Music Theory for the 21st-Century Classroom
musictheory.pugetsound.eduhttps://musictheory.pugetsound.edu/ link takes you to the homeworks/assignments and everything else for a self-study/auto-didact to follow along. Neat!
I can't recommend enough Absolutely Understand Guitar[0], it's free and taught me music theory than any course I've ever tried.
[0] - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Gg1L-sBIxnY&list=PLJwa8GA7pX...
The fact that the equation 440 * 2^((n-49)/12) is nowhere to be found makes me strongly disagree.
The history around how 440hz came to be the standard is pretty interesting in itself.
Very cool but what does this have to do with "21st-Century Classroom"? Is that just a meaningless phrase to make it sound modern, not old-fashioned?
There is a whole paragraph in the preface about why he titled it “21st-Century Classroom”. The first sentence contains one very good reason: it’s a full year college music theory textbook with an open license.
The other reasons cited are:
“This text differs from other music theory textbooks by focusing less on four–part (SATB) voiceleading and more on relating harmony to the phrase. Also, in traditional music theory textbooks, there is little emphasis on motivic analysis and analysis of melodic units smaller than the phrase. In my opinion, this led to students having difficulty with creating melodies, since the training they are given is typically to write a “melody” in quarter notes in the soprano voice of part writing exercises. When the assignments in those texts ask students to do more than this, the majority of the students struggle to create a melody with continuity and with appropriate placement of harmonies within a phrase because the text had not prepared them to do so.”
If you subtract the "meaningless phrase", the title of the book is just "Music Theory". Do this for every book written about music, art, mathematics and you'll just have a lot of books with identical and quite dull titles.
Insightful. The title being more to distinguish than to describe.
"Music Theory, Bells and Whistles"
First review with that as a title:
”Beware, this is just a general book of modern music theory masquerading as a guide specially for the bell or whistle player”.
"BaW Music Theory", for that click-bait effect.
I guess the 21st century classroom is the free online classroom you connect to from your portable device
It has embedded youtube videos of examples. I certainly didn't have that in my 20th century theory text books and it would have been very helpful!
This resource looks excellent
It's a new presentation, an online hypertext, and uses YouTube publications of 21st Century music as example.
Could just be because it is the 21st century and this was written for classroom use.
I dunno. On first glance, for a "21st-Century" textbook, this seems to place a high emphasis on classical music theory, and moves very highly influential modern styles to the back burner -- notably jazz. And there is essentially no discussion of music theory in other cultures (middle eastern, african, east asian, indian), nor current analysis of pop and rock music.
I have a BA in Music Theory, I think maybe you should consider again. First off, Jazz relies on the same fundamentals and extends them, everything from Classical music is somewhat relevant in Jazz. So if it's only Jazz theory exclusive to classical, it'd be an advanced book indeed.
Second, it literally has a chapter on Popular Music and another on Jazz Theory, and "Classical" is not found in its chapter titles. So I don't think your critique is accurate.
Third, history and time matter. "Theory" came first in "classical" contexts, with codified rules pre-dating even Bach. Jazz was a much later invention that built upon these and other traditions. Both of the Jazz theory books I used in my BA in Music Theoryhad many elementary topics already covered in Classical contexts.
Yes, I think people have this fantasy that Jazz has anything new to offer in terms of music theory. That's false, everything used in Jazz was already part of the practice of classical music sometimes centuries ago. For example, improvisation was common in Mozart time and extended chords were common already in the 19th century. The only difference may be the terminology used in Jazz circles, but this is something that can be learned later if you want to specialize in that style.
I’m a jazz player but not a theory expert. A lot of what jazz is about is rhythmic, and the elevation of improvisation to a very high level.
I know a lot of people with music degrees. This is a widely acknowledged problem. It doesn't have a simple answer, especially as academic music programs are shrinking. You can't teach everything except at a survey level. You have to find faculty who can teach new topics at a college level. And students who are prepared to dive in. Music students tend to already be damn good musicians by the time they start college.
If programming is an analogy, it's said that once you've learned your first language, you can learn any other language in a jiffy. Also, a lot of higher level learning is "learning how to learn." Maybe it's better to have a standardized "first language" that students can learn in depth, and then let them move into other areas at their own discretion.
I don't have a college degree, but for me, classical music lessons were a great preparation for learning jazz, and I've picked up pop, rock, and folk music on my own. In fact, on the instrument that I play, the double bass, gaining proficiency and experience in jazz without that background is a brutal learning curve.
Anecdotally, I know a few people who spent decades working on and/or teaching middle eastern music in conservatories abroad, and they struggle greatly to find music departments in the US who will hire them. A problem I've seen firsthand is that there are a lot of senior professors who teach it hand wavy versions of it filtered through whatever books Euro orientalists wrote mid century and are threatened at the prospect of someone coming in there who has studied and practiced it for years in places where it's more of a living art form cutting into their position of expertise.
Where this ties in to your point is that part of the reason they really don't want experts is that they rarely have someone whose job it is to teach middle eastern music. They might have a guitar teacher with some experience with oud, a flute teacher who can passably play ney (usually with awful intonation), etc. For most schools, these other types of music are "add-ons" that they have their existing faculty teach.
There is a big problem in music of tradition being elevated too much. If it wasn't used 300 years ago, or is changed in anyway it must be bad. (except the brass is allowed to add valves even though those are modern)
Analyzing jazz voice leading would be extremely difficult without understanding the basic rules of harmonic analysis from the common practice period it evolved from and built on.
It sounds like what you're looking for is closer to a general survey of music traditions for listeners.
Jumping straight to jazz theory would be like skipping all chemistry prerequisites to get to Organic Chemistry first because it's more relevant for modern biochem/human medical treatments than stuff like molarity or stoicheometry.
> And there is essentially no discussion of music theory in other cultures (middle eastern, african, east asian, indian)...
To me, that above ^ looks like the biggest gap.
To be fair, the book doesn't claim to demonstrate theory of the "world music" (sic, a phrase as bad as it sounds).
My (brief and shallow) understanding is that most scholars of music in the western world just do not have enough knowledge to talk intelligently about non-western genres. Exceptions exist, of course, but they are quite rare.
[Other reason is that there is a lot of gate-keeping. I've seen that in Hindustani/Carnatic classical studies, FWIW, which is one my areas of interest]
I don't understand why this standard is always applied to westerners. When we go to other countries, are they explaining all the fundamentals of western music in addition to the theories of their own? "Yeah our students in Boston don't know anything about Carnatic rhythm, but over in Bengal they all learn counterpoint and fugue before they learn the traditional ornaments"
I suspect given western dominance in economics others have exposure to western music traditions. I wouldn't expect exposure to traditions other than their own and western.
