[aikiplayer]

I'm a still learning guitar player (I think I've been taking lessons for ~8.5 yrs and did some piano lessons as a kid and was in school bands).

I usually work on solo style arrangements of popular songs but sometimes dabble into learning solos, different parts of songs, etc.

I try to transcribe what I'm working on in standard notation generally. For me the hard part isn't writing down the pitch; it's the rhythm and timing. Trying to document vocal parts and/or solos is hard, because they float all around.

As others have mentioned, different genres of music document their music differently. Standard notation is probably actually pretty rare.

I don't think the pitch notation system in standard notation is harder than learning the underlying concepts (scales are 7 notes, there are half steps between the 3rd and 4th degree and 7th and 8th degree (the octave) of the scales, etc.). It's an interesting approach but I don't think it's solving the harder problem.