Design your own music representation system

Design your own music representation system. The representation can be intended for performance, analysis, a digital encoding, static, dynamic, graphical, etc.

Design Guidelines

• Can be a practical system or an unpractical system.
• Can be a graphical notation system for performers to read, or can be a digital representation of standard music notation, or a digital/graphical representation of a specialized repertory of music, (like the Japanese musical scores shown in class).

What to Turn in

1. Submit a one-page written description of the musical notation system, with an example.
2. Describe the scope and purpose that a full-scale implementation of your system would have. In other words, what types of music/purposes would it be useful for, and what types of music/purposes would your system be impractical. Example purposes would be for performance, analysis, education (i.e., easy notation that does not require extensive training to learn).
3. Give an example encoding of music in your system. If the system encodes standard western musical notation, then preferably (but not necessarily) use this example melody:

Pitch and rhythm features extracted from the above example:

       Pitch   Octave  Duration Metric position
       C       5       1/8+1/16     1
       D       5       1/32        1+3/4
       C       5       1/32        1+7/8
       C       5       1/8         2
       C       5       1/8         2+1/2

       C       5       1/16        1
       F       5       1/16        1+1/4
       F       5       1           1+1/2
       rest    -       1/16        2+1/2
       F       5       1/16        2+3/4

       F       5       1/16        1
       A       5       1/16        1+1/4
       A       5       1           1+1/2
       rest    -       1/16        1+1/2
       C       6       1/16        1+3/4

       C       6       1/8+1/16    1
       A       5       1/16        1+3/4
       C       6       1/16        2
       B-flat  5       1/16        2+1/4
       A       5       1/16        2+1/2
       G       5       1/16        2+3/4

Duration is in units of whole notes, and metric position is in units of beats (quarter notes in this case). Middle C on the piano is C4 (pitch class C in octave 4).

Demonstrate your system briefly in class (approximately 2 minutes) on the day that the assignment is due. Craig will send a link to a Google Slides presentation for you to add a slide or two demonstrating your music representation.

Ideas for the Creatively Challenged

• Design a graphical notation system for music that does not need to use accidentals (such as sharps and flats).
• Design a system that can be used to type in music data quickly on a computer keyboard.
• Design a system that would be easy to perform by reading the digital data directly.
• Design a graphical system that uses color.