Indeed, the musical traditions of western Europe and Africa, forged together in the Americas, dominate world culture. Turn on the radio anywhere in the world and you will hear the influences of jazz, rock, funk, samba, hip-hop, etc.
"Oh no, math degree... Where is 2+2=4?"
SVG illustrations, too? Delicious! This is how an online textbook should be done. Bravo.
I've also been recommended to Open Music Theory, as a beginner to theory. Has anyone compared the two? https://viva.pressbooks.pub/openmusictheory/front-matter/int...
Tangentially related: what would be the equivalent of this, but for learning how to play piano? "Piano learning for the 21st-Century middle age guy".
Any help is appreciated! Including a device, or a service, that could be particularly useful.
Not really a device or a service, but I'd recommend learning the names of the notes and then just tinkering around. If you notice some patterns or wonder about specific things that come up in the course of that, look it up. If your hand starts to hurt, look up what to do differently. Etc. You'll manage it quite well with that method.
Suffers from the same problem that all music theory texts seem unable to avoid: they require the reader to simply accept a bunch of random facts to memorize with no context.
Example: memorize the major scale as a series of whole and half steps but we won’t provide you with any context or motivation for why this is so.
Similar: in a major scale all notes are played and none are skipped or repeated. Except if your scale goes D–E–F#–G, in which case you skip F. The only way for this to be correct is apparently we consider F and F# to be the same note for purposes of scales even though this directly contradicts a previous section.
I was expecting a “21st century” music theory reference to have an emphasis on building intuition. Music theorists are apparently allergic to good pedagogy.
> Example: memorize the major scale as a series of whole and half steps but we won’t provide you with any context or motivation for why this is so.
I recommend "What Makes Music Sound Good?" by Prof. Dmitri Tymoczko: https://dmitri.mycpanel.princeton.edu/files/pdfs/MUS105hando...
There is a part near the beginning where he derives the diatonic scale from first principles. (There is a sequel as well, and a book if you prefer to read it in book form)
>There is a part near the beginning where he derives the diatonic scale from first principles.
I skimmed through the whole article and only found some brief mention of Helmholtz, which no clear route from his research to the scale.
As a better derivation, I recommend this paper by William Sethares:
https://sethares.engr.wisc.edu/paperspdf/consonance.pdf
Or the informal summary version:
https://sethares.engr.wisc.edu/consemi.html
But note that Sethares's work assumes the Plomp and Levelt curve is correct, which is only approximately true. In practice there is also "higher order beating", which causes additional dissonance at ratios close to small integer ratios. This means the most accurate model of dissonance combines Sethares's approach with ratio complexity as in just intonation. This is backed by listening tests:
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-024-45812-z
The best informal overview and demonstration for this concept I know of is this Youtube video:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iqxfE2nfGhY
Note also that there's a strong cultural/training component to dissonance perception. To minimize this you should ignore the preferences of musicians and only ask untrained listeners.
I'm starting to read the course at the beginning, and a depressing aversion to explaining why and not only what seems apparent, probably motivated by a desire for brevity and informality that also causes serious defects. For example:
- 1.3 grand staff: "Note that middle C is always clearly notated in either the upper or lower staff and never floats between the two staves." It doesn't tell that the choice of which staff the notes belong to indicates which hand should play them.
- 1.4 accidentals "... are characters that can be placed before notes to raise or lower them." Not to reuse staff locations to distinguish the notes one needs to use.
- 1.5 Enharmonic notes: "When two notes sound the same but are written as two different notes on the staff, the written notes are said to be enharmonic." This is totally wrong, not merely maddening, but before discussing scales any decent explanation is impossible.
- 3.3 Scale Degree Names: in the middle of chapter 3 (minor scales) because there's no f** definition of what a scale is.
- 6.1 Introduction to Triads: "A triad consists of three notes stacked in consecutive thirds. A triad is also called a chord as well as a harmony. (Harmony also refers to chord progressions.)"
It's sad because many other places benefit from the concise and elegant treatment, for example:
- 5.5 Augmented and Diminished Intervals: "Augmented intervals are one half step larger than perfect or major intervals and diminished intervals are one half step smaller than perfect or minor intervals."
I don't know your background but I've talked about music theory with a lot of non-musicians who tend to have the same complaints. A lot of what you describe I learned when I was like 5. I don't really think about it anymore, it is second nature on any instrument I play. Even if I don't know the instrument, if you show me how the notes work I can play any scale without really putting any thought into it. This is supposed to be a college level text book. Likely, if you have to think that much about how a major scale works you probably don't have an adequate background to study this. It's not that someone can't but it'll obviously be more work.
These sort of traditional music courses are designed around understanding western classical music. There are some scientific reasons for the way things are but they weren't developed by scientists. This sort of music theory will 100% help build an intuition into western, mostly classical but not exclusively classical, music.
If you want to know why the major scale is the way it is, go take math classes, a few physics courses will likely help as well, probably by the time you're in graduate school you'll understand it and can explain it better than 99% of musician. It'll help you in no way in creating music.
Essentially, what these complaints boil down to would be something similar to someone trying to learn to drive by first learning how an entire car works. It might be interesting to some, but it isn't the point.
Yes, this is what has always blocked me from learning even basic music theory.
I get that maybe it's just the way it is, perhaps the underlying logic is so complex that it would be counterproductive to present it up front. I'm not saying that the theory should adapt to my pet peeves. But I'm very prone to learn things by understanding first principles and building from there. Having to memorize scales where suddenly you need to skip keys or use black keys without much apparent logic is a real deterrent for me considering it's something I learn as a hobby.
This is also the reason why I like algebra, calculus, etc. but dislike statistics... in algebra or calculus you start from first principles and work up from there understanding everything. In statistics (at least the way I was taught) you are shown the formula for the probability density of the Gaussian distribution and need to accept it as an act of faith.
> But I'm very prone to learn things by understanding first principles and building from there.
I'm the same but never had an issue with music theory, because I came to it backwards from just playing. I learned to play by having fun with the instrument, and then the theory I learned afterwards felt like just being given names for the things that had become obvious through playing. What I'm saying is it will click if you let the music be your first principle.
The problem is that understanding everything from first principles is often the longest and least efficient road to learning the things that are actually useful.
Psychoacoustics is interesting, but it's not something that really helps you become a better musician for at least a couple of _decades_ of your journey. For the vast majority of students, it's a complete waste of time.
