octave in which a note is to be played. It also introduces a few “minor” modifications like re-naming the 12 notes of the chromatic scale by the numerals 1-12 (with C being 1). The rest of the elements of traditional notation are retained, including its rhythmic notation system. He notes the value of this consistency, taking the approach of “if it’s not broken, don’t try to fix it.”

The seven lines of SuperMusic’s chromatic staff are spaced a whole step apart with the notes of the chromatic scale falling either on the lines or the spaces between them. The top, bottom, and center lines are bold, with two normal lines falling between each bold line. The top and bottom lines represent C and the middle line F#/Gb.

In his justification for this seven-line staff, Hume makes an interesting point about the difficulty of visualizing more than three staff lines at a time.

“Take a second and try to visualize six parallel lines in your mind’s eye. For most people this is virtually impossible. However, it is only slightly easier to visualize five parallel lines. Oddly, in attempting to do this you may notice that you can handle it if you think of the lines in sections, that is two sets of three lines in the case of a six-line staff, or three and two, in the case of a five-line staff. In fact, almost anyone can visualize three parallel lines, an important point in the development of the new staff.” (page 43)

This seems to provide a general argument for the use of a staff with fewer lines, and preferably three or less. However, Hume uses it as part of his rationale for the SuperMusic staff with its three bold lines, which can then be mentally subdivided into two contiguous three line staves (with the third bold line appearing above them).

Hume describes how the SuperMusic staff is based on the basic 6-line diatonic staff that was used by Jan Sweelinck (1562-1621) and Girolamo Frescobaldi (1583-1643). He has added the seventh line in the interest of the aesthetic symmetry of the three bold lines and to keep any of the twelve basic chromatic notes from falling in the spaces above or below the span of the staff.

What most sets SuperMusic apart from other chromatic-staff based notation systems is its use of “pitch bars.” These are short vertical hash marks that occur before or after each note to indicate the octave in which the note is to be played. They function somewhat like the 8va symbol in traditional notation, raising or lowering a note by one or more octaves:

3 pitch bars before a note means it is played 3 octaves lower
2 pitch bars before a note means it is played 2 octaves lower
1 pitch bar before a note means it is played 1 octave lower

0 pitch bars means it is played in the octave of the current staff*

1 pitch bars after a note means it is played 1 octave higher
2 pitch bars after a note means it is played 2 octaves higher
3 pitch bar after a note means it is played 3 octaves higher

(* presumably as indicated by a register indication at the beginning of the staff.)

This provides a seven octave span covering the pitch range of the piano keyboard on a single seven-line staff.

The use of pitch bars is motivated by Hume’s view that one of the main problems with traditional notation is its use of ledger lines — that it becomes too difficult to tell what pitch a note is when it falls above or below the staff and requires multiple ledger lines. No ledger lines are used in SuperMusic, since pitch bars make them unnecessary. When a melody ascends beyond the top of the staff the notes begin to appear an octave lower with a pitch bar written before each of them to indicate that they are to be played an octave higher.

This brings me to a potential criticism of Hume’s system that is worth mentioning. Hume is critical of traditional notation’s use of 8va and accidental signs, but it would seem that SuperMusic’s pitch bars require the same kind of two-step process in order to determine the pitch of a note. A consistent vertical pitch axis is compromised as notes falling above or below others on the staff may be lower or higher in pitch depending on the presence or absence of pitch bars. The appearance of intervals would also be less consistent. Intervals that extended off the staff would appear just like their inversions until one took into account the notes’ pitch bars. Each interval would have two basic appearances depending on whether they “wrap” around the top or bottom of the staff or not. For instance, a major third and a minor sixth would each have two visual configurations that would be indistinguishable except for their pitch bars.

Hume is right to raise the difficulty of identifying notes that require many ledger lines. This is a problem with traditional notation that deserves to be addressed. However, it seems that one could solve it by making a visual distinction between ledger lines. For instance, one could make ledger lines wider or narrower to indicate which ones represented lines that fall between staves, and which represented lines that would be part of an additional staff should one be drawn above (or below) the current staff.

Another potential point of criticism worth briefly mentioning is whether SuperMusic’s seven line staff is actually superior to a similar staff with five or six lines. Hume does consider a five or six line staff but concludes that seven lines are preferable, although it seems that this remains debatable.

With regard to the Music Notation Project’s desirable criteria for alternative music notation systems, SuperMusic does not meet either the eighth or fifteenth criteria.

Of course, most any notation system will involve tradeoffs in its design that reflect the goals and priorities of its designer. Hume has put a lot of effort into studying the history and disadvantages of traditional notation and designing SuperMusic to address them. This comes through in his thorough presentation of SuperMusic and his reasoning behind it. Supermusicology does well to raise the issue of the difficulty of reading notes that require many ledger lines and offers some helpful insights into the business of attempting to improve upon traditional music notation. While there may be differences in the way notation designers address the disadvantages of traditional music notation, it is encouraging to see books like Supermusicology and the growing consensus on the significance of these disadvantages and the confidence that they can be addressed by a better approach.

– Supermusicology is available from Lulu.com

This means that anyone who might be interested in using John Keller’s method for transnotating traditional music notation into chromatic-staff notations using Finale software should go and download NotePad 2006 right now!

NotePad 2006 was the last version with the feature that let you copy and then paste blank (alternative) staff styles onto existing (traditionally) notated music. This is the best way to transnotate music using Finale software. If you own the full, paid version of Finale, it still has this feature, but NotePad 2006 is the last of the free NotePad line to have it. Get it while you can!

See also: http://musicnotation.org/software/finale.html

UPDATE: Notepad 2006 is no longer available from MakeMusic’s Finale website.

Please update your bookmarks and links to “http://musicnotation.org” and help us spread the word about our site and its new address by telling others you know about it.

Note that our former domains (musicnotationproject.org and mnma.org) will continue to work until further notice.

Seven of these are older systems that were included in the MNMA’s Research Project of 1999. These include notation systems by the well-known figures Arnold Schoenberg and Cornelis Pot:

Proportional Chromatic Music Notation by Henri Carcelle
Notation for the System of Equal Tones Applied to the Chromatic Keyboard by Gustave Decher
Seven-tone or Twelve-tone Notation by Hans Krenn
Untitled by Klaus Lieber
6-6 Klavar by Cornelis Pot
Untitled by Arnold Schoenberg
Untitled by Robert Thelwall

Two additional systems were known at the time of the MNMA’s Research Project, but were not included, even though they passed all of the MNMA’s screens. (It seems they were understood to be superceded by Parncutt’s 6-6 Tetragram.)

6-6 Trigram Notation by Richard Parncutt
Keyboard (or 7-5) Trigram Notation by Richard Parncutt

Finally, we have added four systems that have been designed more recently and so were not part of the MNMA Research Project, even though they appear to meet the criteria of the MNMA’s screens.

Black Triangle Twinline by Doug Keislar
MUTO Music Notation by the MUTO Music Method Foundation
Thumline Music Notation by Jim Plamondon
Bilinear Music Notation by Jose Sotorrio