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rikware commented on Hummingbird – A fresh take on music notation   hummingbirdnotation.com/... · Posted by u/pie
Steko · 12 years ago
"You basically need 3 elements to play an instrument: height (pitch), length (rhythm) and power (dynamics). And I can't imagine a better way to translate these informations than a traditional score."

(1) Hummingbird translates length in a trivially superior way to standard notation. No contest imho.

(2) I would say it does a somewhat better job on pitch as well. Both have huge shortcomings so I can well imagine far better systems.

Dynamics is a push so I'll say Hummingbird is an improvement in translation. I don't think it's a big enough improvement to climb the mountain of inertial standard notation has in it's favor. I'm typing this on Qwerty keyboard too, yep.

rikware · 12 years ago
I'm not convinced length is translated in a superior manner. Any spacing based rhythmic notation quickly gets ridiculous when you combine long and short notes. Space your demi-semi-quavers out far enough to read them (especially if you have to annotate them with hummingbird accidentals) then see how far apart the minims and semibreves are. Traditional notation tends to be set so the rhythm is suggested by the spacing but isn't prescribed.
rikware commented on Hummingbird – A fresh take on music notation   hummingbirdnotation.com/... · Posted by u/pie
rikware · 12 years ago
Like many have mentioned, this seems to add a lot of noise to notation. This isn't really demonstrated in the pieces they have on the site. I'd like to see what it looks like with something a bit more complex like a Bach Fugue. I feel like the rhythm notations, in particular, would become more difficult to parse as the rhythms become more complex.

Also, how do you notate tuplets?

u/rikware

KarmaCake day4March 18, 2013View Original