It's extremely unlikely that you learnt algebra or calculus from first principles, either. You started from the other end, learning the tools and skills to put it to good use, and then dove deeper with those tools already under your belt. Musicianship is no different.
what you seem to look for is a book about psychoacoustics. but even on that level you'll just have to accept that for some unknown reason humans consider certain pitch ratios as pleasant and even those that sound unpleasant have their place to express dissonance and tension and it's culturally dependent also. eventually there will be first attempts at a general music theory of which the western key based frameworks are special cases.
Depends on your stats class. The one I took in college started from first principles, and was focused on proofs.
We recently had a long discussion about this. I come from the “music theory makes a lot more sense once one understands that 2:1, 3:2, 4:3 sound really whole and good to the human ear, 5:4 has a little more tension, and 6:5 has even more tension” school of thought [1] but for other people it is a distraction from understanding basic stuff like “this is a minor scale”. See here for the long discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49541888
[1] I understand ancient scales were 3-limit instead of 5-limit scales, and that modern equal temperament has thirds which significantly deviate from 5:4 and 6:5, but once polyphony became a thing, 5-limit temperament made a lot more sense because they reduce beating.
Man that top comment is such a combination of "sneering to show off" and completely wrong that I'm shocked I'm not on reddit.
Recommending The Jazz Theory Book to someone starting from scratch, especially someone self studying, is like recommending CLRS or TAOCP to someone who asks "I'm curious about learning the basics of algorithms and data structures, any good books for self study?" And of course that happens all the time too. Chapter 1 is "here's what intervals like major 3rd and perfect fifths are", Chapter 2 is "here's the major scale and all its diatonic modes and ii-V-I progressions", Chapter 3 is "here's how you might use the Phyrigian mode to play over a Sus flat-9 chord" (pg 48).
Recommending Schoenberg and Messiaen as steps to get a sufficient surface of topics covered for "music theory" is performance art in its own regard. Bravo!
Yeah, that guy tried to argue that Grade 5 ABRSM [1] is “very basic”. Like, excuse me no. “Very basic” is knowing the notes in a major key, and knowing the I IV V chord progression, as well as a basic 4/4 rhythm (8th note hi hats, quarter note kick drum, snare on alternating quarter notes).
I IV V chord progressions and major scales are basic enough I can explain them in a 400 word post from first principles (where no music theory exists except the assertion that the human ear finds the pitch ratios of 2/1, 3/2, 4/3, 5/4, and 6/5 pleasing to the ear, that the human ear wants at least three notes in a chord, and that the human ear wants at least three chords in a progression).
Those books get very complicated very quickly, and cover music that only a relatively few people actually listen to. It was pure gatekeeping, and I’m disappointed people pointing that out were voted down. Not a good moment for Hacker News. It would be like me recommending Lisp or Forth for one’s first programming language.
[1] https://www.abrsm.org/sites/default/files/2023-09/music-theo...
Having not really used these grading systems growing up, ABRSM is odd to me in general. Has a very very low ceiling for difficulty, at least for piano. I never really know what is appropriate for what grades, especially given that the UK grading system covers MUCH more complex material.
But yes, it takes an amazing amount of arrogance to look at a simple exploration of music theory from first principles and respond with "this isn't music theory"
> I come from the “music theory makes a lot more sense once one understands that 2:1, 3:2, 4:3 sound really whole and good to the human ear, 5:4 has a little more tension, and 6:5 has even more tension” school of thought
Ah, well, that makes sense. I come from the "music theory is a quintessentially rigid, British-Schoolroom-coded subject that emphasizes rote memorization over actual understanding" school of thought. The musical equivalent to Americans requiring their children to recite the Pledge of Allegiance before they can even understand what the words mean.
The student seeking to build their understanding asks: why is the order of sharps FCGDAEB? Why is the mode with a sharp 4th note the Lydian mode?
Music theory responds: Because fuck you, that's why.
> The student seeking to build their understanding asks: why is the order of sharps FCGDAEB? Why is the mode with a sharp 4th note the Lydian mode?
> Music theory responds: Because fuck you, that's why.
Those are questions that music theory will eventually answer. However knowing the answer to them is not very useful for anything music and so ends up being uninteresting even though when you ask it seems interesting. I can derive the order of sharps - or at least I think I can (I know my circle of fifths) - but realistically the isn't useful for anything and so I won't bother.
Which is to say music education is mostly focused on making good music, and generally keeps building on that. Theory should be learned as it is useful, and I think works best when every point you learn results in the lightbulb "so that is why I do X all the time"
Some subjects are hard. Music notation is mathematical notation that is optimized for ease of consumption by notation experts. It is not optimized for learning.
Same with many activities. Pedagogy and real-world use are different goals. Result is a confusing and horrible learning curve.
Indeed, in the typical progression, a music student is a fluent reader by the time they take a theory course. Reading was probably part of their entrance audition.
Maybe their needs to be a “music theory for engineers” like we have “physics for poets.”
My background is a field most would consider "hard", so I'm no stranger to jargon or dense notation optimized for real-world use. So, I don't buy the excuse that you can't have both good pedagogy and usable notation.
Some people are okay with being told "memorize this list of arbitrary factoids" and there's nothing wrong with that, I'm just not one of those people who can pretend that that's good pedagogy.
Even more, my experience as a person raised by and sometimes married to professional music pedegogs and who plays in a lot of professional situations is that the "theory" itself really isn't that hard when we understand the praxis.
I don't think rote memorization is super useful for me as a player- I've heard a lot of analysis that sounds "accurate" but often it doesn't follow my own thoughts and understandings.
If folks are playing, that raises questions about "why this here" and it's nice to have vocabulary for to understand. But I see a lot of folks (there are several in this thread) who think that is a bit backwards- that somehow folks could start with an abstract rule set and learn much. If that's the view on what is happening then I agree that "teaching theory is impossibly hard".
But if learning to play comes before the theory about why we play what we play the situation is a lot easier.
Almost all the theory I have comes from applying the stuff from "theory" books to what I do.
I learned what a secondary dominant sounds like by learning I should stay in an A chord instead of an Am in the turn around in G major blues songs long before I got the concept of what that C# might do to the local tonicity of the tune from whatever theory book.
And I think that's a reasonable way to learn: start playing whatever, try to pick up something you can read for (I read double bass and clarinet pretty well) take up a lot of piano (weather you read it or not), play a bunch with musicians, and eventually the arbitrary facts about your practice sort themselves out.
As I said in a different comment: every point in music theory should result in a "so that is why I already am doing [point]". Well maybe there is a use for "hmm, that is interesting, I wonder how [some song] would sound if I did [new point]." However abstract theory isn't useful for putting together good music. It can help understanding why music is great, and it can help polish good music into great.
