Related links
Login Form
Visitors since 18st Feb 2009:
Leszer Notation. An alternative music notation system.
The Leszer Notation is my personal attempt to make music more readable. It was developed to maximize the ease of reading of music and the resemblance to the traditional Notation. Although it can be used for any musical instrument, the main focus was piano (mainly because I don't play any other instrument). Diatonic system
The Leszer Notation is a diatonic system like the traditional notation. This means that the notes, which represent black and white keys in a piano, share the same position in the staff. Unlike traditional notation though, the color of the note determines whether the note represents a black or a white key. This releases the musician from the task of remembering which accidentals apply to each note. This property makes the key signature also superfluous. Octave Marker
In traditional notation, different clefs determine which tone in which octave is represented by each note. The Leszer Notation replaces the clef by a octave-marker, eliminating the problem of making the position of the note dependent of the clef without renouncing to the octave information.
With the traditional staff, two notes an octave apart from each other bear no visual similarity, which means that you have to learn to associate two or three sets of positions to the same note (one set per octave). The Leszer Notation overcomes this problem by substituting the traditional staff by a pattern of lines, which is repeated across octaves. This pattern of lines is composed of four thin lines and one thicker line, making a set of five lines like in the traditional notation. Through the position and the thickness of the lines the goal is achieved: each note has the same position over the line pattern, regardless of its octave. Summary
The main advantages of this notation are:
Interested? You can find more material here:
|
is is not the first time you point out this to be something peculiar. At this page we already talked about it more than a year ago:
http://groups.google.com/group/musicnotation/browse_thread/thread/73c562d65e81360d#
As for why I chose F as starting point: there is no really any advantage of using F against any other note, but F and C are very easy to identify in a keyboard and therefore I wanted them to be also as easy to identify in the notation.
I see how you make your diatonic staff octave repeating, but why did you choose to go from F line to F line?
- Pianos are not the only instruments in the world: True, I never stated the opposite.
- For singing is this notation definitely not so good: True, hence I pointed out that I focused on pianos.
- It's poor to reduce music to black and white keys: Your opinion. Piano music has only white and black keys, I think this limitation makes reading music easier, without sacrificing any information.
- There is a kind of octave indication: Yeah, the number inside the circle. I don't undestand exactly your point here.
- The look should differ significantly from traditional notation: Why? I designed it to be as similar as possible to the traditional notation.
- A note symbol consiting of a white notehead and a stem is always recognized as a half note: I guess you're right, but only if you are unable to be creative. Others don't have this problem, so probably you should say "most of the time" instead of "always".
- Nice attempt but without future: Thanks for your opinion, obviously I didn't reach up to you. Thanks for your comments anyway.
• What’s a ‘note’ in your opinion? What about stemless notes, e.g. whole notes or breves? Tie stemmed notes a dozen times to indicate their duration?
• Well, there’s a kind of octave indication. Check your own examples and you’ll discover your own faults.
• The look of your ‘sheet’ should—if at all—differ significantly from traditional notation. A note symbol consisting of a white notehead and a stem is always recognized as a half note—you have a couple of them in each measure—inscrutable.
Again—nice attempt, but without future.
Regards, Robert
NB: Make sure your website is readable in any browser—I had to reduce font size twice to view all content.