[icarus_drowning]

What you mean by this is that the key signature tells you what the tonic is, and, conversely, what the supertonic, mediant, subdominant, dominant, etc. are.

Whenever I teach key signatures this is the biggest thing I try to impart: key signatures are more than just accidentals, they define the roles each pitch plays.

[lmg643]

Agreed. Hummingbird seems like a solution in search of a problem. I could see someone trying to learn to sight read music, get frustrated with how it is "broken" and then invent something like this, which seems far less clear to me than the old way.

sight reading is hard because of the cognitive work involved with translating, say, eight notes at a time into the appropriate finger-patterns, rhythm and pace; or translating fewer notes but at a faster rate. i don't see this making it easier.

i'm not sure why they would bother. anyone who finds sight reading too tough, might not really ever need sheet music, whether they do it by ear, or just listen to music. my friend has a disklavier - incredible. robot plays the piano better than i ever could. it makes me wonder why i still bother to try and play, and then i remind myself that every feeble attempt i make is intrinsically satisfying to me, so i keep trying.

[noonespecial]

I could see someone trying to learn to sight read music, get frustrated with how it is "broken" and then invent something like this...

I felt exactly this way learning to read music. The score just didn't present enough information fast enough for me because I hand't learned to build the context in my head and spot the relations. I fumbled about with alternatie notations, extra notations etc. I finally settled on colors. I wrote a small program to color the dominant, subdominant etc. and then printed it on my color printer. This helped me immensely and I didn't take the dead end road of learning alternate notations that would shut me out of all written music everywhere.

Some windmills should be tilted at, some should just be left alone.

[vacri]

I am a neophyte at reading music, but I think that the pitch symbols are almost entirely noise. They would help me personally (oh, that's a 'C' there, I don't have to count the lines!) but for anyone with a modicum of sight reading, surely they already know where the C is due to its location on the staff? At that point, pitch is already represented and the filled figures are noise.

I wonder if a suitable analogy would be like underlining all capital letters in a selection of prose - useful for the neophyte, chaff for the slightly experienced onwards.

robot plays the piano better than i ever could

Apart from the personal enjoyment angle, robots also can't detect the mood of the audience (yet) and play to suit.

[jliechti1]

Agreed. As a pianist, I not only look at the position of individual notes, but also the positions of the next 3 to 6 consecutive notes. This way I can think in "groups" of notes - which is very helpful for sightreading broken chords quickly.

The one place I could see pitch symbols being slightly beneficial is when notes are either way above or way below the staff. But even then, after some deliberate practice these can be recognized pretty quickly as well.

[masukomi]

I've read for piano, bass guitar, flute, and now ukulele. I can read treble clef, and bass clef just fine, but stick them together as you do for piano and my brain has a conniption. The exact same figure at the exact same place on each staff represents two different notes. I suspect this is because the gap between the two staffs would have required too many intermediate lines had they re-used treble clef for the bottom staff, but this doesn't mean it is a good readability choice.

Regarding relative position. On a piano the relative position of notes on the staff almost directly correlates to position on the keyboard. On a stringed instrument this is VERY far from the case. As i proceed up the scale on a simple instrument like the bass i will proceed right on the neck on one string, then drop down a string, shift left, proceed right on that string, drop down a string, shift left, proceed right on that string. So you've got back and forth, and up and down motions to keep going in one direction tonally. On a guitar the strings aren't all tuned evenly so the back and forth on the neck changes depending on which strings you're switching between. On the Ukulele the top string is higher than the string below it so you end up jumping UP strings rather than down, AND the strings aren't tuned at even intervals. So you've just got a big jumble of movements.

Don't even get me started on the totally unintuitive nature of woodwind fingerings or how they are almost totally disconnected from what's going on on the staff.

In short, the relative positioning of notes on the staff is good from a tonal perspective but crap from a finger perspective on most every instrument except piano.

[cube13]

>In short, the relative positioning of notes on the staff is good from a tonal perspective but crap from a finger perspective on most every instrument except piano.

That's not really a problem once you build the muscle memory, though.

It's the same thing as touch typing. With enough practice, you know that finger placement X will produce note y, the same way you know where the keys on the keyboard are.

[raverbashing]

Yes

About hummingbird, it's amazing. Really, I found it strange in the first minute. Then I got it

Why? My major peeve with traditional notation is the lines above and below. And I never know what are they talking about after adding some lines above the stave.

About the key signature, 100% agree.

As pretty much all students, I thought the key signature just meant which notes are always sharp or flat ("oh these guys want us to use more black keys - BORING")

It took me some time to get it. It's not about flat or sharp, but as they said it, it's 'G Major mode'. Then you feel everything is clearer. It's like going from understanding words in a phrase to understanding the phrase.

[valdiorn]

ehm, I would disagree. The key signature tells you what key the piece is in, period.

What the particular notes in that key do (their role, as you put it) is a property of that key.

[icarus_drowning]

How is "tell[ing] you what key the piece is in" different that defining tonic/dominant/leading tone relationships? Those relationships are the product of the whole/half step pattern that the key signature communicates. It isn't just important that G has 1 sharp, and it is F. That sharp actually defines the leading tone.

[colomon]

That's only if the tonic is G. I play tunes all the time with one sharp, but a tonic of D. (ie D mixolydian.)

[icarus_drowning]

Sure, but I'd argue that's because the key signature is wrong. The correct way to notate that is with either a modal key signature a la Bartok or notate it as D with a constant natural on the C, showing that the tonal center is D while clearly notating the departure from the traditional major scale.

[colomon]

By this standard probably something like 30% of the music ever written has the wrong key signature -- and I've never seen a piece of non-major music with a correctly notated key signature!

[rquantz]

Spoken like a true musicologist.

[jofer]

I believe he was referring to the "put my brain in G" comment.

It's all about recognizing when to build tension and when to resolve tension.

Yes, the roles that the notes play is defined by the key, but if you don't mentally make the switch, you'll often perform things poorly because you don't anticipate where things are going correctly.

Or at least that's how it works for me, at any rate. Take anything I say with a grain of salt. I can't sight-read much at all.