This is a system that indicates the lack of information about why the current system (which, admittedly is a mess) is the way it is. This is removing Chesterson's fence without understand why it's there.

A point: one improvement to this system is if the tonic note is always 1. I don't hate the idea of number inside the notes, but as it is currently, its not only useless, but actively making things more difficult to parse.

Having the tonic, the 3rd, the 5th, the 7th... that might make things easier to sight-read. Might.

The current notation is a hodge-podge of compromises of rhythm, legibility, page to music ratio (efficiency of page turns), pitch range, and dynamics. Nothing in music can ever be 'perfect' (the cosmic joke). And without the history of how any why the current system came to be, 'disrupters' are just people who don't know their own ignorance. Even still, sometimes there is value added. Rare as that is.

Great video by Tantacrul about all the other previous attempts at "fixing" music notation, well worth a watch: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Eq3bUFgEcb4

I like the use of base 12, but IMO it's somewhat wasted on a diatonic staff. This is basically just traditional notation with special coloring to make it easier to read. To better match the keyboard, I'd rather use an isomorphic staff (a.k.a. "chromatic staff", although I dislike that name because it implies diatonic music as a default).

There's a web site you might be interested in with many examples of isomorphic notation at:

https://musicnotation.org/

People who know Nashville system are gonna struggle with that.

Am I understanding correctly that it always starts on C (C==0)? Seems like key changes will be hard without computer assistance, I mean, you could have your chart update on the fly if you're using a tablet, but paper charts will be hard to transpose on the fly.

I do think now is a prime opportunity to get away from traditional notation for folks that want it, since transcription to a new notation is trivial now, even for paper charts, where it once required a lot of human effort. And, isomorphic is very appealing.

But, this feels like it doesn't come from the perspective of a musician who plays from charts? Musicians think in relationships, not absolute notes, and this kind of obscures those relationships. I'm not really arguing that traditional notation is optimal, it takes a lot of knowledge and practice, and I've never invested enough time to be good at it, but I don't think this really resolves the pain (you still have to know traditional notation to be able to read it) and adds something that isn't based on musical relationships and maybe even makes those relationships harder to see for a trained musician. To a musician the numbers they know are scale intervals; a "7" here is a "5" (perfect fifth) to a trained musician and a "4" is a "3" (major third), but only in the key of C, otherwise it's not a relationship you can memorize, you gotta do math.

It's fun to tinker, of course, and I'm not trying to shit on your idea. Just pointing out why I wouldn't find it helpful. As a musician, who isn't all that great at reading traditional music notation, I find the numbers distracting. It adds to an already noisy and difficult to read thing, one more thing my brain is trying to translate into something my fingers know how to do.

It took me a while to understand what the numbers were actually trying to indicate (in part because I'm used to numbers in sheet music being suggestions of which finger should play the given note). If I understand correctly now, are you numbering zero-indexed with C as the beginning (0) and B as the end (Y), as a proxy for remembering which key notes are meant to be played in?

I really enjoy all the alternative music notation projects that popup on HN. Based on the comments, I think this one could use a page explaining the notation and instrument before diving into sheet music. Also looks pretty difficult to use with pen and paper but I'm probably in the minority there

The issue unfortunately always falls back to familiarity - It's like spelling reform or DVORAK keyboards. You can create a thousand compelling arguments why new system X is better than the old clunker we're all forced to use but the fact of the matter is that you'll still have to read music the old way to interact with the rest of the world. Millions of musicians, including myself, read music as naturally as reading the written word. It's a functionally impossible ask to change that paradigm. Even learning bass clef for me as a previously treble clef only player took several years of focused and targeted practice to attain equal facility with both.

I think you’d be better off with something compatible with an existing system. Perhaps start with nashville numbering and add accidentals?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nashville_Number_System

It didn't take more than one month of solfege practice to be able to look at any chord or note on the grand staff in traditional western notation and be able to say what the chord is, what the intervals are, etc.

I still practice the piano 2 hours/day most days. The challenge of playing music isn't reading the notes, it's getting from one note to the next one. 99% of what I practice is simply hand positions, grouping notes, fingerings, voicings. Reading notation is such a trivial part of musicianship, mastered easily with just a few months of study.

