Limitations of the staff notation system

So here is a concept I'm sure many of you have not thought about.

Music is written on a staff using black dotes to indicate what notes to play. This is the standard all around the world and we know of nothing else. This system has worked for many years and has had no real complaints put to it.

Have you ever had an idea while composing that you could just not get down on paper? Whether you don't know how to write it or there just doesn't seem to be a way to write you feel stuck.

Does our current music notation system limit what we can do with our music? Does it cripple music's evolution? If you think so, are there any ways to fix or change it? Is there anything about our notation system that you would like to change?

Standard notation is useful for so many things...but yeah, there's many musical applications it's not suited for. Many composers have created their own systems - some based on the 5-line staff, while others are quite distant.

Dig:

• John Zorn
  
• Anthony Braxton
  
• Karlheinz Stockhausen
  
• Luciano Berio
  
• Butch Morris
  

I've often used a graphical notation system, with (or instead of) a traditional staves. This is the only way I can see to improve on the standard system. Currently, so much information can be conveyed with minimal notation - for most applications, there's not a lot left out. When one starts getting into improvisation, and freely interpreted musics that's where the usefulness runs out.

The 5-line staff doesn't hinder music's evolution - the notation system itself is evolving at the same time.

Its really hard to find any faults or come up with ways to improve the system because we don't have anything to compare it to and there is really nothing to complain about the system. Things like graphical notation and methods like conduction can only take you so far from the system.

There are some instruments that can't be written out on staff paper like micro-tonal instruments and most of the Harry Partch instruments.

Its really difficult to imagine it but if we did have another universal notation system, would music evolve faster? Would we actually be able to compose new and original music and create new sounds that have never been heard before? Its interesting to think about.

... Things like graphical notation and methods like conduction can only take you so far from the system...

This is where we run into the limitations of instruments and musicians, not the notation. I don't think there's many things that musical instruments are capable of that's not easily notated. Even microtnal music is developing its own system...

Is that a western microtonal notation system because I can't imagine that being put to use with much eastern music due to it all being taught by ear. Plus, the accidentals are really hard to differentiate don't you think?

It does have a lot to do with limitations of instruments (maybe not so much musicians). Harry Partch had to invent a new notation system for every instrument he created. It ended up kind of being like tablature for guitar but customized for the instrument. I think musicians only develop limitations when they don't take the time to fully explore every inch of their instrument.

There is really no limitation to the sounds an instrument can make both harmonically and percussively. You just have to put aside some time in your practicing to discover new sounds through your instrument. It starts to get hard to find new notation marks for these unused sounds with our notation system.

You just have to put aside some time in your practicing to discover new sounds through your instrument. It starts to get hard to find new notation marks for these unused sounds with our notation system.

Keep in mind that when you leave the realm of standardized notation, you run into a different problem that's even more "confining"... finding musicians willing to put any effort into having to decipher what you're putting on paper. You'd find precious few musicians 1) willing to learn your "new" notation, 2) willing to spend precious hours practicing it to your satisfaction and perfection, and 3) willing to play it in front of an audience. For example, out of the bazillion pianists out there, how many would ever bother to do a prepared piano piece, or pluck the strings, or use rosined horse hair to bow it? Pretty much all of them stick to just fingering the keys, you know...?

For me as a performer, it boils down to: do I pick the piece that has a language I, my fellow musicians and composers, and the audience understand, or do I pick the piece only the composer and I will understand (if I truly understand it at all)?

So why re-invent the wheel?

There is no reason to re-invent the wheel. I think if musicians, when beginning to learn music, are taught to explore their instrument more then finding pianists who would do all those things would be less rare. Plus, by discovering more of what your instrument can do, its regular functions start to become more musical. If you never get to use it in real life applications you will still have progressed as a musician.

I realize that our standard notation system is universal and will not change and I think it shouldn't change because its a great system. I'm just putting the idea out there to be contemplated. As a composer its good to know the limitations of what you can write and also be willing to question those limitation and try to exceed them.

So why re-invent the wheel? Well have we really invented the wheel or just a very smooth square?

Are microtones the wave of the future though, or just an eccentricity? (I'm out of the musical loop in terms of present-day composers)

I kinda hate 99% of modern music. So...

Are microtones the wave of the future though, or just an eccentricity? (I'm out of the musical loop in terms of present-day composers)

No, microtones have been used in Persian, Indian, Oriental and many other cultures for years. They have only been explored seriously in western music in the past 50 years (just a guess on how long). One of the most famous composers to seriously write for microtonal instruments in the states was Harry Partch.

