Pashkuli: PMN (Plain Music Notation)

[vurt]

@vurt
No.

you do recognise them as scores though?
sadly (imo) probably due to the diversity of sound, and symbols needed, these kind of scores didn't really catch on, and get no more than a footnote in modern books

these were part of a new musical movement, so it made sense to require new ways of notating the music.

what new music do you feel your system could be best suited to? that imo, would be a better chance of getting it used, old music is doing fine with the old notation. they work together, you need to find what works for yours.

[Pashkuli]

@vurt
Sorry, I do not recognise them as scores. More like a "modern" abstract fine art or digital maybe. Seems like an attempt of a 5 year old at Adobe Illustrator or Inkscape.

As I mentioned above, PMN is intended as a 'generalised tablature' for any instrument.
If someone would like to translate old music form the old notation to PMN, they are welcome.

But first I would like to develop it as JavaScript app to work (at least the basics) in any modern Internet browser online and offline. It will take me some time though before I could develop such an app as I work alone for the time being (part of the Music as a hobby for me).

[vurt]

@vurt
Sorry, I do not recognise them as scores. More like a "modern" abstract fine art or digital maybe. Seems like an attempt of a 5 year old at Adobe Illustrator or Inkscape.

ok. so you haven't actually done any research in to alternative notation?
you just assumed there's the one, and it needs changing, without checking if there are other options?

[vurt]

https://www.classicfm.com/discover-musi ... -pictures/

[shawshawraw]

2. Imagine having a musician with a "perfect pitch" who also happens to be blind.
Do they need an up-down graphical representation of pitch, or rather do they "know" the 12 pitches?

3. PMN can be thought of is a visual representation of the so called "perfect pitch".
Thus any musician can "learn" it and read\write their music with it.[/color]

I've got the absolute "perfect pitch" wayyy before I knew this was a thing to boast. But it has served me astonishingly little in terms of advancing in music. The only advantage having that really is to pave a way for working on the relative pitch hearing, because I was able to cross-check myself very easily and thus can practice this wherever I go, whatever I hear.

The fact you're missing is that Happy Birthday always sounds exactly Happy Birthday whatever key it is in. In common music notation, we observe the same shape of notes. The key signature changes when we transpose this Happy Birthday song but it has no other sharps or flats on paper, indicating that all the notes are falling in Do, Re, Mi, Fa, So, La, Ti, which is frankly quite a common thing because it's rather unnatural to sing or remember a fully chromatic passage (atonal sight singing is the final year course in university AFAIK). (Minor key would be read as La, Ti, Do,... on the paper.)

I don't see how PMN makes musical sense in highlighting these outliers and how these outliers relate to musical meanings when it comes to enharmonic spelling. In scale degree style of writing (Do, Re, Mi, ... Ti as 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7), I'm saying #1 is not b2, #2 is not b3, etc. Although they're the same pitch and in modern music the enharmonic usage is very encouraged (example, #4 in melodic movement contributing to a bVI7 harmony of b6, 1, b3, b5), sharp is still not flat and flat is not sharp.

Also to transpose this particular Happy Birthday melody into your PMN, we would see a completely different set of symbols, even vertical positions because you're splitting the absolute octaves. This totally screws up the visual shape of melody, and keep in mind that in orchestral writing horns are always written in transposed pitches than actually played because it's easier for horns - the absolute pitch doesn't matter as much as you have imagined.

And don't forget you still owe me a piece of PMN sheet to present how you treat the closed voicing movements in fast paces, which I suspect to be a major inefficiency in your system.

[Pashkuli]

ok. so you haven't actually done any research in to alternative notation?

Oh, I have. Nothing seemed to satisfy my... vision about music notation.
I aim for minimalism and overall simplicity. Yes, I am aware Music is not that simple, regarding human expressiveness and if the latter can be represented fairly legible and reproduceable in a music notation.

[Pashkuli]

I've got the absolute "perfect pitch" wayyy before I knew this was a thing to boast. But it has served me astonishingly little in terms of advancing in music.

When we transpose this Happy Birthday song but it has no other sharps or flats on paper, indicating that all the notes are falling in Do, Re, Mi, Fa, So, La, Ti, which is frankly quite a common thing.

See, that is the problem. You have a "perfect pitch", yet you have fallen for the music notation as it is now, because of education and others around you who learn it how to read it, your teachers, etc.
Or if self taught you had the books with plenty of songs, written in it, so you did not ask questions.

I just was not like that. I always asked questions.
In some occasions teachers told me:
"That is not something you have to think about. Bach, Mozart, Chopin used this and they wrote the best music for piano and orchestra. If they used it, so should you, if you want to be better at Music and pass the exams."

So, I didn't. I went to study languages and Design Engineering instead.

[shawshawraw]

I've got the absolute "perfect pitch" wayyy before I knew this was a thing to boast. But it has served me astonishingly little in terms of advancing in music.

When we transpose this Happy Birthday song but it has no other sharps or flats on paper, indicating that all the notes are falling in Do, Re, Mi, Fa, So, La, Ti, which is frankly quite a common thing.

See, that is the problem. You have a "perfect pitch", yet you have fallen for the music notation as it is now, because of education and others around you who learn it how to read it, your teachers, etc.
Or if self taught you had the books with plenty of songs, written in it, so you did not ask questions.

