OK, I'll bite - what does acoustics have to do with it? It does have its logic, though you do have to understand some theory and acoustics to get it. Standard notation evolved over centuries. Quite true, standard notation does have its drawbacks -but a truly precise notation would be too unwieldy. I was going to translate this post into Esperanza, but strangely enough AltaVista Babelfish () doesn't offer that as an option. QWERTY only had decades to establish a standard that can't be ousted by a more sensible approach. I remember the pundits who prophesied that within a few years QWERTY would be an outdated option available for an extra charge and all keyboards would be DVORAK. Decades later, the DVORAK layout was invented to allow the fastest entry. You probably know the story of QWERTY and DVORAK keyboards - QWERTY layout was invented to purposefully slow people down and disperse commonly used keys so that the mechanics didn't get jammed as easily. But notation has a long history and a huge library - it is probably here to stay. I wish it did, because it would make transposition on the fly a whole lot easier. Standard notation has some drawbacks, the most notable (to me) being that some notes have a sharp or flat between them and some physcically don't (but can still logically be flatted or sharped - the key of C# has an E# in it) so the notation does not clearly indicate intervals.
Perhaps not as a total replacement for our current system, but how about as shorthand? I could envision eliminating the staff entirely with no loss of functionality, and a big gain in simplicity and clarity, at least for single note lines. This could be the notation of the future, freeing us from the historical baggage of black and white keys. The tonic simply changes, and you find the interval relative to that tonic based on the shape. #There is really only one key signature - no sharps or flats. This actually makes more sense to me than our current filled-in round note-heads with accidentals in the signature. #Assuming I know intervals on the fretboard, the shapes will guide the fingers relative to the I, unencumbered by accidentals on the key signature. Knowing where the I is by the shape on the staff, I could conceivably just read shape notes from then on for the II, III, IV, etc. In my mind, this opens the door to key-signatureless notation, which in my opinion might be very, very useful for stringed instrumentalists.įretboard positions are relative to each other. #The differentiation between keys is simply where the "I" lives on the staff.
Shape-notes appear on the staff as regular round-head notes do, but each shape (triangle, square, circle) denotes a degree of the scale. #I was not familiar with the concept, but I think it might have important value for stringed instrument players, particulary in view of the recent discussions of tab vs. In another thread, someone spoke of shape-note singing.
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