Written music in the digital/electronic age

[runningwithit]

Does anyone choose to continue writing in the tonal theory sheet music style when they know the technology has beaten paper with buttons and such. has anyone an affinity for paper seeing that as a school child they were most likely forced to write their name on paper times when they necessarily did not want to turn anything in. Well, not overall I think how you choose dictates where musical progress goes if you believe in progress in general. Certainly if you write in paper you will not get the same effect as working in a computer, is there a point when one predominates another? Shall paper and digital technology live in equilibrium or will one succumb to the general fate of superiority to the other. Please excuse Hegel.

I have a love for paper though recognize the difference in forming a piece through a physical writing tool and a machine.

gonna be neutral non-assertive position.

[stringtapper]

I keep a book of staff paper with me at all times in case I think of something and need to write it out. I also use an iPhone to record ideas on the fly. And then of course I usually have a laptop so I can sequence something in Live, program something in Max, or even do notation in Finale if I think of something that would be more tedious on paper.

Options are always a good thing.

Also, when the collapse comes and the juice is gone you'll still be able to get down your ideas if you can write.

[mrdelurk]

I was just thinking about this yesterday, while looking at my 3000 paper books and scores covering nearly all wall space. Some are 40 years old. Had I just scanned each book when I got it and disposed of it, it all would have fit onto a small hard drive. And since hard drives last 5 years on average until they crash, I'd have lost all this information 8 times to crashes by now.

So all I'd have today is the morning paper.
(Same thing with songwriting notes.)

[sounddevisor]

If you write music that you want other people to play, being able to notate it as sheet music is often the easiest and most direct way to convey that information to other players.

[doghouse]

I think notation is still important. It's still easier for me to write down a bar or two of music with pencil and paper than it is to capture the idea some other way.

Here's the counter-argument question: what is the alternative...SMF?

[Timbeaux]

And since hard drives last 5 years on average until they crash

LIE

I have hdd from 1990 and they still no crash on every single drive i have (last week I have had a retrogamingevening, so i should know )

But to say something ontopic:

I would like to have the skill to write something down on a sheet of paper, but when we learned this at school I was chronically asleep.

[ImNotDedYet]

I'm not sure if this is a paper vs digital notation or just notation no paper vs "notation" in a piano roll.

For me, I can't read the notes in a piano roll very quickly, but I sure as heck can on paper...

[SLEEarts]

I'm a music teacher that also spends a lot of time making electronic music, so this is an issue I've thought about at length.

Really, the only time you'll need to use traditional music notation anymore is if you need an acoustic instrument, with a player that reads, and who either prefers notation or cannot learn your part by ear. Because of this, I'm starting to believe that the MIDI piano roll will eventually replace standard music notation.

And I'm glad! Traditional notation has always been good at indicating pitch, but is piss-poor at indicating duration... the symbols have no logical attachment to the indicated duration. Piano roll, on the other hand, indicates longer notes with actually longer note bars. Clearly superior!

[stringtapper]

I'm a music teacher that also spends a lot of time making electronic music, so this is an issue I've thought about at length.

Really, the only time you'll need to use traditional music notation anymore is if you need an acoustic instrument, with a player that reads, and who either prefers notation or cannot learn your part by ear. Because of this, I'm starting to believe that the MIDI piano roll will eventually replace standard music notation.

And I'm glad! Traditional notation has always been good at indicating pitch, but is piss-poor at indicating duration... the symbols have no logical attachment to the indicated duration. Piano roll, on the other hand, indicates longer notes with actually longer note bars. Clearly superior!

Perhaps, we'll see. While I agree to some extent* that the representation of duration can be considered superior in a piano-roll display, there is the issue of space. I already have to deal with juggling long scores on some of my gigs, so I don't think a piano roll would be at all practical to read on paper. Perhaps as technology becomes cheaper music stands with electronic piano roll displays will become ubiquitous.

*I wouldn't necessarily say that there is no logic at all to the way the symbols are attached to their corresponding durations, clearly there is some kind of symbolic logic going on for such a system to work in the first place. What you're calling "piss-poor" is the lack of a 1:1 correspondence between visual space and sonic duration in traditional notation. The issue of duration is also related to tempo and meter as well and so the musician's ability to count within a certain meter and tempo is going to be necessary with either traditional or piano roll notation and I'm not entirely sure either system would offer much over the other in that regard. Maybe if the performer is watching a cursor moving through the piano roll timeline.

[mrdelurk]

And since hard drives last 5 years on average until they crash

LIE

"The average life span of a hard drive is approximately three to five years." A Web search on "typical life of hard drives" turns up dozens of answers. The linked page with its 3 to 5 years figure is a concise, representative sample

[Timbeaux]

And since hard drives last 5 years on average until they crash

LIE

"The average life span of a hard drive is approximately three to five years." A Web search on "typical life of hard drives" turns up dozens of answers. The linked page with its 3 to 5 years figure is a concise, representative sample

[mrdelurk]

One of the biggest mistakes when making old/new tech comparisons is that we take it for granted that the electronics will just stay around and work. It won't.

Today's example: I just plugged my Sony 400CD charger in after a 8 year (or so) hiatus. It worked fine when I shelved it, now only the display comes on, nothing else budges. I had to disassemble it to free my CDs to rip them fully. I guarantee you, when I bought it, the very idea that it might die (without much use, even) taking 400 of my CDs hostage never crossed my mind. I took it for granted. See, it was a mistake.

[runningwithit]

The piano roll and the written music observation is a good one. Knowing one you should know the other. Definitely piano roll cannot be read like sheet music and certainly it is more difficult to be a scribe of piano roll music then written music. I like the expressive quality of written music. Part of me thinks that finding a balance between the two is the most modern approach. THANKS