Notion as a learning tool

[GaryExo]

I've had someone ask me about using Notion as a means of learning to notate music. I think, essentially, what she's wanting to know is whether Notion will prevent one from entering music incorrectly. As someone used to inputting things correctly I wasn't too sure. I know I deliberately tried a couple of things when I first got the software so that I could see the "red notes" I had heard about but I really didn't set about testing it to see if it would correct any or all errors. I would be interested to discover how thorough Notion might be in this area.

Thanks.

[Surfwhammy]

I've had someone ask me about using Notion as a means of learning to notate music. I think, essentially, what she's wanting to know is whether Notion will prevent one from entering music incorrectly. As someone used to inputting things correctly I wasn't too sure. I know I deliberately tried a couple of things when I first got the software so that I could see the "red notes" I had heard about but I really didn't set about testing it to see if it would correct any or all errors. I would be interested to discover how thorough Notion might be in this area.

Thanks.

NOTION is excellent for learning music notation and composing!

NOTION provides a few clues regarding simple mistakes, where the best example occurs when you enter additional notes at a time when the current measure already is filled with the correct total duration of notes, where for example when the time signature is 4/4 and a measure has 4 quarter notes (a.k.a., "quavers"), if you enter a fifth quarter note, then the note turns red as a visual clue that the duration of the notes in the measure has exceeded the maximum . . .

And there are a few things that NOTION will not allow you to do, but this is more subtle in the sense that it only disallows the actions rather than telling you that the action is not allowed and explaining why . . .

However, the true value of NOTION with respect to learning music notation is that you get immediate feedback by virtue of hearing notes as you input them, and you can play notes and phrases as a way to hear how your composition is developing . . .

Additionally, because there is a logical music notation palette with different types and styles of notes, articulations, dynamics, guitar chords and guitar tabs, and so forth, over time the more work you do with music notation and the various symbols, marks, and so forth, the more sense it makes, and you can enhance this "learn by doing" aspect with a bit of ongoing research, where for example if you encounter the term "staccato" but have no idea what it means, then you can check wikipedia to see how it is defined for music; to which instruments it applies; what it does; and when you might want to use it . . .

NOTION is what one might call "immersive" in the sense of learning a foreign language where you only are allowed to speak in the foreign language during class or whatever, and this is the case because NOTION requires you to input music notation, either (a) directly with a keyboard or mouse or MIDI keyboard or (b) indirectly via importing MIDI and MusicXML data . . .

In other words, when you use NOTION, you are doing music notation, hence one reasonably can expect that the more one uses NOTION, the more one learns about music notation, which certainly is the way it works here in the sound isolation studio . . .

At first, inputting music notation is slow, and this is due to learning about music notation as you go, but after a while it becomes easier and faster to enter music notation, and the "after a while" aspect tends to happen sooner than expect . . .

And there are some thing you can do to make working with music notation easier conceptually, where one strategy is to do everything on the treble clef, which is based on the fact that there are only 12 notes and 8 or so octaves, hence keep it simple, where doing everything on the treble clef keeps everything simple . . .

NOTION allows you to specify how the notes on a treble clef are played, so if you are writing notes for electric bass, then you can tell NOTION to play the electric bass notes one or two octaves lower, but the notes in music notation are on the treble clef . . .

And you can establish the rule that every note has exactly one name, which is another thing I do here in the sound isolation studio, where (a) the 12 notes are {C, C#, D, D#, E, F, F#, G, G#, A, A#, B} and (b) the octave is specified by an integer in the style of scientific pitch notation, where for example "Middle C" is "C4" . . .

[NOTE: Most of the time, I make an effort to keep the notes for a specific treble clef constrained to the range C3 to C7, which is enough notes below and above the actual staff to be easy to remember, and when the instrument is bass I specify that the notes seen on the treble staff actually are played two octaves lower, but for a cello and an electric guitar I might set the notes to be played one octave lower. It takes a while to develop the visual recognition skills required to look at C3 and know immediately what it is, as is the case with the first handful of notes above the staff continuing to C7 or thereabout, but the skill develops over time, and after a while you know the note instantly without needing to think about it in an immediately conscious way . . . ]



In other words, if you look at the keys on a grand piano, you discover that there are 88 of them, and using the aforementioned 12 notes and scientific pitch notation, each of the 88 keys has a total of one and only one name the way I do it, where for example we do not like to allow the nonsense where D♭ is another name for C#, and we enforce this rule via paper straws and spitwads, where if you call C# by the incorrect name D♭, then you should expect an incoming spitwad pretty soon, unless it is summer and the watermelons are especially tasty, in which case instead of spitwads, we spit watermelon seeds, and if you are within 20 feet, I can spit a watermelon seed and get you . . .

