>why we use such an archaic notation system.
The answer is, because it works, and nobody has managed to propose a better one.
The answer is, because it works, and nobody has managed to propose a better one.
A new notation system will need to be a lot better to justify the change, because there is also a lot of value in compatibility with everything that already exists.
I'm not sure a sufficiently better system exists, because as you say, the traditional notation works. It has its quirks and rough corners, but music is complicated enough that any system would probably have similar imperfections.
The first is that spacial recognition takes more effort than symbol recognition, because it's comparative.
The second, and more important being that complex sequences of notes will be very dense on the page, and simple sequences of notes will take up a lot of space on the page, so suddenly there is a tradeoff between having sheet music that doesn't take 10 pages, and having enough space to represent hemi-demi-semiquaver sequences when they inevitably appear somewhere.
[In this case, I'd like to say go apprentice engraving if you are 100% serious.]
"There are multiple cues to the same information. Everything has both a symbol and spatial element, for all kinds of thinkers."
Indeed, in addition to the spatial length of the notes, there is also a symbol next to the notes denoting their life. You can see this on the linked page, in the second section. (Next to "Intuitive.")
Another question is whether or not the length of a trailing line is absolute or relative to the bar itself.
On the subject of filled notes, Hummingbird is also conveying a lot of information that for performance of a score is useless. Note letters (A-G) aren't actually important for performance, only the action or position that they map to for each instrument. No musician parses a score and translates each note to a letter and then each letter to an action, instead going directly from note to action.
Essentially, telling you the note letter with a glyph shape on top of the position on the stave is adding noise to the signal.
I'll admit I'm coming at it from a position where I'm perfectly comfortable with traditional notation, so part of the reason that it appears difficult is simply because it's unfamiliar, however the terseness of traditional notation and ability to read in one "parse" without forward- and back-skipping seems to give it the advantage.
That and over 300 years of existing music, too ;)
I don't know if it's true or not, as I view Hummingbird to be fixing things that aren't broken (is the difference between a whole note and a half that hard to suss?) and doesn't fix the things that are.
I'm not really sure what this means, but it sounds interesting.
This could work like that and only the time signature would need a brand new notation, so no I don't think it would be super hard to read.
It's possible (and fun) to play music where the rhythmic structure changes smoothly and continuously. But it's bloody impossible to notate and very difficult to orally communicate, so music cultures that depend on notation or oral communication have left this territory largely unexplored.
The handful of classical composers that have attempted this (Steve Reich, Brian Current, etc) have either abandoned western notation (Reich) or hacked on their own bespoke glyphs with their own situation-specific explanations (Current).
Electronic musicians can easily explore this space by writing their own software (Autechre, your humble author, etc). When your musicians are mechanical, you can explore all sorts of otherwise impractical permutations of theory.
Most delightful, though, are the non-western cultures that communicate musical ideas entirely without written notation or spoken language, and instead communicate musical ideas through play (Indonesian Gamelan, Australian Aborigines, etc). You get the ineffable human qualities that make music most beautiful, and the freedom to explore structural spaces that are difficult to capture with discrete/unitized/quantized notation and language.
It's really easy to orally communicate. You can just sing it!
(I know what you mean, is it's difficult to describe using a computer keyboard. Using a pen and paper it is really easy, given that you can just draw notes and time signature changes in the margin.)