[munificent]

It so hard for an outsider to tell the difference between:

1. It is this way for logical but obscure reasons that will become clearer later when you have deeper understanding.

2. It is this way only because of path dependence and historical baggage and it's arbitrarily annoying for a new person to learn but we don't switch because we all learned it the old hard way.

It's valuable for inexperienced people to question designs that appear bad from the outside because there are a lot of examples of 2 and experienced users of a system aren't incentivized to fix them because they've already climbed up the learning curve and don't personally benefit. But that baggage is a worthless drain for every new user.

The tax for having new users point out and sometimes fix #2 is having to deal with them sometimes erroneously "fixing" cases that are #1.

[vintermann]

Well, it's even harder for insiders. What makes you think the would-be be reformers are outsiders anyway?

Further down this thread, someone brought up their sight reading tutor program. That's a very classic "solution" to the problem.

Also very classic is that when the well meaning "insider" who approves of classical notation finds out that his tutor program didn't really help matters, he'll come up with a reform proposal of his own...

We know that reformed notation systems can increase musical literacy, because they have. Examples are the Scandinavian siffer notation, the Chinese system (which is almost identical to the Scandinavian one, even though developed independently) and the American shape note systems.

But we also know that once they do, there is inevitably a push from educators to "graduate to real notation", and the gains are typically lost within a generation...

[munificent]

Insiders can reform things too, but they tend to do so less often from a combination of:

1. Since they have already learned the old way, they are less personally incentivized to improve the path. It's in their past anyway, so it's a sunk cost. Also, they may have some (conscious or not) incentive to keep things the way they are in order to leverage their existing expertise in the current system.

2. Once you've internalized a system, it's much harder to even see it's flaws. Like navigating your living room, you just walk around the furniture completely on auto-pilot without even thinking, "Maybe I should move this chair out of the way." If you've ever done any UX research, it leaves a striking impression about how users often know and do things without consciously knowing they are doing them. Outsiders and new users to a system still see it for what it is.

The peak time to improve a system is when you understand it just well enough to see its flaws and how to fix them but not so well that you've forgotten the pain points. Any given user is in that liminal state for only a small amount of time, so it's precious and it's good to make the most of it.

[scrozier]

You bring up interesting examples. The only one I know anything about is shape note singing. I guess your point is that shape note singing can be taught much more easily to beginners, and get them to a point of being able to enjoy making music (usually with others) more quickly?

If so, point taken!

And I guess that those shape note singers who feel the pull to perform/compose more complex music can then simply learn traditional notation. Self-selection, with a satisfying "intro" notation for those who are happy at that level.

Following that path, I'm still not sure that the original article here provides anything useful. It's simply an alternative to traditional notation. It doesn't seem easier to learn to me. I could be wrong, but I doubt that I'm an order of magnitude wrong. In fact, if this new notation were proposed as an alternative to shape note singers, it would seem to undo the very reason for shape note singing in the first place: easy entry point to music making.

[gabereiser]

I think you forgot

3. It is hard because of me?

Music isn't for everyone and reading sheet music is not for all musicians. I know plenty of guitarists who only can read tabs. I know a few serious musicians that can't read sheet music (they have to take it home to study).

Anyone that has had proper music instruction though was taught how to read sheet music in their clef. Pianists learn both.

We must also understand our own limitations and accept that there are some things in this world that we, in our current state, can't understand without either further experience or further instruction or unlearning a prejudice we have.