Same with staff notation: If you want to communicate music to other people, learning the slightly clunky but universally-known written language is generally the way to go.
A certain Amazon Web Services comes to mind…
And I really want to see you communicate wobbling bass or fast random notes. Well you can - in Studel.cc - but is impossible in this notation. Same for complex drum sections (as in dnb, yes), and I can give you fair amount of other examples where medieval notation is useless.
Since you mention Drum and Bass, here's the Amen break in drum notation:
https://www.elephantdrums.co.uk/blog/guides-and-resources/am...
What you’re suggesting is actually hundreds of years old from well before the existence of computers or DAWs but still no one is using it.
It turns out that judging the relative length of lines is difficult at speed compared to reading distinct symbols.
Also that 88 note piano rolls are a very space inefficient way of representing music on a page. Even a chromatic stave would be inefficient.
That really matters for people that want to sight read with other musicians and have as much viewable as possible in a compact area.
Finally, standard notation is very rich and evolved, as you’d expect for something in active use for so long. It has extensions for lots of instruments.
When people say notation can’t show X it’s usually that they just don’t know it can.
The only downside is that you have to learn it.
I have friends who have actual degree in music composition from actual conservatories, so most of them, professionals, who actually compose and produce actual music for movies, for games, for whatever you want - well all of them use DAWs and all of them are on Ableton or Logic or something along the line, and exactly ZERO of this nonsensical notation that takes more effort to master than music itself.
Most of the new music that gets composed is written in gantt charts or tracker rows, believe it or not. Dig around, and you'll find out.
You can use a scrollable chart to display notes on screen and still want printed music for live use.
I'll bet you that if your friends are professionals and using live musicians to play their their compositions then they are distributing music to them in notation form not screenshots of Logic gantt charts.
There's nothing "nonsensical" about notation, it just serves a different purpose to a DAW screen.
If you want to read from paper and play what you read in real time, a Gantt chart is harder to use not easier. Use the right tool for the job.
Anything that can be played live, can be represented with music notation.
If anything does comes along that people want to do live then notation will be extended yet again to include it.
Besides, I bet five years from now s.o., some genz/genalpha/ gen++ will figure out that it is in fact much easier, and I can see the post climbing top positions as something novel...
So I would definitely take that bet against you.
One of the issues is that Gantt charts don't explicitly including rests as symbols. In standard notation everything adds up to the bar length including the rests.
They also fail a bit when it comes to showing discernable short notes and long notes in the same passage of music. That's fine in a DAW because you can zoom in and out but you can't really do that as you're playing.
Finally, learning the basics of musical notation ain't that hard. If it was we would have replaced it already.
Think about this way, computer based sequencing with Gantt charts has been common since at least the Atari ST. People know about it and they use it on a computer.
But they still don't want it for paper. Ask yourself why?
Do you really think it's because everyone is just stupid and old fashioned or could it be something else maybe?
I would bet that your clever "genz/genalpha/ gen++" would be more likely to introduce better teaching system than establish replacement for musical notation.
Well I hope than someone does.
Apart from that, I get your points, and these are valid arguments. I appreciate them, my original post had no intent of offending peoples or calling names.
Although I don't find that the notation (with the perfectly added timings) simplifies the whole 'playing instruments' thing. Said classical notation becomes crazy complex spiderweb of pause and notes when you add legatos, syncopation, triplets, arpegiation, etc. It is not as universal also, as you claim - the guitar players don't prefer tabs (barre/fret) notations; drummers use rhythm charts more often, than never.
I can agree certain instruments (such as claviers and alike) may benefit greatly from this notation, which was created for them precisely. But I totally disagree this is universally useful one, and yes - I've tried it, has a very steep learning curve, and I'm very good at telling notes apart by only hearing them. The notation stays in the way of performance for me personally.
Call me dumb if u want, but my gut feeling is my position aligns with the vast majority of modern, non-classical musicians.
But not sight-read when playing an actual instrument.
The instruments, music, and notation all evolved together in a shared tradition that make them well-suited for one another.
I'm sympathetic to that view; I spent all evening writing electronic music by programming it into a sequencer and spent a lot of my early career (starting in about 1999) programming using a piano roll.
But "easier for what purpose"? It'd be really tough to read at a gig off a piano-roll.
It took a long time to become comfortable with the fact that standard notation is mostly a suggestion that doesn't contain the years of context I need to get through a big band gig on double bass... but once I realized that my ability to sight read got good enough that I stopped wishing there were some other kind of notation to read.
So it is indeed a mixture of reading and improvisation. But this is aside from the choice of notation, which is just a practical matter of finding people who can read it fluently enough to perform from it.
I very much can and do read for a lot of instruments. In some situations (I played cello in string quartets for a couple of years) deviation from the written notes is limited to phrasing and dynamics and if you're playing weddings, the form gets shoved around a lot (eg don't re-start the cannon when the bride's mother is cued up to walk).
In most of the situations I've played in over the last couple of years, reading more like a teacher running off of "lecture notes" and less like an actor performing Shakespere- deveation is not just expected but required.
However, my memory and ear isn't so good I can predict the future or play a melody or form I have not heard- being able to read an idea and play it is important in the places I play.
And that's my point: standard notation never really catches all the facts about music, even in classical situations. But it's still a lot easier for me personally to read than some weird grid or table (though I have had to play charts that were almost that bad).
I've been using DAWs since Logic was owned by E-Magic. Much my early 2000s was spent writing music on a piano roll in Fruity Loops.
The reason I prefer to read standard notation is precisely because I know what the other alternatives are- in reality, it's not "piano rolls" or tracker data, but simple memorization or, like, chord charts- which works fine in a lot of places.
If you don't understand what I mean, then fine, but you might find the world a more interesting place when folks tell you how they have different experiences.
To use a common phrase among directors, I can indeed "read not write" (if you know you know). Playing a notated part as-written is super common in a lot of places and I do that, but you might find it interesting to know that this notation isn't the only way that standard notation is used in the world.
As a human who plays a lot of instruments for money in front of people, it is far easier for me to read and understand directions written in standard notation than it is to decode whatever the fuck is going on with a piano roll or, god forbid, guitar tab.
it is thus understandable when a certain set of characters are the only language that one reads/writes for his whole life it is perhaps easier to climb the steep learning curve once and then just stick with it. many musicians that I have known do exactly this - stick with classic notation, and never ever touch DAWs. producing these obnoxiously simple pop songs then sounds like PHD-level math.
totally get what you're saying about playing certain instruments, and the fact that some of them evolved or were created alongside said notation back in the day (hundreds, yet not thousands of years ago). when I play - I play mostly by memory - melodies, drums, and not the strings. this cannot be the case though if one works on a new score to play, indeed.
your point about chord charts and "read not write" will be remembered. merci.
p.s. yes, everyone is missing greatly on learning new stuff by being stubborn, perhaps myself including.
(I also feel obligated to point out that an A sharp and a B flat are not the same note, they just happen to have the same pitch IF you're using equal temperament. And even then, the difference is important and understanding it IMO gives you more freedom as a musician to write what you actually want to write.)