All the stuff like "We're B♭ clarinet players, so we have our own clef, because we're special" is not allowed here in the sound isolation studio, and the first clue is being bombarded with spitwads or watermelon seeds, because here in the sound isolation studio (a) you are an A# clarinet player and (b) you get the standard treble clef just like everyone else, which is fabulous . . .

Fabulous!

P. S. Another stellar rule here in the sound isolation studio is that everything is in the key of C Major, which is yet another way to keep everything as simple and mathematically elegant as possible . . .

Basically, the perspective here in the sound isolation studio is that taking something with 88 notes, like the keys on a grand piano, and then devising several names for each note is torturous for no even remotely logical and rational reason, especially when the 88 notes are arranged in simple repeating patterns of 12 notes . . .

Having 10 or 15 different clefs when one clef works wonderfully also is torturous, and nonsense like this is one of the reasons that people have difficulties learning music notation . . .

For all practical purposes, music notation is a set of dots, circles, and lines drawn on a piece of paper, and I think the smart way to do it is to keep it as remarkably simple and mathematically elegant as possible, because most people can remember 12 names and 8 or 9 octave numbers, which is completely and totally sufficient, and if you must learn all the weird stuff, then you can learn it later when you have nothing better to do, but in the beginning it makes no sense to cause everything to be mind-bogglingly complex when the fact of the matter is that it is very simple, really . . .

Really!

[elerouxx]

I play A# clarinet!

[Surfwhammy]

I play A# clarinet!

Cool!

I tried to play A# clarinet for a year or so as a child, but I got blisters on my thumb, and I squeaked too much, so I switched to violin, except that violin did not work so well, which led to switching to string bass, which I liked, but after a while I got an electric bass, and then I got blisters on my fingers but by that time I was accustomed to blisters and I worked through it . . .

I like Pete Fountain, and as an odd but fascinating bit of information, there was a discussion about glissandi a year or two ago, and someone suggested that it was not possible to do glissandi on a clarinet, but I remembered hearing Pete Fountain do it in New Orleans and after a bit of researching I found a YouTube concert video where he does a glissandi at approximately 5:08, which is fabulous . . .

[NOTE: Pete Fountain saves the glissandi until the last, but I like it, and it is mind-boggling, really . . . ]

"Struttin' With Some BBQ" (Pete Fountain) -- YouTube concert video

Fabulous!

[GaryExo]

Thank you.

Yes, I had already talked my friend through much of what you said. As a matter of interest could you say what those things are which Notion disallows without explanation? I think that would be helpful to her.

On another note, I don't think I would advocate ignoring all the other clefs as you say you do or writing everything in the same key or timing. I think she would be best to follow "proper" methodology.

[Surfwhammy]

Thanks.

As a matter of interest could you say what those things are which Notion disallows without explanation? I think that would be helpful to her.

Glad to help!

Most of these things that NOTION disallows without explanation are intuitive, where an example might be trying to add a staccato articulation to a rest, which of course does not work, because it makes no sense . . .

Another example would be selecting a whole rest and then trying to transpose it a fifth or perhaps an octave higher, which also makes no sense . . .

Some of these types of things travel with visual cues provided by the mouse pointer, where when something is allowed the mouse pointer is the correct shape or style, but when something is not allowed the mouse pointer might be different or if it is not different then clicking at the particular location does not do anything . . .

These are a few examples that come to mind, but as intriguing as it might be to have a list of things that make no sense, I do not have one, although the idea is intriguing . . .

On another note, I don't think I would advocate ignoring all the other clefs as you say you do or writing everything in the same key or timing. I think she would be best to follow "proper" methodology.

My views on keeping everything in music notation as simple as possible are a bit non-standard, but being non-standard does not map arbitrarily to making no sense . . .

Mostly, I think it depends on the knowledge level of the person, where for example when someone is just beginning I think that simple assignments are better, as is everything when it is kept simple . . .

Consider someone who does not know the names of notes . . .

One strategy is to start with 12 notes (C, C#, D, D#, E, F, F#, G, G#, A, A#, B} and if possible to use the keys on grand piano to show the pattern for each octave and to distinguish the notes by an octave number using scientific pitch notation, where "Middle C" is C4 . . .

In other words, there are 88 keys, but there also are 7 repeating patterns of 12 notes and the patterns occur in octaves, where you can show the person "Low C", "Middle C", and "High C" while explaining that all of them a C but differ in octave . . .

The other strategy is to provide the person with something like this:

{[B#|C|C♮|♭♭D], [##B|C#|D♭], [##C|D|D♮|♭♭E], [|E♭|D#|♭♭F], [##D|E|E♮|F♭], [E#|F|F♮|♭♭G], [##E|F#|G♭], [##F|G|G♮|♭♭A], [G#|A♭], [##G|A|A♮|♭♭B], [A#|B♭|♭♭C], [##A|B|B♮|C♭]}

The second strategy is cruel, and it becomes egregiously cruel when it is introduced gradually over time, because what happens is that at each step along the way when the person believes that her understanding finally is clear, you introduce yet another exception, and in fact I think it is mean to do this . . .