Can't spell classical without "class". If you like classical music and don't find at least parts of the culture obnoxious and elitist, I'd worry for you.
You might enjoy this unfinished project of mine: https://fakestory.acjay.com/
It's the culmination of years spent chasing an explanation of where all this stuff came from.
Highly informed by Tymoczko, who was mentioned in a sibling reply, and a bunch of other thinkers on the topic.
I will check it out, thank you.
Glad I'm not the only one with this complaint.
I've been playing music for 20 years, learned and forgotten plenty of music theory. The only way I actually "grok" it, is by re-deriving the whys, but then that slows my learning to a crawl and I begin to forget the earlier lessons.
The memorization doesn't work well for me. I can read music, I can derive scales and chords, but the memorized knowledge of "this chord is technically the same as this one so we'll start calling things other things but it all means the same thing" gets me totally lost.
Yes, I was hoping for something different, but as best I can tell this is a slight rehash on more of the same.
Ableton's teachings are far more interesting in my opinion, even if extremely more limited.
A better way to think about it is that all letters in the musical alphabet are represented in a musical scale. Some are sharp or flat
D major: D E F♯ G A B C♯
D minor: D E F G A B♭ C
Db major: D♭ E♭ F G♭ A♭ B♭ C
Db minor: D♭ E♭ F♭ G♭ A♭ B♭♭ C♭
Sure, I knew what they meant. But if they are sloppy with their terminology on the knucklehead stuff then it doesn’t bode well for the esoteric stuff to follow.
My point was not to showcase my confusion, rather to reinforce the fact that music theory texts are just generally low quality, and music theory as a field seems to be okay with that.
but it doesnt say that. you paraphrased the book in a way that makes it look sloppy but it was your paraphrased version which is sloppy. if you read through the book when it defines this stuff, it introduces accidentals as "characters that can be placed before notes to raise or lower them" and then in the section on the major scale it says "All major scales use the notes of the musical alphabet in order; no notes are skipped and no notes occur twice." i dont think this is ambiguous
"Music theory" is not a theory per se, it's mostly a fancy way of saying "rules for notating piano".
In the linked textbook the real actual theory only starts in chapter 33, "Set Theory". (The exposition of the actual theory is pretty bad, though - zero explanation of what consonance/dissonance is, where the 12 notes come from and the reason why our particular scales exist.)
Book: Music Theory for the 21st-Century Classroom
by Robert Hutchinson
Happy to see serialism covered! thanks
How can this be fairly labelled "for the 21st-Century Classroom" when even 20th-century techniques aren't adequately represented? Electronic and computer music techniques are conspicuously absent. Microtonality has a rich history as well which is not even footnoted here.
Indeed. Like so many books of this type, better title would be "Our Music Theory for the 21st-Century Classroom".
I was hoping to see if by "21st-Century" it meant "music theory that is applicable to the way modern music is generally written and interacted with". With details on things like microtonal music, increased focus on rhythmic theory, an increased appreciation for the role that timbre plays in the sound of music, the theoretical frameworks that underpin long standing musical traditions of other cultures and contrasting what makes each musical theory unique as a way of better understanding both western theories of music as well as the breadth of musical expression....
Nope! Just the same old, well beaten, rotting corpse of a horse in the form of a musical theory that entirely exists to prop up schenkerian analysis. The one that that racist, elitist music programs have been teaching since well before the 21st-Century. (The way you can tell is because it includes figured bass, which is totally irrelevant to any discussion that isn't about the harmonic style of 18th century european musicians.)
God forbid I want to, oh I don't know, make music that's similar to the kind that I actually listen to on a regular basis? Better understand its underpinnings and what makes it work in the ways that it does? No. Figured bass.
Somebody ate Adam Neely's video hook line and sinker.
I do agree, but I don't know how many generations will die before we can overturn the ridiculousness of the current approach. Even the book linked has some nice flowcharts of harmonic function, given as a useful tool for analysis and composing. Sadly, the theory fails almost instantly, defeated by the highly experimental niche piece of music called "Hotel California".
However, bringing race and class into it, while true, does not help the argument, as most people you're trying to convince are already fully convinced of the supremacy of the German masters.
> The one that that racist, elitist music programs have been teaching since well before the 21st-Century.
Are you this guy? https://youtu.be/u2NKodxRO4A?si=xdOd7I1f_rnFN85C&t=255
> On the piano there are 88 notes.
88 keys (usually) and unlimited notes.
I suppose a 1 key piano can have unlimited notes, at least until the key wears out.
I hated Battlestar Galactica for this.
Am I the only one who thinks that the classic music notation is 3x harder to learn than the basic music theory (without the rules of notation)?
I think that you can learn music theory (to play an instrument or to compose music e.g. in a "piano roll tool" / MIDI editor) much faster if you skip the classic notation. And I think that it is even better to learn the notation AFTER you understand the music theory.
I even made my own guide to music :D https://www.jampea.com/learn
This is a bit off topic, but since you mentioned your guide: I hope this doesn't come off as hostile, but the guide you linked contains a number of inaccuracies and oversimplifications - it's kind of naive in an endearing way, but also leaves the reader with the impression that it covers all there is to music. I guess what I'm saying is it's fine to restrict yourself in what you include in the guide, or even simplify things, but it should be clear that the topic (i.e. music) is far richer and more complex.
To give an example, this it of course not true:
> Only a limited set of frequencies is used in music. All these frequencies (that exist in music) can be played by a piano.
Yeah, I think a good discussion on music theory is starting from first principles, explaining Pythagorean tuning, then explaining 5-limit just intonation, the explaining we compromised on 12-tone equal temperament because it made tuning and changing keys a lot simpler, at the expenses of some notes being slightly out of tune (e.g. the minor and major thirds deviate by about 15 cents from their 5-limit just intonated “ideal” tunings).
You're saying its not possible to tune a piano to an arbitrary set of 88 pitches?
Aside from that not being what was said (the parent’s pull-quote is wrong in multiple ways), it is in fact not possible to tune a piano to any arbitrary set of 88 pitches without changing the design so dramatically and fundamentally that it would no longer be a piano. The triangular shape of a grand determined by the strings lengths, the placement of the pins, the use of double/triple strings in some frequency ranges, and design of the sound board, all permit only a very limited range of frequencies for each key on the keyboard. You very obviously cannot take an existing piano and tune it to 88 keys of A0, nor to 88 keys of C9.
That's clearly not what was meant, even without the context of this following bit:
> To describe tones that exist in music, we can describe tones that exist on a piano. There are only two rules:
> the first key must play a tone of 27.5 Hz each next key must play a tone 6% higher than the previous key
(This is not to mention that at a 1.06x increase per half step you're going to be sharp by 1 cent / octave which starts to add up).