...

Anyways, you still owe me that sheet of PMN!

[fmr]

I aim for minimalism and overall simplicity.
???

file.jpg

Right

And we still didn't see it with several octaves, and polyphonic writing.

[Pashkuli]

And don't forget you still owe me a piece of PMN sheet to present how you treat the closed voicing movements in fast paces, which I suspect to be a major inefficiency in your system.

Which one was that, the Debussy fragment or some other form earlier posts? I will look back.
In other forums they ask me to transcribe whole pieces... I really do not have time to do it for everybody.

Regarding shapes and transpositions. Yes, once you know the shapes of the notes, you would spot intervals regardless of used symbols. We talked about that in another website a few days ago.

It is like any other notation\language.
1. Learn the letters\symbols
2. Learn basic intervals ("syllables")
3. Learn basic melodies
4. Transpose in few keys, memorise
5. Maybe some inversion of both intervals and harmonies
6. Practice, practice, practice

If you expect to start reading Bach using PMN in the next week, that most likely won't happen.

[BertKoor]

Why do we need music to be notated in the first place?

Before there were record players, it was the only way to "record" it and let others play the same thing. Also if there's more than one performer involved (ensembles, orchestras) and the music is not improvised it makes sense to have a score for each musician.

Are these still valid reasons in the 21st century we live in? Partially: sure! But we see a movement of popular DJs that get paid a modal year salary for one gig, and all they do is put on music that was preproduced. The way we make music is changing and notation is less needed in the process. Just sending a midi clip or audio track is enough today to collaborate. We have tools that can convert that to staff notation if needed.


I think I understand parts of the true motivation of Pashkuli. Because what we see here is a call for total revolution in music. This new notation can not be seen without its brother-in-arms, namely the notion that music should be seen outside the scope of being mainly heptatonic and thus all twelve notes within the traditional octave are of equal importance.

Some time ago I did some research on the background of this guy that now goes by the name of Pashkuli (he had some other aliases in the past. Why the father of this musical revolution doesn't want the world and history to know his real name is beyond me.) But I discovered he's a metal guitar player from Bulgaria and one day I stumbled upon a SoundCloud page. The music I heard there was... somewhat different, unconventional. It was using all twelve tones available, not limited to scales of seven notes. And although not really my taste, that's totally fine!

So what if that sort of music needs to be notated? Do you get sick of all the chromatic accidentals? What if it's so atonal that defining the main scale is pointless? Then you need vertical space for twelve notes instead of seven. Nearly twice as much vertical space is needed, so a way to circumvent that "problem" is needed. You see the result above.


Good luck with the revolution, brother. But I'm afraid it ain't gonna happen. The majority of the musical world is totally happy with traditional notation.

[vurt]

So what if that sort of music needs to be notated? Do you get sick of all the chromatic accidentals? What if it's so atonal that defining the main scale is pointless? Then you need vertical space for twelve notes instead of seven. Nearly twice as much vertical space is needed, so a way to circumvent that "problem" is needed.
.

that's what i was getting at, is there some new music, that would find the old notation stifling.
musique concrete required a different approach, so it made sense to seek new ways to convey it.
if im sat in a cafe (pre covid, im not an idiot) and there's some roadworks nearby, and people passing, a stave won't help me notate that for later.

[Pashkuli]

Why do we need music to be notated in the first place?

Before there were record players, it was the only way to "record" it and let others play the same thing.

Those are true and valid questions. We don't need Music notation from modern audio recording point of view. Most young people would use the MIDI-roll inside modern DAWs or tablature tailored software.

Some time ago I did some research on the background of this guy...
Good luck with the revolution, brother. But I'm afraid it ain't gonna happen. The majority of the musical world is totally happy with traditional notation.

Who I am is the least important thing to discuss. I am just a guy with a great hobby\passion for Music.
That is all that matters.
Thanks, but it will happen. Maybe not in our life time, but in the next one.
The majority of the people (sorry the educated ones) were "happy" learning and reading Latin and maybe also Greek. It is all gone.

[gaggle of hermits]

And don't forget you still owe me a piece of PMN sheet to present how you treat the closed voicing movements in fast paces, which I suspect to be a major inefficiency in your system.

Which one was that, the Debussy fragment or some other form earlier posts? I will look back.
In other forums they ask me to transcribe whole pieces... I really do not have time to do it for everybody.

you could do a single bar of the closed voicings in the Debussy chord run and uncover the issue almost immediately, as it's going to reveal the issue with octave-based tab notation. I can see how you can get round it, by chunking the notes within a given octave into "chords" or a kind of figured bass. this, effectively, is how braille notation works - though I believe it uses a left-hand/right-hand split rather than dividing things according to octaves.

[gaggle of hermits]

Most young people would use the MIDI-roll inside modern DAWs or tablature tailored software.

I'm far from the greatest sight-reader, but even I find regular music notation way quicker to parse than midi piano roll. more than four notes in a vertical group and it all becomes a blur.

this is the root of your problem, because you've never really bothered to grasp how the regular notation works, you've no good basis for making a comparison but have pressed on regardless. similarly, for your keyboard design, even a little experience with a button accordion might help give you some perspective on the usability of different configurations beyond "I can make this monster chord with one hand".