Skip to content

Comment on Music Theory for the 21st-Century Classroomparent

Comments

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.

AboutSource Built by g1lg1l

Hackerly is an independent reader for Hacker News, built on the public HN API. Not affiliated with Y Combinator.