From the article and wiki page, I see claims that the sacred harp system makes things easier, but I can't actually see if or why I might've found it any easier to learn than the standard western notation I did learn.
So my guesses are that either it's not actually an improvement, or it's a small enough improvement on a good enough already internationally recognised system that there just hasn't been pressure for this niche form to take over in many places.
This is because a shape note singer learns to associate the shapes with the degrees of the scale. If a good shape note singer is given sheet music with just the shapes, with no staff, they can usually still sing it. But a shape note singer must "switch gears" every time the key changes or a note outside of the scale is used.
That's great if you process music in those terms... but as a mostly sight-reading instrumental musician, I'm thinking about what note is written, and what fingering that requires on my instrument. When playing from sheet music, it never really mattered much to me what key we were playing in, or if I was playing the fundamental or a third; maybe if I were better attuned, I might adjust my fingering ever so slightly, but if I did that, it was unconscious and by ear.
Now, when I was playing in Jazz band, improvising bass lines, the key makes a real big difference, because I'm going to play like 1-3-5-3 and such, but then I'm just working from a chord chart, not sheet music, and note shapes still don't help me.
I was never very good at choral music, and never thought in do-re-me, etc. But I can see it being useful for people trained in that; move the do to the new fundamental, and go from there. Not sure how (or if) they handle accidental sharps and flats that take you away from the key signature... maybe not, since the emphasis seems to be on simplification.
The other thing that was touched on is arrangement --- rather than a melody and harmonies arrangement, it seems like each part is arranged to sound nice on its own as well as together. This makes it easier to practice the parts individually --- sometimes harmony parts sound really iffy by themselves, so you don't want to practice it.
I don't think there's necessarily much lost by using these shapes more, but I don't think there's much gained. And of course, it adds more labor to typesetting or hand writing the scores --- until you get to computer based typesetting where you can probably convince the computer to do the shapes for you.
A couple of things you gain with shapenote notation…
You don't have to learn key signatures to sing from shapenote notation. So it's less work to pick it up.
Sightsinging is easier with shapenote notation. After a while, you internalise the intervals between the shapes – you just know what a fa up to a sol feels and sounds like.
You don't really need to learn them in roundnotes either? Like yeah, I know that C major is all natural, G major is one sharp, etc but I don't really need to know that, the key signature is on the left side of the staff. I guess you need to learn to apply those sharps and flats though, of course.
> Sightsinging is easier with shapenote notation. After a while, you internalise the intervals between the shapes – you just know what a fa up to a sol feels and sounds like.
This makes a lot of sense. I never really internalized intervals with scored music (although maybe a bit with playing from chord charts); I internalized the position on the staff to the fingering for the note. If I learned to sing this way, I'd internalize position on the staff to pitch; like B flat sounds like [hmmm] or something. I guess you're saying singing by intervals is easier than singing by named notes? But you can really do both with shaped notes, so all the better. :)
Yeah, there's a big difference between fingered instruments and singing. When you're playing on a fingered instrument, it's quite easy to apply incidentals – you get a feeling for the shape of the scale (and you practice scales to help with that). But unless you have perfect pitch, you're only _ever_ singing intervals. And good luck when the key changes from F# Major to Eb Minor halfway through the piece!
Another factor is that these singers likely do not play any other instruments, so they don't have any visual or tactile reference for sharps or flats – all keys are sung exactly the same way. When you're singing "by ear", you place the note in the scale you're singing.
In Sacred Harp, before a song is sung, somebody sings out the notes of the opening chord of the song using a combination of ear/feel/memory/practice/experience. The same song can be keyed a bit higher or lower depending on things like: energy of the singers, time of day, whether the last song was quite high or low, how easy the highest or lowest written notes are for the singers in the room. It is a skill! But most keyers will usually pitch songs written in F major at roughly the same pitch and will pitch songs written in D major differently to F major.
You can hear it on any recording but around 0:15 here is an example: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y8bKu52cv6o
Infinitely easier, unless one has perfect pitch. :)
I can't speak to which is easier to get to a competent level, but that doesn't sound any different to traditional notation - after a while you internalise the intervals between notes (but you're just looking at where the note is in the score's lines, along with any flats/sharps in the key or on the note - rather than shapes). But you still get to the point where you see two notes and "just know what [x to y] feels and sounds like".
1: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sacred_Harp#/media/File:Windha...
Major and minor keys use the same shapes / solfege system. The major scale is "fa, so, la, fa, so, la, mi, fa", while the minor scale uses the same syllables but starts on la. This means that the shapes always represent the same intervals (i.e. pattern of whole and half steps) whether a song is in a major or minor. It's hard to describe but makes sense when singing.
That's one reason shape notation never caught on; another reason is that the notation was introduced by publishers of American sacred music and not by, say, music conservatories.
Ear training is really difficult if you didn't grow up with it. Some intervals are easy ("Here comes the bride" for a perfect 4th, "My bonny lies over the ocean" for a 6th. There are lots of apps to learn this. If shape notes help, hey.
I’ve sung a lot of Sacred Harp and people with a background in this high status music just blend in with everyone else really.