Here are some shortcomings I thought of immediately.
- Traditional notation is instrument-agnostic.
- It may be easily printable, but a staff is easily writable. With just a pen and a ruler, I can produce a neat staff in ~10 seconds. The ruler is optional if I don't
care about prettiness. With this, you more or less have to print it: getting the spacing right by hand would be quite difficult.
- I have mixed feelings about the the traditional representation of key. Missing a sharp or flat in an unfamiliar key is probably my most common error when
reading sheet music. OTOH, The traditional notation tells me which sharps and flats to use. With this system, I have to already know the structure of C# major if I want to noodle around (always). This would seem to be more hostile to beginners.
- The precision issue has already been brought up many times, but I would add that all the lost information is an archival disaster. It might seem superfluous since
we have recordings, but given the rate of change in technology, access to data in old formats is by no means a certainty. Since this notation basically requires you to have heard the song in order to play it, it would become incomprehensible pretty quickly.
It seems to me that most of the complexity of musical notation reflects the "essential" complexity of actually playing the music. For example, consider key: even at the level of simple rock songs, a basic grasp of "key" is absolutely essential, and if you're playing a piano, this means you have to know which sharps and flats to use. If this seems pedantic, consider that the main difficulty of learning to play a piece is dexterity. It's going to take a bit of effort just to make your fingers hit the damn keys. Since this effort has to take place anyway, the little bit of extra effort to learn notation doesn't seem like much to ask. Besides, the amount of notation required to play pop songs is relatively small - that rendition of "Let it Be" contains about 10 symbols, most of which are related.
This isn't to say that traditional notation is perfect, or even good. It is rather baroque, and I'm open to a "redesign," as long as it really solves the problem. This redesign isn't useless, but its scope of usefulness seems so limited that I'm not really sure it's worth it.
- Traditional notation is instrument-agnostic.
- It may be easily printable, but a staff is easily writable. With just a pen and a ruler, I can produce a neat staff in ~10 seconds. The ruler is optional if I don't care about prettiness. With this, you more or less have to print it: getting the spacing right by hand would be quite difficult.
- I have mixed feelings about the the traditional representation of key. Missing a sharp or flat in an unfamiliar key is probably my most common error when reading sheet music. OTOH, The traditional notation tells me which sharps and flats to use. With this system, I have to already know the structure of C# major if I want to noodle around (always). This would seem to be more hostile to beginners.
- The precision issue has already been brought up many times, but I would add that all the lost information is an archival disaster. It might seem superfluous since we have recordings, but given the rate of change in technology, access to data in old formats is by no means a certainty. Since this notation basically requires you to have heard the song in order to play it, it would become incomprehensible pretty quickly.
It seems to me that most of the complexity of musical notation reflects the "essential" complexity of actually playing the music. For example, consider key: even at the level of simple rock songs, a basic grasp of "key" is absolutely essential, and if you're playing a piano, this means you have to know which sharps and flats to use. If this seems pedantic, consider that the main difficulty of learning to play a piece is dexterity. It's going to take a bit of effort just to make your fingers hit the damn keys. Since this effort has to take place anyway, the little bit of extra effort to learn notation doesn't seem like much to ask. Besides, the amount of notation required to play pop songs is relatively small - that rendition of "Let it Be" contains about 10 symbols, most of which are related.
This isn't to say that traditional notation is perfect, or even good. It is rather baroque, and I'm open to a "redesign," as long as it really solves the problem. This redesign isn't useless, but its scope of usefulness seems so limited that I'm not really sure it's worth it.