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Comment by rmk2 | Hacker News Reader

They are only "proficient" in a very limited sense, then. I'm sure we can argue semantics here, but a musician needs to understand the concepts that govern music. And these concepts can only be understood and visualised by using notation.

The circle of fifth, musical modes and any advanced form of transposition, alongside the basic theory involved in cords, their components and their succession are necessary for a musician. [1]

Technical proficiency does not make you a musician, just like being able to type really well doesn't make you a programmer if you can't...read code.

[1]: This may not apply for percussionists, but even there, playing together with others necessitates the same understanding.

Side note: it's per se

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> And these concepts can only be understood and visualised by using notation.

That's not true at all. One can have a deep understanding of all the elements of music you mentioned without knowing any traditional notation. Maybe it's understood in terms of modular arithmetic and fractions and visualized as such, or visualized in terms of a piano or an abstract spiral structure or not even visualized at all. Traditional notation is only one possible representation (an a fairly arcane one at that); others are certainly possible and don't preclude deep understanding.

I am well aware that Western notation is not the only one, however, I cannot see how music theory works without any notation. Whatever form of notation you choose to encode information in will still have to be decoded, i.e. read. The reason why some notations have been more durable than others is the relative amount of information that can be stored.

Tabs for guitar and bass are just one example of a deficient mode of notation, since they cannot provide all information necessary to play something.

If you want to forego all notation, however, understanding theory becomes even harder than with a deficient notation. For that, you'd have to solely rely on somebody's ear in order to explain roots, scales and afterwards more complex topics. The only other option is teaching visually, which ist somewhat possible with a guitar, and somewhat possible with a piano, but is not transferable to another instrument afterwards.

All forms of notation are deficient. If you want proof, just listen to a muzak (elevator music) cover of your favorite pop song. It is correct according to a professional transcriber's notation, but it loses nuances and imperfections that classical music notation doesn't cover.

You are right that tablature by nature does not cover rhythm and that is a gap that won't even get you to muzak. However, there is nothing about classical music notation that makes it an ideal form for representing all forms of musical sound. How would you notate a Jay-Z or Skillrex song?

those are actually pretty easy. The only issue with skrillex would be identifying an instrument to play the notes, but other than that he's low on the polyphony scale (pun intended).

When I clicked this I was hoping for a notation that describes midi values against timbre (filters, distortion etc), and blends it with traditional notation, I think that is a missing link between old and new - but rewriting accepted notation for generations? That's like replacing a-Z with some sort of base 26 number and saying its easier to learn.

I was hoping for a notation that describes midi values against timbre

Dream on. You could show controller automation lanes as digital audio workstations do, but those are only as informative as they are consistent with some scheme like General MIDI and a standard sound architecture. Once you start resampling or using modular routings any kind of timbral notation schema goes out the window.

I've seen attempts at this, and if you email I'll try and dig you out a reference but the particular book I'm thinking of is in a box in my attic right now. However I can't say I've found them very informative. When I think about timbre I think about the whole synth architecture and program it in my head, for many timbral ideas it's just a matter of walking up to the synth later and dialing it in.

Most electronic musicians stick with simple diatonic scales or within modes, at most switching in and out of relative minor. Harmonic complexity and timbral complexity don't go very well together.

I would absolutely love if you could post the reference of this book here - and I'm sure a couple of other folks would as well! It sounds quite interesting. Thanks a bunch.

I went up and had a look, but haven't turned it up yet. I'm supposed to be getting new shelves in the next week or so and getting all those books up onto them, so I'll keep an eye out.

> They are only "proficient" in a very limited sense, then. I'm sure we can argue semantics here, but a musician needs to understand the concepts that govern music. And these concepts can only be understood and visualised by using notation.

That's pretty narrow. Some people aren't visual thinkers and don't need to see something on the written page to understand it. I personally know several musicians who have a deep understanding of music theory, but don't read music. You can explain and understand modes, transposition, chords, etc without having to write it down.

> I personally know several musicians who have a deep understanding of music theory, but don't read music

"don't" or "can't" read music? I think this is a critical distinction. If the answer is the latter I would still argue that they cannot have a deep understanding of music theory, since a major component of music theory is generally accepted to involve understanding notation.

Edit: I can accept that there are many aspects to music theory that go beyond just notation, but I am skeptical of 'deep understanding'.

So would you consider the various blind musicians (such as Ray Charles) not real musicians? After all they can't read music.

Edit: I do otherwise agree with you that a full musician should understand much of the theory of music, and not just be able to repeat a group of notes that they heard (that is, they should be more than just a human tape recorder).

>these concepts can only be understood and visualised by using notation.

That attitude makes you an ass. That might be blunt, but it's true. I can't imagine someone who is actually musical thinking that for even a second.

That is very wrong... You are implying that the concept of music can only be understood through theory and knowledge of the musical notation. And that's just plain wrong because there has been thousands of famous musicians who cannot read music.

One doesn't need to know musical notation to understand any of those ideas. Related, one can learn how to read music and never learn any of that stuff.

You can understand music without being able to read music. I know a fairly famous guitarist who can tell you all about voicings, harmonization, and any other bit of music theory you'd care to know about. He uses all this to write and improvise music. You put a piece of music in front of him and he'll take five minutes to figure it out. He'll be counting lines and spaces and humming notes to do that.

How is "counting lines and spaces" not reading?

Technically it is "reading music", but it's so slow that learning a piece takes much longer than it should. Over the years I've had a couple motivational spurts where I felt like playing piano again, and lack of frequent exposure to sheet music slowed my reading skills down to a crawl.

Reading music is the ability to look at a line of music and being able to hear it in your head, or at the very least play it back almost immediately on the instrument of your choice. My buddy's music "reading" ability is more on the order of a kid who doesn't really read but knows a few words. He's effectively illiterate, but he's not stupid and can figure it out with difficulty.

You confusing musicianship with musicology. I'm a better musicologist than I am a musician (which is to say I understand music theory quite a bit better than I can play it), and I really think your claim that 'these concepts can only be understood and visualized by using notation' is utter bullshit.

You need to be able to read code to write it, you do not need to be able to read musical notation to play it.

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