In other words, consider that the person understands that ##C, D, and ♭♭E are names for the same note, and they are happy, confident with their knowledge, and generally feeling good about their progress in learning music . . .

What happens inevitably is that someone says, "Ah hah! But you forgot the natural, which is typical for slower students like you who never take the time to learn all the rules, all the wonderful maze of completely frivolous and pointless rules. You thought you were right, but you are wrong, and I am right. You lose, I win! Don't you love music!" . . .

Some of the naming stuff makes a bit of sense, where one of the goals for having sharps and flats is to avoid using a letter more than one time in a scale, where instead of having C followed by C#, the rule is to have C followed by D♭, and there is a bit of merit to having a distinct indicator for "a single half-step below" (flat) and "a single half-step above" (sharp), but this only works in a practical way for the notes on a piano that have adjacent black keys, although F♭ is a commonly used name for a note even though the note actually is E . . .

And the problem with having key signatures is that you cannot look at notes on the staff and know what they are without knowing the key signature and remembering which notes are flat or sharp, where for example the note on the staff might look like A4 when the key signature is C, but if the key signature is different then instead of being A4 it is either flat or sharp, depending on the specific key signature, with the result that you cannot look at music notation and immediately make sense of it without looking at other stuff and remembering a virtual festival of asinine rules . . .

When you learn the treble clef, along comes the bass clef and the notes are a whole step lower, or along comes the tenor clef, and so forth and so on, and something which truly is simple becomes a maze of complexity that only a career bureaucrat could love . . .

In fact, it tends to encourage the wrong type of people but to discourage the right type of people . . .

Explained another way, it is the music notation equivalent of a homeowner's community association that has rules regarding the acceptable height range and type of lawn grass; allowed colors and styles for mailboxes; and so forth and so on . . .

I fully understand the logic, and for some people it makes excellent sense and is a prudent way to introduce order into their lives, but this is not the case for everyone, and I tend to favor the strategy of keeping everything simple at first and to introduce the strange stuff later . . .

There are reasons for having different key signatures, different tempos, a variety of names for the same note, and so forth and so on, but I suggest that none of the reasons are mathematically elegant, which is the basic problem, and is one the things I like about electric guitar when all the chords are Barre chords, which also applies to electric bass, because once I know a song in the key of A, if I need to play it in the key of B, all I have to do is move everything upward by two frets, and the pattern is exactly the same so long as everything is within a general region or whatever . . .

And on a related note, intervals are vastly important, and I think that learning intervals is a much better use of time than learning a festival of names for the same note . . .

It also depends on what the overall goal happens to be, where possible goals are (a) composing, (b) playing or singing an part composed by someone else, and (c) improvising, which actually is (a) but done in real-time on the fly . . .

If the overall goals are (a) and (c), which includes the "by yourself" variation of (b), then learning intervals is the important focus, where learning intervals essentially maps to learning how to "play by ear", which is fabulous . . .

Fabulous!

[tubatimberinger]

I've had someone ask me about using Notion as a means of learning to notate music. I think, essentially, what she's wanting to know is whether Notion will prevent one from entering music incorrectly. As someone used to inputting things correctly I wasn't too sure. I know I deliberately tried a couple of things when I first got the software so that I could see the "red notes" I had heard about but I really didn't set about testing it to see if it would correct any or all errors. I would be interested to discover how thorough Notion might be in this area.

Thanks.

Notion will tell you when you have too many beats. It doesn't tell you however, how many quarter notes are in a whole note; this is assumed to be already known. It doesn't tell you if the notation is unclear in terms of rhythmic spelling (for a human being to read; if that's your end use). It doesn't tell you when a chord is in the wrong inversion to facilitate voice leading. It doesn't tell you if your enharmonic spelling is no so good. Doesn't tell you when you are writing way too high for an 'intermediate' level player. In short, although Notion has many uses for music education (many, many), I would not say it "teaches" you how to notate music and a basic level of knowledge is assumed. What a lot of it boils down to is 'what kind' of music is she trying to write, what is the end product she is trying to get from it.

I will say however, that for someone who has little to no basic technical knowledge in music, Notion would without a doubt be my first choice. While Fin/Sib both have many many components to their suites that are specifically for 'teaching' they are both very expensive and even the easier of the two (in my opinion) would be very hard to figure out for a beginning musician/composer.

In short, buy Notion, then buy a couple books (or just google is fine for the basics) on beginning music concepts.

just my 2 cents.

-t

[GaryExo]

Thank you, chaps. That's very helpful and I shall pass it all along.