Of course you can, but that's not what's implied by the quote.
In addition to microtonality, many instruments (and the human voice) are capable of infinite tuning, and musicians will deviate from the "correct" note (as played by an even-tempered instrument) based on chord structure, voice leading, etc.
That's not what "tuning" means. Yes, fretless string instruments, the human voice, instruments like the trombone are all capable of being played with arbitrary or semi-arbitrary pitch. But they are still either tuned in some way, or never tuned at all. Performance is not tuning.
Also quarter step bends in guitar and vibrato in general.
there are absolutely pitches that an arbitrary piano cannot be tuned to. it is also non-trivial to tune a piano.
Since an "arbitrary piano" is tuned by turning screws, like simpler string instruments, the only pitches that it cannot be tuned to are those that fall outside the range of each string. Departing from the usual inharmonically tempered 12-EDO tuning would just sound strange, possibly outside some piano tuner's professional comfort zone.
https://www.modartt.com/pianoteq_overview :) Very high quality and affordable software modeled piano. It is rather easy to tune via Scala KBD formatted files.
Not a piano, and not relevant to the parent remark.
And that isn't a nuanced opinion; a common one among rigid materialists. Its not the best piano for a stage, but I am sure it could fool your ears in a recording. Morpheus would think it was a piano too. "What is real? ..."
https://youtu.be/Eq3bUFgEcb4 explains why music notation is the way it is. There are very good reasons for it.
The parts that are really weird (like the C clef) have mostly been obsoleted, unless you play the viola I guess.
It kind of reminds me of the periodic declaration someone makes on HN that textual programming sucks and we all need to switch to something else, usually visual programming in this case.
If someone takes time to deeply understand the advantages of the textual approach and then builds an alternative, I'll listen.
But at this point, anyone who is doing this and their criticism of the original approach is shallow and uninsightful, where it's basically just "it's old and it must therefore suck", is unlikely to produce a good answer.
I think that applies to the music notation case too. "Conventional" music notation isn't just a staff and a couple of types of notes. By the time you handle all the use cases that conventional notation handles, or even just a solid subset of it, your brand new notation is probably a lot less elegant than it started out as in someone's head.
Exactly. Music theory is a programming language for musical composition and performance.
Unlike most languages it's inherently two dimensional because music includes both horizontal (time, rhythm) and vertical pitches (chords/colours, harmony) information.
And - especially important - melody is an element that needs both.
You can't represent the same information with text without losing a lot of important content, which is why toys like Sonic Pi are more limited than they seem.
You can kinda sorta represent the same information on a piano roll, but it's not any easier to read than dots - in some ways harder, because you're not going to see the relationship between a bass line and chords as clearly.
Is it a good programming language? It's quite dense, but not denser than some code idioms. The 2D element is unique, and hard to represent in other ways.
The learning curve is steep, but it's probably as good as it can be given the requirements and constraints.
Don't forget about the dynamics (loud or soft) dimension of music.
> Exactly. Music theory is a programming language for musical composition and performance.
Not really. Here in the 21st century people mostly use DAWs, and there's a piano roll inside that thing instead of staff notation.
Have a look at http://terpstrakeyboard.com/about/ and the janko keyboard
I know neither is about music notation per se (but about fixing the piano), but it is analogous: Music notation has exactly the same problem as the piano -> it defaults to C, which makes everything else relative to C and overly complicated.
For the record, I don't think this means we should switch to a new system, but it is usefull to recognize that it is suboptimal, if only to be able to accept it and continue (because nobody is going to translate everything to some new notation)
Context: I played piano for about 15 years.
I think the discussion around changing the piano keyboard is somewhat more obvious and less subtle. It's pretty obvious that the main thing keeping the current piano keyboard alive is the same thing keeping QWERTY alive. Now, the current piano keyboard is not as bad as QWERTY, which is all but an objectively bad layout, whereas the current piano keyboard is one with pros and cons.
I am typing this comment in Dvorak on a split keyboard so split that the two halves are literally on one side each of my chair's armrests, separated by about two feet, so I am no stranger to heterodox opinions about keyboards and putting them in action, and have a track record of not defending the status quo just because it's the status quo.
The current piano keyboard, while it does require you to learn the 12 keys separately, is something that is demonstrably possible for a normal human being, and the advantage is then that you are in fact in those 12 keys separately. You can not be playing in D major and then, for any period of time, accidentally slide into D# major and be confused, which Terpstra makes very easy to do. Of course, recovery is then not difficult either, but it might take a moment.
But other than that, the debate around the piano layout is really a matter of just trying it out and seeing what works.
For notation, I see a lot of people trying to replace the current notation without realizing how many subtleties are in it. It's not just about single quarter notes being banged out in a regular rhythm. It's about many different instruments. It's about dynamics, how the notes are struck, it's about subtle details in how the notes are horizontally spaced, it's about how the notes are played, even things like vibrato can be indicated as starting halfway through the note, and it's about a lot of other things. It's about having a representation for the conductor, it's about working for percussion, it's about guitars and other things. The usual "notation sucks, let's use X" is "let's just use piano roll notation", but if you make a full inventory of what conventional notation has and compare it to "piano roll notation", piano roll notation isn't even close to filling the gaps.
A more fully-fleshed out proposal could. A more fully-fleshed proposal to break up the proposal based on instrument (classical notation does some of this anyhow) might get closer. But that's not what people propose. They generally propose that piano roll notation is already what we need. But it isn't even close to fitting the bill. I don't even have to start asking questions about how exactly one distinguishes between a minor and major 10th interval with their notation (a huge problem generally left unsolved) because they haven't even developed their supposed notation far enough to be a serious competitor. Maybe there's a solution to that too, if someone puts the work in. I wouldn't care to try to categorically exclude it... but I've never seen anyone demonstrate it or answer the question. Conventional music notation doesn't necessarily even have the final word on that question, it certainly has issues if you go too far above or below a clef, but it has an answer to that question. Proposals based around something other than piano roll notation are generally even less fleshed out than piano roll notation, which at least does have some decades of prior use in computer software, which I've also clocked some years with, I used to compose music for fun. Even whackier proposals are generally complete nonstarters even on their own terms.
I think if someone is going to come up with a new, useful notation, it is going to have to retain the non-representationality that the current notation has, where we are not trying to directly encode pitch changes into a literal, 1-to-1 geometry on the page, and especially not a direct 1-to-1 representation of time. Current notation is correlated to those things, but it's not even close to a 1-to-1 map (for example also 8ve block notation for jumping up and down). I have no problem with the idea that there could be something much better if it was worked out, but I doubt that much better thing is going to have those characteristics either.