They aren't just an eccentricity. In fact, our 8 tone scale system in mathematically impure compared to the microtonal systems.

They aren't just an eccentricity. In fact, our 8 tone scale system in mathematically impure compared to the microtonal systems.

8?

Western music is actually based on a 12-tone chromatic equal temperament scale.

Most scales used during the common practice harmony period (ie: pre 20th century) are 7-note scales.

And there is no "fact" about the purety, or lack thereof, of western tonal scale tuning (ie: equal temperament). Microtonality is no more, nor less, "pure" than equal temperament chromaticism.

Ok so 7-note scale or 12-tone is what I meant I just added the octave.

When I talk about purity I'm talking about the amount of cents between each note. Equal temperament was a European invention to make the octave equal and make it possible to fit 8/12 notes equally in a scale. If you spaced the notes out mathematically equal you would discover every octave would be a few cents higher then the last. That is what I mean when I say western tonality is impure. It doesn't make it less musical it's just the only system that changed from the original greek tonal system.

Depending on the microtonal system you use (there are a lot of different systems) it will be more "pure" then equal temperament chromaticism. You should pick up a copy of "The Genesis Of Music by Harry Partch". He talks about many different scale temperaments and microtonal systems as well as the history behind them. It also has his theory and opinions on how music should be played.

But keep in mind the following, which people tend to forget when talking about these things:

a. Equal temperament wasn't practically possible until less than a century ago, and probably not even desirable until not much earlier. The vast majority of the common practice period repertoire was written without any thought of equal temperament.

b. Even today, any talk about equal temperament and its impurity is only true when we talk about keyboard instruments, harps, and fretted instruments with fixed frets. That's it. All other instruments are free to ignore equal temperament, and indeed they do for (partially) the very reasons of acoustical impurity that you mention.

It never ceases to bother me how much misinformation is still circulating about tuning and temperament issues. Countless textbooks and teachers still keep alive such patent idiocy as the notion of Bach writing the WTK for equal-tempered instruments. But I digress.

The subject of notation has been dealt with over a period of time. Ferneyhough's essay "Aspects of Notational and Compositional Practice" from 1978 raises questions of needing to meet the notational requirements of a composer/composition; reflected in his own work, some with very unusual time signatures, microtones, articulations.

Ferneyhough and many others simply augmented the standard notation system, usually with a preface to explain non-standard notation they devised for individual works.

and equal temperament wasn't designed "to fit 12 notes into the octave".

It was designed to overcome the limitations of fixed "natural" tuning for music that required greater access to more and more distant relative keys.

In a system that is NOT equal temperament, the moment you move away from a very limited set of related keys, intervallic relationships become too strained and unwanted dissonance creeps in. Obviously this is primarily aimed at music for instruments that have "fixed tuning" (ie: keyboards).

Music would NOT be free to modulate as freely if there were not some system designed that equalized the intervalic relationship.

What is with this fallacy that somehow "natural" tuning based on the overtone series is somehow superiour?

Microtonal music isn't any more "natural" than chromatic or diatonic music.

In a system that is NOT equal temperament, the moment you move away from a very limited set of related keys, intervallic relationships become too strained and unwanted dissonance creeps in. Obviously this is primarily aimed at music for instruments that have "fixed tuning" (ie: keyboards).

Music would NOT be free to modulate as freely if there were not some system designed that equalized the intervalic relationship.

Do you really believe that it creates "unwanted" dissonance or are you just so sold on equal temperament that you have no ears for anything else? Equal temperament was not used to adjust to fixed tuning instruments, fixed tuning instruments were adjusted to be able to use equal temperament. I can think of many fixed tuning instruments that can freely use the 43-tone scale, the keyboard being one of them (hammer dulcimer, gamelan marimba).

You have never played or listened to much 43-tone music if you think music wouldn't be able to modulate as freely without equal temperament. Most all of Persian music gets along fine without it and it sounds like it makes perfect sense. We are so conditioned on the 12-tone series that anything else (music from the rest of world) sounds dissonant and wrong to us.

I couldn't agree with you more WaxY. That is why I do not write my music down, I improvise all of my compositions, whether or not they come out as a form-composition or freeform improvisation. I use so many weird polyrhythms and changes that I think adequately notating the originals would be very approximate and not very close to the original at all.

