DAWs have been around for a few years now. If you were right and they really were 100 times easier to comprehend people would you not see people using printouts of piano rolls to read from?
What you’re suggesting is actually hundreds of years old from well before the existence of computers or DAWs but still no one is using it.
It turns out that judging the relative length of lines is difficult at speed compared to reading distinct symbols.
Also that 88 note piano rolls are a very space inefficient way of representing music on a page. Even a chromatic stave would be inefficient.
That really matters for people that want to sight read with other musicians and have as much viewable as possible in a compact area.
Finally, standard notation is very rich and evolved, as you’d expect for something in active use for so long. It has extensions for lots of instruments.
When people say notation can’t show X it’s usually that they just don’t know it can.
Because people doing piano have never seen DAWs, or never tried to use them? Because computers are bad, and piano is good. What a nonsense! And I've heard this argument hundred of times, and then at the end most music is produced/recorded/mastered using DAWs.
I have friends who have actual degree in music composition from actual conservatories, so most of them, professionals, who actually compose and produce actual music for movies, for games, for whatever you want - well all of them use DAWs and all of them are on Ableton or Logic or something along the line, and exactly ZERO of this nonsensical notation that takes more effort to master than music itself.
Most of the new music that gets composed is written in gantt charts or tracker rows, believe it or not. Dig around, and you'll find out.
Haha! I've been using Ableton since 2007, it's not something new or secret.
You can use a scrollable chart to display notes on screen and still want printed music for live use.
I'll bet you that if your friends are professionals and using live musicians to play their their compositions then they are distributing music to them in notation form not screenshots of Logic gantt charts.
There's nothing "nonsensical" about notation, it just serves a different purpose to a DAW screen.
If you want to read from paper and play what you read in real time, a Gantt chart is harder to use not easier. Use the right tool for the job.
Anything that can be played live, can be represented with music notation.
If anything does comes along that people want to do live then notation will be extended yet again to include it.
I still fail to understand how using the gantt charts is less convenient than using the medieval scribblings? The only argument being "cause nobody uses it" is not a true argument in favor of or against the point being made. If it is easier to write gantt charts on Ableton, my gut feeling would be - it is equally easy to play off them.
Besides, I bet five years from now s.o., some genz/genalpha/ gen++ will figure out that it is in fact much easier, and I can see the post climbing top positions as something novel...
I guess what I'm saying is that Gantt charts have been tried before, they aren't novel or new. Your suggestion is hundreds of years old.
So I would definitely take that bet against you.
One of the issues is that Gantt charts don't explicitly including rests as symbols. In standard notation everything adds up to the bar length including the rests.
They also fail a bit when it comes to showing discernable short notes and long notes in the same passage of music. That's fine in a DAW because you can zoom in and out but you can't really do that as you're playing.
Finally, learning the basics of musical notation ain't that hard. If it was we would have replaced it already.
Think about this way, computer based sequencing with Gantt charts has been common since at least the Atari ST. People know about it and they use it on a computer.
But they still don't want it for paper. Ask yourself why?
Do you really think it's because everyone is just stupid and old fashioned or could it be something else maybe?
I would bet that your clever "genz/genalpha/ gen++" would be more likely to introduce better teaching system than establish replacement for musical notation.
I would bet that your clever "genz/genalpha/ gen++" would be more likely to introduce better teaching system than establish replacement for musical notation.
Well I hope than someone does.
Apart from that, I get your points, and these are valid arguments. I appreciate them, my original post had no intent of offending peoples or calling names.
Although I don't find that the notation (with the perfectly added timings) simplifies the whole 'playing instruments' thing. Said classical notation becomes crazy complex spiderweb of pause and notes when you add legatos, syncopation, triplets, arpegiation, etc. It is not as universal also, as you claim - the guitar players don't prefer tabs (barre/fret) notations; drummers use rhythm charts more often, than never.
I can agree certain instruments (such as claviers and alike) may benefit greatly from this notation, which was created for them precisely. But I totally disagree this is universally useful one, and yes - I've tried it, has a very steep learning curve, and I'm very good at telling notes apart by only hearing them. The notation stays in the way of performance for me personally.
Call me dumb if u want, but my gut feeling is my position aligns with the vast majority of modern, non-classical musicians.