I'm not a musician, so my question may have an obvious answer, but... what problem does this solve?

I'm thinking back to when I was in band as a kid, and the idea of having to recognize tiny number inside the notes seems to make it more difficult to read, not easier. Even if not trying to read them, the visual is noisier.

Is the idea it offers help to new musicians, but experienced musicians can ignore it? Someone good enough to sight-read sheet music can disregard the new noise?

So many software nerds get nerd-sniped into trying to invent their own music notation. I have almost succumbed to that temptation myself. Someone should make a version of https://www.mcmillen.dev/language_checklist.html for this.

Looks like you've either come across or independently reinvented pitch classes! https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pitch_class

I'm solving a similar problem: to build a 12-TET isomorphic music notation: https://rawl.rocks/

I was working on a similar idea, I grabbed 2x PartyKeys and I was going to map each key to a finger ( left-pinky = orange ), but the API is such that -- if you have two boards (72 keys) and send a msg to a single board ( 1st key = orange ) -- it lights up both 1st keys (there's no way to address a single board). Was disappointing.

a few opinions: the detection of the mouse hovering isn't forgiving enough and sometimes it gets a bit annoying. try to use bbox with some padding wherever possible, and add some visual hints when hovering over the notes (slight scaling up etc)

Can we make a simpler thing: staff and durations same as before, but put solfege syllables (relative to current key signature) inside the note heads?

Edit: it seems a bunch of people already had this idea, it's even in Musescore. It might need some more work to make it readable at small sizes, though.

Just learn to read music dude. It's not "your own instrument" right now if you can't fucking sightread the first mvmt of the Moonlight Sonata. Detach yourself from AI horseshit and woodshed a bit.

relatedly does anyone have a tool to generate piano synthesia videos from sheet music, maybe with or without AI? They seem fun to play along with. (I'll just look it up, commenting to share the idea too though)

Uhm, why not writing the degrees of the scale at hand? 12-TET is irrelevant for modal music.

In a similar vein, I sometimes line the root of the scale with a red felt tip pen if I am struggling reading a piece.

I love this video and it's explanation of music notation, attempts to improve music notation, and a long history of failure. TL;DR Efficiency, high context, and compact notation.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Eq3bUFgEcb4 The video is excellent.

What does "isomorphic" mean?

I like the technical fun of it, but no musician is ever going to give a crap about this. We have hundreds of years of the evolution of music notation and it is pretty comprehensive. Just because there are only 12 unique notes in western music doesn't mean base-12 to notate it makes sense....that completely strips out context of what you are playing.

For example...in the key of aminor when you make the five chord major to create a resolution back to i (aminor) you raise the 7th scale degree. That means the G becomes G#...Ab is the same pitch but writing it that way is wrong. An EMajor chord is spelled E G# B, not E Ab B. Now if you spell that as 9 0 4 you have stripped all context out of the music. Musicians aren't just player pianos, they analyze the harmonic structure of the music the inform phrasing, shape, tone, volume, and pacing (acelarando, decelerando, ritardando, etc).

Whenever I see something like this trying to reinvent standard notation I feel like it is usually from somebody who can kind of play an instrument but can't read music or can't read it well because they haven't put the years of work it takes to be a proficient sight reader and they haven't studied harmony/music-theory.

One of the most important things about musical standard notation is that it is - standard - you can hand it to any musician on any instrument and they can make sense of it quickly. It is a skill that takes a lot of practice but it is what allows musicians who have never met each other to be hired for a gig and show up and play together without ever rehearsing.

This approach won't teach you to "see" music either. It forces pure mechanical number memory....you won't see harmony and be able to quickly notice that - for example - a line is just moving the chord up in inversions and since you know harmony and your chords you can sight read that part without ever even reading every individual note.

But still a cool idea from a hobby perspective.

Go to fucking college for music theory or leave it alone. Dilettante shit at correcting all those snobby college boys about their passion has always been fated to fail. Congrats you really showed those first year conservatory students what's what. Thank god they are the real elite of the US or else this would come across as pointless bullying

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