Has anyone heard of MusiScript?

[Jill Walkains]

On another forum I saw someone post about MusiScript. I was wondering if anyone has used this notation, and what they thought. Let me know! www.MusiScript.com

[Jason Rodgers]

I'm a music teacher, and I've not seen this system. New attempts to upgrade old systems of language come along every so often, but without widespread acceptance and use, they usually fizzle and fade. Traditional Western notation has evolved over the past approx 1000 years, spending roughly half of that time in its current form.

From a brief glance, I can see how the system attempts to group pitches on the lines, grey band, and spaces with different shapes according to the layout of the piano keyboard. This is clever, but it may not work for other instruments: quite simply, the scalar organizational/kinesthetic pictures that we create in our minds for different instruments are different. For example, a guitarist thinks differently from a clarinetist thinks differently from a trombonist. Maybe I'm misunderstanding this system, but it is not something that I would teach.

[Jill Walkains]

Thanks for the response. That makes sense! I wonder if someone just wanted to learn the keyboard, if it would be easie.

[Jason Rodgers]

If someone simply wants to learn a few tunes on the piano, they'll just do that: by ear, by sight, by feel (a bazzillion youtubes devoted to this). Same for any other instrument. Nobody NEEDS to read music (I know, blasphemy from a music teacher), but it certainly is helpful if you want to access the massive history of literature written over the aforementioned millennium, or communicate to others your musical ideas over the next. This is what written language does. This system looks like a solution looking for a problem with literacy that is better solved by funding music education in our schools.

[Clay Schaeffer]

Shape notes and guitar (and other) tablature are two musical notation systems that are used by some people. But the universality of standard musical notation across cultures and instruments still makes it the best system to learn. Although microtonal notation requires additional symbols it is still based around the standard system.

[Simon Chadwick]

So itis basically a tablature for piano? The fact that it is patented and not "open source" means it will likely get nowhere, regardless of its merits.

There are clearly some big problems with it - the use of 4 tones (black, white, blue, grey) means that writing it and printing it is not as simple as with most other notations using only 2 tones (B&W). The use of different note shapes for "black" and "white" keys on the piano is a fun tablature feature but like with other tablatures it tends to conceal other aspects that could be considered useful - e.g. it makes transposition harder.

So even as a piano tablature it has problems. As a notation system for other instruments it is pretty useless I would say.

[Dennis Weaver]

Traditional Western notation has evolved over the past approx 1000 years, spending roughly half of that time in its current form.

I think it de-voed with Guitar Tabulator. Best to be aware of note names etc... in music, not just physics of where to play.

I do like chord boxes. I guess that is a crutch as well as tab but I like that visualization.

There is a bunch of software available. I too have tried several that I really didn't like and ordered staff music. I really do not like the software which you make music in measures but has no staffs!!!!!!!!!!!!!