Comments
DAWs have been around for a few years now. If you were right and they really were 100 times easier to comprehend people would you not see people using printouts of piano rolls to read from?
What you’re suggesting is actually hundreds of years old from well before the existence of computers or DAWs but still no one is using it.
It turns out that judging the relative length of lines is difficult at speed compared to reading distinct symbols.
Also that 88 note piano rolls are a very space inefficient way of representing music on a page. Even a chromatic stave would be inefficient.
That really matters for people that want to sight read with other musicians and have as much viewable as possible in a compact area.
Finally, standard notation is very rich and evolved, as you’d expect for something in active use for so long. It has extensions for lots of instruments.
When people say notation can’t show X it’s usually that they just don’t know it can.
The only downside is that you have to learn it.
Because people doing piano have never seen DAWs, or never tried to use them? Because computers are bad, and piano is good. What a nonsense! And I've heard this argument hundred of times, and then at the end most music is produced/recorded/mastered using DAWs.
I have friends who have actual degree in music composition from actual conservatories, so most of them, professionals, who actually compose and produce actual music for movies, for games, for whatever you want - well all of them use DAWs and all of them are on Ableton or Logic or something along the line, and exactly ZERO of this nonsensical notation that takes more effort to master than music itself.
Most of the new music that gets composed is written in gantt charts or tracker rows, believe it or not. Dig around, and you'll find out.
Haha! I've been using Ableton since 2007, it's not something new or secret.
You can use a scrollable chart to display notes on screen and still want printed music for live use.
I'll bet you that if your friends are professionals and using live musicians to play their their compositions then they are distributing music to them in notation form not screenshots of Logic gantt charts.
There's nothing "nonsensical" about notation, it just serves a different purpose to a DAW screen.
If you want to read from paper and play what you read in real time, a Gantt chart is harder to use not easier. Use the right tool for the job.
Anything that can be played live, can be represented with music notation.
If anything does comes along that people want to do live then notation will be extended yet again to include it.
I still fail to understand how using the gantt charts is less convenient than using the medieval scribblings? The only argument being "cause nobody uses it" is not a true argument in favor of or against the point being made. If it is easier to write gantt charts on Ableton, my gut feeling would be - it is equally easy to play off them.
Besides, I bet five years from now s.o., some genz/genalpha/ gen++ will figure out that it is in fact much easier, and I can see the post climbing top positions as something novel...
I guess what I'm saying is that Gantt charts have been tried before, they aren't novel or new. Your suggestion is hundreds of years old.
So I would definitely take that bet against you.
One of the issues is that Gantt charts don't explicitly including rests as symbols. In standard notation everything adds up to the bar length including the rests.
They also fail a bit when it comes to showing discernable short notes and long notes in the same passage of music. That's fine in a DAW because you can zoom in and out but you can't really do that as you're playing.
Finally, learning the basics of musical notation ain't that hard. If it was we would have replaced it already.
Think about this way, computer based sequencing with Gantt charts has been common since at least the Atari ST. People know about it and they use it on a computer.
But they still don't want it for paper. Ask yourself why?
Do you really think it's because everyone is just stupid and old fashioned or could it be something else maybe?
I would bet that your clever "genz/genalpha/ gen++" would be more likely to introduce better teaching system than establish replacement for musical notation.
Well I hope than someone does.
Apart from that, I get your points, and these are valid arguments. I appreciate them, my original post had no intent of offending peoples or calling names.
Although I don't find that the notation (with the perfectly added timings) simplifies the whole 'playing instruments' thing. Said classical notation becomes crazy complex spiderweb of pause and notes when you add legatos, syncopation, triplets, arpegiation, etc. It is not as universal also, as you claim - the guitar players don't prefer tabs (barre/fret) notations; drummers use rhythm charts more often, than never.
I can agree certain instruments (such as claviers and alike) may benefit greatly from this notation, which was created for them precisely. But I totally disagree this is universally useful one, and yes - I've tried it, has a very steep learning curve, and I'm very good at telling notes apart by only hearing them. The notation stays in the way of performance for me personally.
Call me dumb if u want, but my gut feeling is my position aligns with the vast majority of modern, non-classical musicians.
".. most music is produced/recorded/mastered using DAWs."
But not sight-read when playing an actual instrument.