"hummingbird": a new musical notation

[Heroes Fall]

Spent about 30 minutes and found a piece of sheet music I wasn't familiar with and transcribed it into hummingbird notation, which was surprisingly easy as soon as you have an idea what you're doing. Gave it a go at sight reading and I didn't find it too difficult to follow. Depending on how far ahead you read the music as you're sight reading it, the spacial aspect of a note's held value is not as bad as I thought it would be when put into practice. A series of 32nd notes with some quintuplet 16ths in a 3/4 bar were just as easy to read as if I was playing on a traditional staff, but then again I already transcribed it so I had it worked out already.

As someone who has a decent idea of what he is doing (3rd year of a bma in performance, not like that means much) I'd say these people took almost everything I could think of into account (left hand pizz, untimed notes, all easily accommodated though). It's an interesting system, a novel system that has some slight advantages over the normal system like identifying notes on ledger lines and separate clefs. I prefer the simplicity and elegance of the traditional system and would not consider switching, but it's still a cool idea that holds some merit.

 

[JimBob]

It's really not /that/ bad, but it could use a bit of work. The key signature bit that chaos is on about is pretty big, but I would say that the "Friendly, soft, bubbly" forms are a bit of a weakness. In the traditional notation, all the eighth/sixtheenth/etc notations are large, powerful, hard to miss. The accidentals are enormous, as well, which makes it easier to read the music when you're watching the conductor.

It's not all that hard to figure out how to read it, but having all these smaller ticks that tell you what the notes mean make it more of a chore. I dunno, it just sort of seems like the "weakness" of the traditional notation that they're trying to correct is actually its strength.

 

[Audiosurfer]

I seriously doubt that this makes playing any easier. It really isn't hard to depict what the traditional notes mean, especially since they show it larger than hummingbird.

wtf man

 

[Pernicious]

i think the consensus is

it's generally a progressive and interesting idea to continually try to revise and improve conventions of learning rather than just accept them because they're "traditional"

this is what this is trying to do

however it's not the best way to do it

that doesn't mean that progress is bullshit

just that progress has to actually improve on tradition in order to be revolutionary and useful

progress for the sake of progress is pointless even if you use buzzwords like innovation revolutionary and moving forward
tradition for the sake of tradition is pointless even if you use buzzwords like integrity and familiarity

we should care about what works the best

 

[vonFiedler]

... No? Spatial learning is visual learning. It's understanding concepts through images, in a nutshell. Read the Wikipedia article if you wanna learn more. While they are different subsets of this in terms of how long you hold out a note (spatial vs. non-spatial), standard notation and Hummingbird are very similar. What I'm suggesting in my post is that if you really want to appeal to students in a variety of ways, use different learning modalities. That's a much more effective tool that offering slightly modified versions of what is essentially the same path of learning.

If you're gonna really stubborn about it, then I have autism and I personally have difficulty learning spatially but not through symbols. I was the kind of kid that things like hummingbird are supposed to appeal to. I've learned traditional the hard way but it's honestly tempting to switch. The nuances in which certain students learn cannot be dumbed down into "it's still just visual" unless you want to continue having a school system where large groups of students get left behind. Some of the flaws of the Fleming VAK/VARK model that you seem to be clinging to are in the same page you linked.

Also not true. Most African cultures, for example, historically didn't have a written language. Almost all of their traditional music is passed down aurally from generation to generation. Their music is consistent, especially their rhythmic ideas. These ideas can absolutely be applied to Western education; it's ignorant to think otherwise. Choral teachers can (and often do) teach musical ideas in a call-and-response fashion.

You really want to turn this into a debate as to whether we should written records of things (cause this goes way beyond music) or not? I was careful to use the words "with consistency", because without a record then what you are teaching is always going to change. Especially when you get to putting on longer multi-piece concerts.

Remember that teachers don't necessarily know all music aurally or kinesthetically, or even traditionally, so you still need sheet music in your syllabus to show them how to teach the kids in different ways.

It doesn't matter what cultures historically didn't use writing, written language is awesome and everyone benefits from it. You wouldn't be using an internet without it. You wouldn't even know how those African cultures passed music unless someone had made some sort of proven record about it so that you'd know it wasn't just some old wive's tale.