Thanks for your writeup! Nice insightful read.
Personally I think musical notation should be optimized for ease of playing first and foremost - and I think that would be best achieved with a 1-to-1 mapping to the pitch. I.e. if I just want to play a piece in an orchestra, it's easiest if it just literally says the notes. Having to parse what a note with a double flat actually is on the fly is just unnecessary mental labour, when the information you need as a player is just 'what note do I need to play'.
I also imagine that transposing is a lot easier if I was reading piano roll notation - just play the note but X down.
It's easy enough to extend piano roll notation or something like it with hints regarding what interval it is etc, so you have both benefits.
For the rithm though I always found the existing notation intuitive, piano roll probably would be hard to parse in that regard.
love that video, it made me lol so hard the first time I saw it :D
Classical composer and software engineer here. One of my goals is to help update score notation. I use something called "harmonic coloring" which is like a reduced MIDI notation: You color a note by its functional role (harmonic value) rather than an arbitrary hue in 0-11.
What this view shares with MIDI: Long rectangles representing the applied durations. How it is different: Occupies a minimal amount vertical space.
The color palette I'm using is intended to support people with colorblindness. The shades/hues of a color encodes the functional harmony. The root key signature (origin) is always the same color; and chords some distance r away on the circle of fifths is the shade/hue at that offset r.
There is a similar concept described in the Tantacruel video towards the end.
You can explore it here on Monic Theory. (mobile view should be fixed within 48 hours)
Note that in historical Byzantine musical culture, there are no absolute pitches at all. Their notational form is entirely intervals from some arbitrary root note.
Similarly, in Carnatic and Hindustani classical traditions, the note names (Sa, Re, Pa etc) do not denote pitches - Sa is always the root, whatever it is, and the rest have a somewhat well defined intervallic relationship to it.
I personally would not use "harmonic value" to describe this, since it occurs in music that (broadly speaking) lacks harmony. The key point, IMO, is that what matters are sets of intervals (ratios, if you prefer) rather than actual pitches (as frequencies).
^^ THIS
Hindustani (and Carnatic) music indeed do not denote pitches for a very sound (pun intended) reason: They let singers choose the root note (Sa), and thereupon the melody is built. Most (all?) of Hindustani music is melody-based, not harmonic based (like Western music). And the melodies are themselves created within the Raga framework. Raga is like a mode (but not exactly that), and is hard to explain within the constraints of Western music theory precisely because that concept does not exist in western music per se. Which is why most Indian classical theorists call a raga a "melodic framework", and leave it at that (or expound on it, as the case may be).
A great reference for Indian classical music is [1] and and more recent one [2]
[1] The Ragas of North Indian Music, N.A. Jairazbhoy, https://archive.org/details/dli.ministry.26725
[2] Rāgs Around the Clock, A Handbook for North Indian Classical Music, with Online Recordings in the Khayāl Style, https://www.openbookpublishers.com/books/10.11647/obp.0313#r...
much love for the Just Intonation in the house
Actual frequencies matter in bass-focused dance music. You want a root note around 40Hz to 60Hz, which is high enough that it's easily heard and reproduced, but not so high that it loses the tactile body-shaking effect.
As a semi-professional trombonist, C clefs are very important to me. Alto and tenor as-written, tenor as a means of transposing Bb treble, mezzo-soprano as a means of transposing F parts… they are not obsolete.
Yes, I did write "mostly". Sometimes the bassoon uses the C clef as well. Still, overall it can be safely ignored in most cases.
My favorite genre of hacker news comment is when someone lacks sufficient imagination to wonder why something that’s commonly used by many people is still in use
FWIW, there's no real need for imagination here. The comment says "mostly", and added a parenthetical comment that was simply meant to name the viola as a prominent remaining use.
In particular, trombones have almost entirely stopped using the tenor clef in jazz.
It's true that jazz charts are unlikely to use tenor clef. Nonetheless, it remains career limiting for a trombonist to be unable to read clefs.
Commercial players are likely to use the skill for transposing Bb treble lead sheets, or playing in a pit. Tenor clef shows up in modern musicals regularly.
Not to mention being shunned from quartet or choir opportunities that are the basis of networking in the industry.
I suppose it makes historical sense, and even ingeniously designed.
But it, and the piano black keys with it, are definitely not optimal. It makes playing in C easy, and playing in anything else hard. I've picked up a new instrument since ~2 months, and 1 month in I could already play all scales by by deliberately staying away from music notation, learning the raw distances/steps that make up a scale and how to play them, rather than the 'delta from C', which is how classical training taught me to think. (Same story for chords etc)
> But it, and the piano black keys with it, are definitely not optimal. It makes playing in C easy, and playing in anything else hard.
I don't think this is true—I was under the impression that, at least on piano, keys other than C major are sometimes chosen specifically to make things easier on the fingers.
Easier on the fingers - maybe (I don't know what you reference), but not easier on the mind: Instead of learning each chord once, you have to learn it 12 times (for each key).
I have some great news: you're a nerd ! :))
... or is it geek, i can never remember the difference ...
It's all about the integers modulo 12. Classical notation obscures that (while making it easier to figure out which of the integers modulo 12 you're using, minus being able to assign them to integers in an obvious way).
> It's all about the integers modulo 12.
Only in 12TET.
24, 128, approach infinity -- I know there are microtonal systems, but if you want to understand them, choose the nearest multiple-of-twelve (or really, choose whatever TET contains the closest approximations to the exact notes) TET and look where their intervals land with respect to the symmetries (factors) within that TET, and where those symmetries are broken by a note moving by a perceptual 'slide' (one note 'moves' into the other position) rather than sounding like a new distinct voice.
More like, only if you're playing Schoenberg it's about modulo 12.
Almost all sheet music that you play uses 5 or 7 unequal subdivisions of the octave, and occasionally the rest. Sure, sometimes you'll have one or two of the rest on a regular basis (blues, harmonic/melodic minor), but still most music won't use all twelve.
Isn't modulo-twelve (if we ignore microtonal) the core underlying structure, and then you pick scale (like 2 2 1 2 2 2 1) and a key as a mapping, and then use degree as an 1-based index into the scale?
I don't really know a thing about music, so I could be wrong here - but that mental model at least made some sense to me when I tried to map all the concepts I've heard about into some sort of a mental system.
The point is that to a player the mapping is more important than the core 12-note structure, because highly chromatic (12-note) passages happen but they are the exception.
