Our Mission...
The Music Notation Project seeks to raise awareness of the disadvantages of traditional music notation, to explore alternative music notation systems, and to provide resources for the wider consideration and use of these alternatives. We hope our efforts will help make reading, writing, and playing music more enjoyable and easier to learn.
How does music notation make it more difficult to learn to read music?
Many people really struggle to learn to read and play music using traditional western music notation. Many give up before they become proficient at it. Does the notation system itself make it much more difficult than it needs to be? We think it does, and we think there's a better approach (see the Chromatic Staves Tutorial).
"The need for a new notation, or a radical improvement of the old, is greater than it seems, and the number of ingenious minds that have tackled the problem is greater than one might think."
Key Signatures
Traditional notation is based upon C major and closely related tonalities. This bias makes other keys and tonalities much more difficult to read, even if they are just as easy to physically play on a given instrument. To become proficient in all keys one must master fifteen different key signatures which are progressively more complex and difficult to learn.
Accidentals
Traditional notation employs various accidental signs (flat, sharp, double flat, double sharp, natural) to represent notes that fall outside of the current key signature. This can become visually challenging for the musician when reading music that requires many accidental signs, especially if it is in an unfamiliar and complex key signature.
The rule that an accidental applies to a given pitch until the end of the measure, unless it is cancelled by another accidental, opens up room for mistakes and gives the musician one more thing to remember. Also there is often confusion about whether it applies to other octaves of the same note (it generally does not).
Clefs, Staves, and Octaves
Traditional notation is commonly written in four clefs: treble, bass, alto, and tenor. Except for the clef signs, the staves that accompany these clefs look identical, but represent different sets of notes. Keyboard players face the difficulty of reading both bass and treble clefs at the same time.
Even within a single staff, the same note will look different at different octaves. For example, the E on the bottom line of the treble clef bears no visual resemblance to the E in the top space.
Interval Relationships
Traditional notation obscures the interval relationships between notes. Whole steps and half steps (tones and semitones) are visually indistinguishable, as are major and minor thirds -- and these are the basic building blocks of all diatonic keys, scales, and chords. A major scale (a series of whole steps and half steps) appears as a regular sequence, while a whole tone scale (a series of identical whole steps) appears as an irregular sequence. What one sees does not fully and intuitively match what one hears.
To fully identify an interval one must take into account the current clef sign, key signature, and any accidentals, going through the mental procedure of calculating the names of the individual notes before their interval relationship becomes clear.
This makes it much more difficult to play by reading the interval relationships between the notes (rather than reading their individual pitch values). This has implications for learning to improvise or play by ear - skills which largely entail playing by interval relationships. It also has implications for a basic understanding of harmony and music theory. (For a more in-depth look, see our Intervals Tutorial.)
Is There a Better Approach?
All of these features of traditional music notation combine to make reading music much more difficult than it might be with a better notation system. For an analogy, imagine trying to do arithmetic with Roman numerals. It can be done, but the notation system makes a big difference.
(Of course it is important to view traditional notation in its historical context and keep in mind the innovations and reforms that it has undergone over time. It was developed over several centuries for use with music and instruments that are generally quite different from those of today. Guido d'Arezzo introduced his staff-based system of notation in about 1025 CE, but the five-line staff only became standardized in the 1500s. This staff-based notation was a significant achievement that improved upon the notation systems that preceded it, and it has continued to evolve over time to address new notational needs as they arose.)
We think there is a better approach to music notation that avoids each of these pitch-related difficulties, and promises significant improvements over traditional music notation. It involves a different kind of staff: a chromatic staff.
Next: Chromatic Staves Tutorial
Arnold Schoenberg was probably the most influential 20th-century composer of Western "classical music." This quote is from his "A New Twelve-Tone Notation," an article in the anthology Style and Idea.
Although Schoenberg was a proponent of atonal, non-diatonic music, his statement applies to all kinds of music. Most alternative notation systems were invented primarily with traditional tonal music in mind, and our goal is to make all types of music easier to read and play. Though we are quoting Schoenberg we do not discount the importance of diatonic scales and keys. Chromatic notation systems actually render diatonic scales, tonalities, and their intervals much more faithfully than does traditional notation which actually obscures them. This clearer representation of intervallic structure facilitates transposition and, more generally, comprehension of harmony and music theory.
