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I think multiple colours are great as a study aid, not something that should be necessarily regarded as an end in itself.

Yep! To me this is much more of a pedagogical device -- "learn music theory" vs. a performance device -- "feel it in your bones".

WRT, again I'm finding that a middle path seems to be working, i.e. as I play a piece I find I can flip back and forth between the standard C layout and my smurf vomit layout above. Different map, same territory. The key (erm) would be to not become reliant on it, but to provide real insight into the underlying logic -- and hopefully not just a contemporary version of pasting cheesy note stickers on one's fretboard or piano keys, haha! I actually do find that it is making me more aware rather than less aware of where things go and why.

Though thinking of performance, you just know someone is gonna create a disco dance floor with this thing at some point.

Revealing the underlying logic, or patterns, shapes whatever. That’s it. Of course muscle memory comes before visual cues but my thinking is that if you have to think about it there’s no harm in using a bit of colour to speed things along.

My favourite mess, here in chromatic, is based on intervals.
I also found too many colours more confusing than useful. Three is the magic number. The colours are assigned to interval class. So perfect intervals (including the root in that), mediant and sub mediant, subtonic and supertonic (if it’s called that). They make up the classes. The tritone I have as white, so technically 4 colours I suppose. There’s a distinct pattern going on here which is easy enough to memorise, to the point that what colours are used isn’t really important. I’m looking out for the pattern, not specific colours. I like this approach because it’s hardwiring patterns or shape that matters. I’ll see how this works out over time.

I ended up keeping only C and A lit in +6 layout. It is less confusing than having all white keys on. You tend to learn shapes instead of learning to follow the lights… I am still in the process of practicing side reading, having less lights makes it easier. Seems counter intuitive, but that is my experience.
If playing sounds on the iPad, it has the additional advantage of needing less power…

Tj Shredder wrote: Thu Jan 27, 2022 6:03 am having less lights makes it easier. Seems counter intuitive, but that is my experience.

That actually makes a good deal of sense to me. I've also been struggling to learn to sight read ... struggling being the operative word. It's one of those things that I feel like shouldn't be hard -- why can't my brain seem to connect each bar on the staff to a note and then translate that to gird position?! I get now why it would be a lot easier on piano, ironically.

So yeah, I think rather than having 6 white dots that the brain treats the same, having only two of different colours that each have their own set location could be less confusing. And I just tried using the anchors of E and higher F to match treble clef along with trying to use white for the lines (G,B,D) in between, and it didn't really seem to work that well. So overall, matching the colours to graphical notation doesn't probably make sense.

Also, yes Linnstrument (and Roger, who is likely tired of me trying to configure 128 power situation in obscure ways) will appreciate fewer lights.

All I can say is be patient, Miles. Start simple, and commit those basic note associations to memory, one at a time if need be.

For example, if I were to ask just about any novice guitar player what note occupies the 3rd fret of the 6th string, they'd look at me like "Duh, it's G, of course." But if I were to then ask them what note occupies the 8th fret of the 2rd string, they'd be stumped; yet both of those notes are in fact a G, just octaves apart, and the effort required to learn and memorize the position of either note is the same. It's just that they've spent significantly more time playing in-and-around that lower G, and now they couldn't miss it for trying. The same is true of reading notes on the staff.

With this in mind, I maintain that sticking with a single tuning scheme and light configuration will serve you (and by "you" I mean anyone) better than changing patterns and transposing all the time.

I promise you, if you just keep at it, there will come a day when you can't remember not knowing this stuff.

Think about the language that you're speaking... Did you start out in life conversing in full sentences, or did you just keep pointing at a ball and saying "ball" until it was a ball and could be nothing else? One letter, one word, one phrase at a time... Learning music is no different.



Cheers!

P.S. I also agree with TJ, that fewer lights is better: i.e. ultimately, ideally, all you need is a single, fixed point of reference.

Thanks for the post michaeljk1963. I am learning music theory for the first time so I can create my own music too, but my window is a little different, in that I am learning to play with both hands first (availing myself of the teachers in our community) and using existing music and noodling around.

I am also excited to have discovered Clairnote SN https://clairnote.org an alternative music notation. It seems like a natural fit with the isometric nature of the Linnstrument, straight forward and consistent. I will start to convert sheet music to this modern notation using the tools they list on their site. It might seem like I am making it more difficult for myself, because I won't be able to read traditional sheet music but I don't like the note layout being different for each clef, Clairnote SN seems logical to me, like Linnstrument.

I am also interested in exploring Pitch Class > Integer Notation (Mod-12), where each note is a number (0 - 11) eliminating sharps and flats, but I am going to get my footing first with the traditional approach.

zachaudioguy, thanks for posting your suggestions.

flyingaudio wrote: Tue Feb 01, 2022 3:17 am I am also excited to have discovered Clairnote SN https://clairnote.org an alternative music notation. It seems like a natural fit with the isometric nature of the Linnstrument, straight forward and consistent.

