
Hexnot: an experimental musical notation - fpereiro
http://www.federicopereiro.com/hexnot
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davelnewton
Interesting in some respects, and I like that it's text-editor-friendly.

My biggest issue is that traditional notation does a _lot_ more to show flow,
relationships, and basic shapes. All of that is invisible in this notation
without reading and understanding it. There's a lot of cognitive overhead not
present in standard notation.

An editor that had live conversion to standard notation might be pretty boss,
though.

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fpereiro
Hi Dave,

Thanks for checking it out!

I definitely agree; traditional notation is quite more suggestive, though I
don't know how much this is because of previous exposure to it.

The long term question here, I believe, is whether the cognitive overhead of
using hexnot can converge to the cognitive overhead of using traditional
notation. When you learn it, a notation should make things as easy as
possible; so I'm interested in finding out empirically if hexnot has actual
value as a notation for memorizing, interpreting and composing.

As for an editor, I am considering the idea of writing a parser for hexnot,
which could also generate some other kind of output, but not at this moment
:). And, of course, if you're interested in experimenting with this, I'll be
glad to be of help.

Cheers!

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davelnewton
It's more suggestive because the shape of the music is visible; the interval
relationship is tangible.

Humans are visual creatures (by and large). The memorization of played music
is generally proprioceptive; while the music may still be read, it has more to
do with relating structure to the playing appendages once you know the piece.

~~~
fpereiro
You're absolutely right; hexnot is way less visual than the standard notation.
I am a quite non-visual person and I think that's part of the reason I'm
inclined towards this approach.

Hexnot seems to draw more on the formal and perhaps also linguistic parts of
the brain. I also find very reassuring the 1:1 relationship between the
numbers and the actual notes, which lets them stand a little bit more in the
realm of a symbolic ideal, and less dependent on a position in the staff.

Thank you for commenting!