And sure, it's not "sheet music" anymore, but the entire push of Hummingbird seems to be that it's a revolutionary new way to appeal to different people. In actuality, it's just another copy of visual learning, and is less effective than other modalities in terms of teaching in a varied pattern.

No, that's what appealed to me. Which is what I said. It's also only the fourth selling point on the home page. Only slightly more important to them it seems than the ability to hand write it easily (which I don't actually get...) If you want to teach aurally then by all means, make a syllabus.

 

[TheValkyries]

First: To all the people saying reading music is easy. Shut the fuck up. I spent three years taking music lessons, being in the Marching and Concert bands as well as Drumline (On the keyed percussion instruments) and even took Music Theory AP. I was one of the best players in the band, and breezed through Music Theory like it was nothing. I still was never ever able to learn sight-reading at a proficient level. Literally almost everything about it is incomprehensible despite having tried to learn it for a rather long fucking time.

Now I'm fine with you shit's saying that it was easy for you, but what's good for the goose is not good for the gander. This isn't a problem solved by "well just practice it's pretty simple."

I know many many many musicians who love playing music, but can't ever go to a music school, or continue conventional music education entirely because they couldn't comprehend how to read it. If you think that this isn't a problem I honestly am curious to know how sheltered your life in music was to never have met people that precisely fit this description.

Not even gonna have a positive or negative opinion on Hummingbird and it's effectiveness/usefulness, I'm just rather annoyed at the tripe being passed around here to say that it's bad.



Second: To the people who said "This is useless no one actually uses this in the real world" stop sounding like a 9th Grade C student taking his first Algebra class. Seriously. You're kind of missing the point.

 

[Snowflakes]

“It's much more easier!”
ANNA, AGE 6

cool idea and props to somebody trying to change something as huge as music notations. i'd rather stick with the normal ones but i could see how it's useful as the others have said.

 

[blitzlefan]

i think the consensus is

it's generally a progressive and interesting idea to continually try to revise and improve conventions of learning rather than just accept them because they're "traditional"

this is what this is trying to do

however it's not the best way to do it

that doesn't mean that progress is bullshit

just that progress has to actually improve on tradition in order to be revolutionary and useful

progress for the sake of progress is pointless even if you use buzzwords like innovation revolutionary and moving forward
tradition for the sake of tradition is pointless even if you use buzzwords like integrity and familiarity

we should care about what works the best

This. I agree with this quote whole-heartedly. Don't dismiss change just because you're used to what's old, but don't mindlessly accept it just because it's new. Base your opinions on which one is more efficient and useful, rather than the familiarity or innovation that the traditional/new forms of writing music.

I've been a musician for a while now; played piano since I was 7, (quit in middle school), and I've been in band from 6th to 11th grade. Yeah, I'm pretty good at reading music, and I'm quite comfortable with the traditional style of sheet music. Really gonna miss having a key signature and such, but admittedly, sometime in your musical career you've got to have wondered "why can't the accidentals all be marked in rather than me having to refer back to the key signature again and again?"All my music's written in traditional, so obviously, there's not much point in spending the time to completely learn Hummingbird, but that doesn't mean that if they did make the change, I would be reluctant to do so.

 

[Jorgen]

I just think this is like somebody suddenly out and saying "hey, we're going to make a new alphabet where A's are green circles and B's are yellow triangles because learning to read our old, outdated alphabet can be hard for some people". I get the intent, but I mean, it's not practical in the slightest. Obviously, though, it's an imperfect analogy, because language is a lot more universally taught and used.

 

[Lemonade]

After doing some more thinking, I think a system like this would be effective in starting out--it should not be used by serious musicians (which I don't think is it's intention in the first place). My line of though is this: music is rarely about a single note (and when it is about a single note, you have ample time to read it). For example, an arpeggio sounds the same to most people whether it's in C or Db: it's the sound of the intervals that matters. To extend it more, a song written in two different keys will pretty much sound the same (see Mozart's Oboe Concerto in C and his Flute Concerto in D). However, hummingbird seems to focus around making single notes easier to read with it's mnemonics--this is good for beginners because using mnemonics is very strong way of memorizing things.

So I think hummingbird should be taught like this: you use the symbols for the notes but place them in the correct spaces on the ledger. This would also make learning the different clefs easier. After a while, depending on the student, you would switch them to traditional, and maybe even a mix of the two until they can read full traditional. I just think the vertical information offers so much.