At least in western music you pick the seven basic notes on the scale, and that gives you the sharps and flats you place at the beginning of each line. That choice, from the point of view of notation, is even more important than the exact scale. And the choice is constrained to 15 sets of sharps and flats because it implicitly tells the player (veeeery roughly) to expect some patterns that probably will occur.
It doesn't always work great, for example if you want to write the Simpsons theme the set of notes in the scale doesn't fit any of those 15 sets. But it uses an unfamiliar scale in any case, so there's not much to gain and as a player you just deal with it.
See around 32:30 in https://youtu.be/Eq3bUFgEcb4?t=1950
I fun little exercise is to work out what would be different if we found aliens that also used 12 tone equal temperament, and also used a subset of 7 of those 12 notes to make their major scale, and also followed the same convention that we do of naming the notes of the major scale C, D, E, F, G, A, B like we do and naming the other 5 by naming a major scale note and adding modifier to tell how far away the not is from that like our # and b modifiers, and we both have the convention that when naming the notes of a transposed major scale we use each letter exactly once--except they picked a different 7 notes to be their major scale.
Our 12 tone scale with the major scale note names and notes not in the major scale marked with dots looks like this:
Suppose the aliens have a very different idea of what makes a good sounding major scale, and their system is:C.D.EF.G.A.B
Suppose we transpose ours up 7 tones. We can represent this graphically by drawing out major pattern for two octaves, and below that drawing our major scale pattern with names replaced by X (X.X.XX.X.X.X) shifted over by 7, then look above to see how to name the notes (remembering we can only use each letter once):CDE.FGAB....
Our major scale transposed up 7 is G A B C D E F#.C.D.EF.G.A.BC.D.EF.G.A.B X.X.XX.X.X.XLet's do the same 7 tone transposition for the aliens. Their major scale pattern is XXX.XXXX..., so we get
That's B Cbbbb Dbbbb Ebbb Fbbbb Gbbbb Abbbb.CDE.FGAB....CDE.FGAB.... XXX.XXXX...At first that seems very different from our 7 tone transposition. We only need one sharp and they need 23 flats! But wait...mod 12 we have -23 = 1.
It turns out for all transpositions if you count sharps in your key signature as +1 and flats as -1, the key signature for a transposition by N tones will have 7N sharps or flats mod 12 in both our systems.
In general if you have a T note equal temperament scale with an M note subset major scale, transposing the major scale up N tones gives a key signature with NM mod T sharps/flats.
I'll leave it as an exercise to prove that. Hint: you can think of a transposition as a two step operation: (1) a shift that keeps the same letters and just adds sharps or flats to move the notes, and (2) a renaming that changed the name you use to name the first note of the transposed scale. Think about what each of those operations does to the number of sharps and flats needed.
didn't find a single audio file; only links to unaffiliated YouTube videos which want me to watch ads first.
“Writing about music is like dancing about architecture.”
I feel that quote more likely is pointed at "music appreciation" as a written work, versus understanding the theory. I know a few musicians who are happy to use terminology from theory, "I love to write songs with diminished and sustained chords".
This seems like a great resource to me, a classically trained pianist who is now playing different types of music.
There are several music samples in there...
Example: https://musictheory.pugetsound.edu/mt21c/DiatonicChordsInMaj...
skill issue.
Music theory for the 21st century with notation from several centuries earlier. Hmm.... sorry but tracker's table-like views are much easier. And so are most DAWs gantt-like editors. 100 times easier to comprehend than notation having the same not written in three different ways, and then some.
DAWs have been around for a few years now. If you were right and they really were 100 times easier to comprehend people would you not see people using printouts of piano rolls to read from?
What you’re suggesting is actually hundreds of years old from well before the existence of computers or DAWs but still no one is using it.
It turns out that judging the relative length of lines is difficult at speed compared to reading distinct symbols.
Also that 88 note piano rolls are a very space inefficient way of representing music on a page. Even a chromatic stave would be inefficient.
That really matters for people that want to sight read with other musicians and have as much viewable as possible in a compact area.
Finally, standard notation is very rich and evolved, as you’d expect for something in active use for so long. It has extensions for lots of instruments.
When people say notation can’t show X it’s usually that they just don’t know it can.
The only downside is that you have to learn it.
Because people doing piano have never seen DAWs, or never tried to use them? Because computers are bad, and piano is good. What a nonsense! And I've heard this argument hundred of times, and then at the end most music is produced/recorded/mastered using DAWs.
I have friends who have actual degree in music composition from actual conservatories, so most of them, professionals, who actually compose and produce actual music for movies, for games, for whatever you want - well all of them use DAWs and all of them are on Ableton or Logic or something along the line, and exactly ZERO of this nonsensical notation that takes more effort to master than music itself.
Most of the new music that gets composed is written in gantt charts or tracker rows, believe it or not. Dig around, and you'll find out.
Haha! I've been using Ableton since 2007, it's not something new or secret.
You can use a scrollable chart to display notes on screen and still want printed music for live use.
I'll bet you that if your friends are professionals and using live musicians to play their their compositions then they are distributing music to them in notation form not screenshots of Logic gantt charts.
There's nothing "nonsensical" about notation, it just serves a different purpose to a DAW screen.
If you want to read from paper and play what you read in real time, a Gantt chart is harder to use not easier. Use the right tool for the job.
Anything that can be played live, can be represented with music notation.
If anything does comes along that people want to do live then notation will be extended yet again to include it.
I still fail to understand how using the gantt charts is less convenient than using the medieval scribblings? The only argument being "cause nobody uses it" is not a true argument in favor of or against the point being made. If it is easier to write gantt charts on Ableton, my gut feeling would be - it is equally easy to play off them.
Besides, I bet five years from now s.o., some genz/genalpha/ gen++ will figure out that it is in fact much easier, and I can see the post climbing top positions as something novel...
I guess what I'm saying is that Gantt charts have been tried before, they aren't novel or new. Your suggestion is hundreds of years old.
So I would definitely take that bet against you.
One of the issues is that Gantt charts don't explicitly including rests as symbols. In standard notation everything adds up to the bar length including the rests.
They also fail a bit when it comes to showing discernable short notes and long notes in the same passage of music. That's fine in a DAW because you can zoom in and out but you can't really do that as you're playing.
Finally, learning the basics of musical notation ain't that hard. If it was we would have replaced it already.
Think about this way, computer based sequencing with Gantt charts has been common since at least the Atari ST. People know about it and they use it on a computer.
But they still don't want it for paper. Ask yourself why?
Do you really think it's because everyone is just stupid and old fashioned or could it be something else maybe?
