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Well, I think there are more basic notational issues too, which you can't ignore; they affect everyone. For example, the way that sharps and flats work makes no rational sense, except in the context of history of instruments and scales.

A lot of the notation of timing is cumbersome. Why the large number of wonky-looking symbols? Compare to how a lot of composition software shows timing with how long a position notes take up horizontally (music notation predates the concept of Cartesian coordinates!). It's a lot easier to work with, in all respects.

All this stuff builds up to about an unnecessary 3-month learning curve for kids learning music notation.

Is it worth changing a whole industry -- where everyone already knows the notation and there are countless works in notation -- to save all kids three months? Maybe, but probably not. That's the legacy system problem.

The nice thing -- compared to software systems -- is that none of this stuff is really all that complex.




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