Whoa! Thanks for sharing. I guess to many people -- including most who already know musical notation deeply -- this will look like a solution to a problem that doesn't exist, but to me this feels like someone read my mind. There is so much about musical notation that seems idiosyncratic and often just .. perverse. I am so so tempted to learn this instead. At the same time, the major advantage of the current notation system is of course that everyone uses it. Once trained, someone can hand you a piece of music and everyone can read and understand it. Unfortunately, that's also the reason why alternatives will probably never supplant it. Network effects apply to centuries old artistic conventions as they do to social media platforms and software APIs.

At the same time ... the thought that I might be able to learn a notation that is symmetrical, consistent and elegant to play an instrument that is symmetrical, consistent and elegant is almost too tempting not to try.

[Edit]: Disappointed to find that there isn't a single jazz standard in the curated sheet music -- that would be actually one of the best use cases for this. I guess I could convert one, but not sure when I'd get to that.

MilesParker wrote: Tue Feb 01, 2022 6:28 pm At the same time, the major advantage of the current notation system is of course that everyone uses it. Once trained, someone can hand you a piece of music and everyone can read and understand it.

Agreed. So, before I decided to adopt Clairnote SN, I checked to see if I could convert a piece of sheet music handed to me in real-time. I haven't done it yet, but I believe it is possible. There are two apps for the iPhone/iPad that I found, where you use your camera to convert the score to MusicXML and then LilyPond will convert MusicXML to Clairnote SN.

I purchased Sheet Music Scanner as the first step in the conversion, but I probably won't really look into it for another month, focusing on just getting my fingers working on the Linn first.

It would be great to snap a set of photos of traditional notation with an iPad Pro and see your music in Clairnote SN. LilyPond doesn't run on iPad, so it might not be as simply as I am making it out to be. There is a way, maybe a backend server to do the conversion. For now, I will scan the image to Dropbox via iPhone and then on my Mac use LilyPond to convert and display the 21st Century notation. Ta-da!

App:
Sheet Music Scanner https://apps.apple.com/us/app/sheet-mus ... d884984324
There are others with many more features, but this is a one time fee, good for testing the process.

I will make updates here when I start to experiment with it.

Written music is meant for communication with others, if you go you're own way, you'll be doing it solo.

Also now tie in theory and you'll have to come up with a new way to describe all the theory.

Is it just because you haven't learned the common language, you believe everyone else should conform to your reality?

My advice is if notation is important to you, take advantage of the many years of standard notation knowledge, and just learn to deal with it. Yes it does take time and effort.

On the other hand you can certainly develop your own system, or there's always the option to not even bother with notation at all.

Good luck,
Dirk

^This!



Cheers!

Dirk Diggler wrote: Wed Feb 02, 2022 1:48 pm Also now tie in theory and you'll have to come up with a new way to describe all the theory.
Is it just because you haven't learned the common language, you believe everyone else should conform to your reality?
My advice is if notation is important to you, take advantage of the many years of standard notation knowledge, and just learn to deal with it. Yes it does take time and effort.

It's not about time and effort so much as it is precisely that the current notation system is suboptimal for the task of describing, sharing and understanding music. That is, if someone was going to come up with a system of music notation now, it would be very different. If you look at the site posted above, you will see that Clarinote has real, practical advantages -> the location of notes on the four staffs are exactly the same (bottom line is always E), intervals are consistent, every tone has a unique location, chord shapes look the same, the tonic and key are clearly specified, and accidentals are merely there for clarity.

All of these things make it quite analogous to the differences in Linnstrument itself from piano. So it could be argued that it matches theory better rather than a set of idiosyncrasies driving by a particular set of needs and historical accidents, frozen in time.

So just to say I'm not advocating it as appropriate for everyone, but it certainly enriches the set of possibilities, and I don't think it's fair to dismiss it out of hand -- it's not about refusing to speak a language, but about being open to different dialects.

[edit] Just to add a practical point, I have spent many many hours practicing reading notes on treble and bass clef and I'm still hesitant. I just spent about 20 minutes using the clairnote practice tool and I'm already able to read more quickly -- I could see being fluent in a matter of days. For the way my visually oriented brain works at least, the lack of consistency between staves in the traditional approach and the fact that even within one staff a given note appears twice, one on a line and one in a gap, breaks visual pattern recognition and creates cognitive dissonance -- one learned pattern is disrupted by the other. Of course that pattern can be learned but it is difficult. Coming from the other direction, if you know the bass and treble clef well, learning the clarinote clef would probably be relative child's play, though your brain would have to get used to the fact that tones have unique positions.
https://clairnote.org/learn/

MilesParker wrote: Wed Feb 02, 2022 6:26 pm It's not about time and effort so much as it is precisely that the current notation system is suboptimal for the task of describing, sharing and understanding music.

Miles, all due respect (and I absolutely mean that), but these sticking-points, that you see as being shortcomings of traditional notation, have actually been arrived at, over centuries, for a number of reasons that still hold true to this day. Perhaps it's just that you don't have enough perspective yet to fully understand exactly why it is the way it is.

Don't get me wrong, I encourage you to learn music in whatever way works for you, because the end goal (I can only presume) is to be able to play. And if you're not having fun with it, well...