I would bet that your clever "genz/genalpha/ gen++" would be more likely to introduce better teaching system than establish replacement for musical notation.
> I would bet that your clever "genz/genalpha/ gen++" would be more likely to introduce better teaching system than establish replacement for musical notation.
Well I hope than someone does.
Apart from that, I get your points, and these are valid arguments. I appreciate them, my original post had no intent of offending peoples or calling names.
Although I don't find that the notation (with the perfectly added timings) simplifies the whole 'playing instruments' thing. Said classical notation becomes crazy complex spiderweb of pause and notes when you add legatos, syncopation, triplets, arpegiation, etc. It is not as universal also, as you claim - the guitar players don't prefer tabs (barre/fret) notations; drummers use rhythm charts more often, than never.
I can agree certain instruments (such as claviers and alike) may benefit greatly from this notation, which was created for them precisely. But I totally disagree this is universally useful one, and yes - I've tried it, has a very steep learning curve, and I'm very good at telling notes apart by only hearing them. The notation stays in the way of performance for me personally.
Call me dumb if u want, but my gut feeling is my position aligns with the vast majority of modern, non-classical musicians.
".. most music is produced/recorded/mastered using DAWs."
But not sight-read when playing an actual instrument.
The English language is messy as hell, and yet, here we are using it because it's a shared set of rules and symbols that pretty much everyone who wants to join in on this conversation already knows.
Same with staff notation: If you want to communicate music to other people, learning the slightly clunky but universally-known written language is generally the way to go.
The choir director at my church, Michael Dodds (UNCSA), covers the early development of musical notation, "From Modes to Keys in Early Modern Music Theory" [0]. Currently on sabbatical at Cambridge. Once in a while during rehearsal he will give an impromptu lecture on music history, always interesting.
> learning the slightly clunky but universally-known written language is generally the way to go
A certain Amazon Web Services comes to mind…
No, English language is easy as sh... as piece of cake. A lot of it is marginalized French tbh, sorry, no offense, and the English in the USA is further simplified. You think tis difficult, because you never tried Russian, French, or Mandarin - then we discuss again. Had it not for the simplicity of English Language, it wouldn't be so omnipresent. So you are so wrong on this account.
And I really want to see you communicate wobbling bass or fast random notes. Well you can - in Studel.cc - but is impossible in this notation. Same for complex drum sections (as in dnb, yes), and I can give you fair amount of other examples where medieval notation is useless.
Can you give a specific example of a drum patten you think can't be represented with music notation then?
Since you mention Drum and Bass, here's the Amen break in drum notation:
https://www.elephantdrums.co.uk/blog/guides-and-resources/am...
I don't really agree with the person replying to my original comment, but I can see where they're coming from with respect to notating something like the pitched snares in Renegade Snares (chosen specifically because it's an Amen break that I don't know how I could write down in standard rhythm notation).
I’m sympathetic to this viewpoint, but most music students in the classroom will be playing instruments or singing rather than working in DAWs.
The instruments, music, and notation all evolved together in a shared tradition that make them well-suited for one another.
It would be really hard for me to improvise a clarinet solo based on the melody line in that kind of notation, which is something I have to do pretty frequently in my old style jazz band using fake books.
I'm sympathetic to that view; I spent all evening writing electronic music by programming it into a sequencer and spent a lot of my early career (starting in about 1999) programming using a piano roll.
But "easier for what purpose"? It'd be really tough to read at a gig off a piano-roll.
It took a long time to become comfortable with the fact that standard notation is mostly a suggestion that doesn't contain the years of context I need to get through a big band gig on double bass... but once I realized that my ability to sight read got good enough that I stopped wishing there were some other kind of notation to read.
Sorry, brov, but improvisation is not "following a notation", but exactly the contrary. And perhaps you should try to once in a lifetime use a DAW, I bet you may find yourself amazed by how easy it is to actually read these squares.
The above post mentions big band on double bass, which is precisely my main bag. This is just to clarify. The sheet music consists of portions that are fully notated (i.e., dots on the staff) and lengthy sections with nothing but chord symbols. I'm expected to improvise those parts, and to take liberties with the notated parts as well.
So it is indeed a mixture of reading and improvisation. But this is aside from the choice of notation, which is just a practical matter of finding people who can read it fluently enough to perform from it.
Yeah, that's pretty much how it works in the big bands I've played in- you need to be able to both read and improvise and know when to do either.
I very much can and do read for a lot of instruments. In some situations (I played cello in string quartets for a couple of years) deviation from the written notes is limited to phrasing and dynamics and if you're playing weddings, the form gets shoved around a lot (eg don't re-start the cannon when the bride's mother is cued up to walk).
In most of the situations I've played in over the last couple of years, reading more like a teacher running off of "lecture notes" and less like an actor performing Shakespere- deveation is not just expected but required.
However, my memory and ear isn't so good I can predict the future or play a melody or form I have not heard- being able to read an idea and play it is important in the places I play.
And that's my point: standard notation never really catches all the facts about music, even in classical situations. But it's still a lot easier for me personally to read than some weird grid or table (though I have had to play charts that were almost that bad).
Well, you do you... if you're putting piano rolls in front of the folks you're performing with and asking them to use that as a basis for a tune, then that's neat. I don't believe you are, but hey I have been wrong about lots of things.
I've been using DAWs since Logic was owned by E-Magic. Much my early 2000s was spent writing music on a piano roll in Fruity Loops.
The reason I prefer to read standard notation is precisely because I know what the other alternatives are- in reality, it's not "piano rolls" or tracker data, but simple memorization or, like, chord charts- which works fine in a lot of places.
If you don't understand what I mean, then fine, but you might find the world a more interesting place when folks tell you how they have different experiences.
To use a common phrase among directors, I can indeed "read not write" (if you know you know). Playing a notated part as-written is super common in a lot of places and I do that, but you might find it interesting to know that this notation isn't the only way that standard notation is used in the world.
As a human who plays a lot of instruments for money in front of people, it is far easier for me to read and understand directions written in standard notation than it is to decode whatever the fuck is going on with a piano roll or, god forbid, guitar tab.
It might be easier to learn, but it's definitely not easier to read. It takes up many times more space both vertically and horizontally and it gives you very little visual cues in both dimensions. I mean, good luck telling apart a fifth and a sixth on a piano roll, or even telling which octave you're in. Sheet music is something you can sight-read, with enough practice.
(I also feel obligated to point out that an A sharp and a B flat are not the same note, they just happen to have the same pitch IF you're using equal temperament. And even then, the difference is important and understanding it IMO gives you more freedom as a musician to write what you actually want to write.)