Sometimes I think modern music should move more in the direction of having notation ALWAYS accompany a recording. That is, use notation without any rhythmic notation whatsoever, JUSt the pitches, accompanied by a MIDI or mp3. That way a performer could get a true feeling of the original rhythmic/melodic intent of the composer from the recording but make sure they got all the pitches right from the "barless" notation.

Do you really believe that it creates "unwanted" dissonance or are you just so sold on equal temperament that you have no ears for anything else? Equal temperament was not used to adjust to fixed tuning instruments, fixed tuning instruments were adjusted to be able to use equal temperament. I can think of many fixed tuning instruments that can freely use the 43-tone scale, the keyboard being one of them (hammer dulcimer, gamelan marimba).

You have never played or listened to much 43-tone music if you think music wouldn't be able to modulate as freely without equal temperament. Most all of Persian music gets along fine without it and it sounds like it makes perfect sense. We are so conditioned on the 12-tone series that anything else (music from the rest of world) sounds dissonant and wrong to us.

I don't think the equal temperament "conditioning" is nearly as sinisterly widespread as is suggested here. The most modern and conditioned of ears would agree that a barbershop quartet is very much in tune. Equal temperament? Obviously not. The sound of a keyboard instrument tuned to quarter-comma meantone (playing music written for such a tuning--I can't stress enough how important this is) isn't particularly exotic, and it wouldn't require much "un-conditioning" to find it very pure indeed, and suitable for that particular music. (The multitude of Classical slow movements in A-flat or D-flat might be harder for us to understand--these keys would be rather dissonant in most temperaments--but that's merely a sidenote.)

However, the point about modulation is true, if you think about it. J. S. Bach (and others before him, but he's the famous one) efficiently showed that all twelve keys (major and minor) were quite usable in whatever tuning system he used (a huge topic in itself, which I won't go into). But the point to understand here is that they were still different from one another. From a Baroque point of view this was a good thing. As a result of it the choice of key was in itself an effective means of expressing a particular Affekt, as it were. However, if you think logically about it, it does make modulation less free. For better or for worse! Each time you venture into a different key, you attain, in practice, slightly different acoustical properties of scale steps and harmonic functions, and, in effect, a different timbre and different emotional properties. This can be exploited to good effect, of course, and thus is not necessarily a bad thing, but it does make modulation less free. You can't modulate to whatever key you want without taking into consideration the effect that this particular key will have, compared to the previous one.

Free doesn't have to be a value judgment. But it can be in a particular idiom. No music is superiour to any other. No tuning system is either. Deal with it.

Free doesn't have to be a value judgment. But it can be in a particular idiom. No music is superiour to any other. No tuning system is either. Deal with it.

I completely agree with this statement. I believe that if you are a musician or music lover, you have no right pass judgments on other music styles or have an elitist attitude about a certain style until you have a basic knowledge and some experience working with the other music.

I understand your point about modulation but do the twelve keys make it easier. If they can fit and modulate within any tuning system then it seems to me they are just a simplification of broader tonal systems.

Do you really believe that it creates "unwanted" dissonance or are you just so sold on equal temperament that you have no ears for anything else?

That's kind of harsh man.

Well, those who created the system most likely saw them as unwanted dissonances. That seems logical enough of a statement.

I realize you're having a debate and such but I think you're the one coming off as elitist. Or it might just be the negativity vibe I get from your posts.

I apologize if that came off as harsh because it wasn't meant to be. I was just trying to bring up another point by addressing something specific in my post.

Please explain how I am elitist. This thread was meant to be a somewhat philosophical discussion about something with no right or wrong answer. I keep trying to ask new questions based on the replies people have posted so as to spark new thought and different opinions.

I think the problem with the notation system is that music is an audio phenomenon, while the notation is visual. While it is the best that we've got so far, it is not perfect. Try to write out a jazz improvisation, and give it to a classicaly trained musician who doesn't play jazz and you will see that the notation system has its limit.

A recording included with a score is the way to go. But it poses a problem for those of us who can't perform the recording. We will need somebody else to perform our composition, and to do that... we will need a notation.. and .. because the notation cannot really convey what we want, we will need a recording .... @&^$*&^!!!!!

I'd rather not derail this thread so I'm bowing out.

We need a notation system we can taste.

AHA!!! AGAIN WITH THE FOOD ANALOGY!

I think there's something to this....