To that end, however, as I said earlier in this thread (and have said many times before), we are standing on the shoulders of giants. Do you honestly believe that thousands-of-years of musical geniuses have just rolled over, hands in the air, and resigned themselves to using a "suboptimal" system of documenting and communicating musical ideas, too lazy to fix it? Or... Could it be that there's simply no need to reinvent the wheel?

It's not like there aren't alternative ways to think about (and notate) music (i.e. number systems, modal theory, etc.); it's just that those systems were designed by (and best serve) musicians who are already fluent in standard notation and classical theory and are otherwise in need of a “shorthand” method, to facilitate, say, an improv performance or session work, wherein a score would be unnecessary or altogether moot.

Would you endeavor to rewrite the English language to solve the which-witch-is-which conundrum?

Anyway, I applaud you for taking an interest in music, in general, and ultimately taking it to task. Of course, if you're inspired to pursue this “Clairnote” method, then by all means, carry on. Hell, it’s a fun academic exercise, if nothing else. However, I personally think one's time and energy would be better spent learning standard music theory and notation; especially if you aspire to engage with the greater music community. That's my best advice, and all I'm going to say on the matter.

Cheers!

I think that all makes a lot of sense, John. And ... as a student of the process of innovation, I feel compelled to share some meta thoughts..excuse long-windedness, see TL;DR; below.

(Also, I am taking your advice re: learning traditional notation via focus on one note at a time, seems to help!)

I think that regardless of the field of endeavour there will always be a built-in and usually healthy tension between "the farmer" and "the explorer". 95% of people in a community will be involved in exploiting existing resources. It's far more efficient and sensible to leverage what you have rather than go out in search of something better, even if what you have might be "sub-optimal" in the grand scheme of things. But that risks getting stuck in a local optimum.

Now, it's very expensive to engage in exploration, so societies tend to frown on that sort of thing. There are a lot of dynamics at play here. Not least that individuals have spent a lot of time getting to know the terrain, and there is fear that the value of the time spent clearing rocks and stumps will have been wasted should an open field be discovered over the next ridge. This can be true even when the new approach is clearly better .. when fat skis first hit the scene, most of the push-back came from people who had somehow learned to make their 203cm skinny skis work in powder, and the fact that any bozo could strap on a pair of fatties and bomb down anything was hard to swallow. (And anyway why do we need polyphonic expression when modulation wheels work just fine and I already know all 12 fingering patterns!?)

So explorers tend to be under-valued, even punished, even if there is that occasional new land that is discovered that for some people make the risk worthwhile. But the risk/reward trade-off rarely ever makes sense from a logical, practical point of view. Happily for naysayers, truly useful innovation is very rare indeed. Most of the time explorers end up trapped in a mud bog somewhere, and if the existing land is "good enough", it is very easy to say "I told you so". Or preemptively, "we have been doing it this way for a long time, there must be a reason, at least learn to till the soil here before searching around for something better, sigh".

Now this is the interesting part to me -- one might think that it would be the people who knew the most about a given endeavour to be the people who would be best suited to scout the best acreage in distant lands. But in every field I've encountered that is rarely the case. When you've invested your time in becoming expert at tilling the land where you are, you have have far less incentive to look elsewhere. In the history of innovation in science, it's remarkable how many key insights come from people from entirely different disciplines who happen to become interested in a well trodden field. (Ok, my metaphor just broke, but let's move on..) Why? First, they don't know what everyone else knows and sometimes what everyone else "knows" is wrong. Second, they don't have any reputation to lose by sharing "stupid" ideas that might be right.

So I'm happy to be the hapless fool who might join a group of folks who stumble on something worth trying, even if I know we will all probably come back hungry, covered in mud and none the wiser. It's easy for me, as I'm not a professional and my only goal is to enjoy the process of musical discovery. My goal is to make music yes, but it is also to understand it and perhaps help it expand the set of possibilities in whatever small way I can. Ironically that is because of -- not in spite of! -- my lack of knowledge. I know that those invested in the current system have no incentive to explore elsewhere, and so those who aren't invested are the only ones who might be dumb enough to try. I appreciate your encouragement in that direction.

Because to be clear, I'm not whining about having our rebel spirits squashed hahaha, just wanted to place things in a larger perspective. It's not surprising then that a community that is built around an innovative approach to making music would attract the explorers, and I think innovative communities everywhere find ways to celebrate that by taking a "yes and.." rather than a "no but.." approach to different perspectives.

TL;DR; despite the title of this thread personally I'm not looking for advice on learning music theory so much as healthy collaboration between those who don't know enough to know what isn't worth trying and those who know enough to help steer clear of the bogs.

To get back to technical issues -- which are my real interest -- while there are a lot of contrasts between the two notation systems I think the deepest one is that the traditional approach is essentially diatonic, whereas the Clairnote system is essentially chromatic. There are solid arguments for each, but the parallel between Clairnote vs traditional notations and Piano (diatonic focussed) vs Linnstrument (chromatic) layout that @flyingaudio pointed out seems very interesting.