I might have misread the OP, but I thought the music was in G-major and he wants to play it in F#-major. So the seventh tone in F#major should be a half-step below the octave, or F, right? Is this one of the situations where you would notate it as E# to avoid confusion?
That is a demonstration of unfamiliarity at work. Yes, it’s a complex system, and the complexity is because it incorporates a massive variety of data in a single two-dimensional format. There’s no point learning, in isolation, what all the symbols mean. For its real function to be clear, it’s necessary to learn how the notation works alongside how the music sounds.
I grew up with it, took piano lessons from the age of 4 through the end of high school, and can read sheet music well enough to sing from it (SATB choir or solo) or play an instrument such as french horn or trumpet. But those all involve reproducing no more than one note at a time, a bit of guesswork the first iteration around, and the advantages of a good ear and auditory memory to eliminate the need for accurate reading to kick in shortly after that.
If I just glance at a page, I don’t hear music in my head the way, when I glance at this page, I immediately apprehend sentences and phrases much faster than I could read them aloud.
I know other people do, though. To me it’s still blackbirds on telephone wires.
Yes, that’s right. E# and F-natural are enharmonic, the same key on the piano.
AHunter3, do you read guitar tabs?* I can, but for me it’s like reading English text transcribed into the Telugu alphabet. I can make it out, but need to stop and figure out each note, like each letter, haltingly. First I was a violinist mostly playing from classical scores, and then transferred my string-instrument chops to guitar. I composed and taught myself classical guitar pieces using conventional notation. But guitar tabs sound like maybe a system of music notation more compatible with what you are asking for.
*Tabs in guitarspeak is short for “tablatures.” The original tablatures were used to score lute music in the Renaissance. Modern guitar tabs use the same basic principle, which is to diagram all the instrument’s strings, but are notated differently.
The F-sharp key signature has an E sharp in it, so that’s partly why you’d call it an E-sharp. Also, it would be difficult to constantly switch the notation on the F with a sharp or natural depending on whether you wanted the tonic or the major seventh. It just all works out neater and more consistently this way.
There’s many reasons to notate with enharmonics. You’ll see a lot of examples of double sharps and double flats–for example, the chord G-flat minor is notated as G-flat, B-double flat, D-flat. C-sharp augmented will be notated C#-E#-G double sharp. The symbols don’t only indicate key, but also harmonic function.
You’re right, that this is a specific skill, and it’s one that’s not necessarily acquired through instrumental lessons (although it can be). Yes, it’s possible to play many instruments to a significant standard without the skill…but a notation such as you’re suggesting prevents it from being done at all.
I agree! I hate TAB, and it’s supposed to be so easy to read. As far as I’m concerned, once you have reasonable familiarity with the fretboard and can read an eighth note, standard notes are easier. Additionally, in traditional guitar music, the string and fret to be played are often given, when not self evident. I’m currently having problems because I want to learn some jazz solo tunes but they’re almost impossible to find in standard, fingered notation a la classical guitar music.
You might not hear the music in your head, but you must be able to get at least an idea of how it’s going to sound. I’ve always felt that standard notation is better for allowing you to do that. At a glance, you can see the “shape” of the melody, get an idea of how sparse or rich the harmony is, and the rhythmic feel of the piece.
Interesting. Maybe it’s because guitar isn’t my first instrument, but I actually like guitar tabs because they also show you the position on the guitar to play the notes. It would take me forever trying to figure out all the permutations of positions and voicings for a simple chord otherwise, or to figure out which fretting is easiest for a melody line, etc.
There’s just too many frettings for the same note to choose from. (Once again, that’s for me, and I never formally studied guitar, nor made any effort to try to learn to read music on it, like I do with piano. Maybe it is easy for somebody who studied guitar, but I feel tabs actually give you more information–albeit instrument-specific information that is not readable for other instruments.)
The problem with tab, though, is that when I take the music and try to play it on any other instruments, it’s absolutely useless. When playing guitar, tab is great. Outside of that, it is a pain the ass.
I don’t understand this.
I’m musical. But all keys sound the same to me. I don’t associate different moods with different keys, unless they are in different modes. Moreover, I can’t see how one could so associate, since the keys pretty much (to me) sound identical. Sure, they are higher and lower in pitch, but the relationships between the notes are identical, and so I can’t see a way to make out different moods to associate with them.
But I do see comments like yours here and there, and I know composers have often said the different keys have different moods.
I can’t figure this out.
Like I said, it’s not like I have a tin ear or anything.
-Kris
I don’t think there’s anything wrong with traditional staff notation, but I don’t understand why you say alot of the things you say here.
The piano-roll notation you are responding to puts different notes on different lines. Each line corresponds to one and just one note. Hence, by looking at what lines notes have been put, you can determine the harmonic structure. You (GorillaMan) can’t do this “at a glance” because you’re not used to the notation. But I don’t see why someone raised with that notation wouldn’t be able to do it “at a glance.”
Especially since the instruments are color coded, and since they are all notated over a single field rather than over separate staves, this is apparently easier with piano roll notation than it is in traditional staff notation.
The rhythm is seen by examination of the placement and length of lines.
I must be misunderstand you because it looks to me like the information is all plainly and obviously present.
-Kris
There’s two things. Firstly, before the wholesale adoption of equal temperament, not all keys sounded the same, because the fine tuning of individual notes meant that the same chord patterns played in two different keys had different end results.
Secondly, when dealing with many instruments, particular keys bring out or inhibit particular characteristics. Many violin concertos are in A, D or G, because this makes it easy to use the natural resonances of the open strings to greatest effect. On the other hand, C# minor is a key where this is often impossible, and is the key used by Shostakovich in his very introverted and ambivalent second violin concerto.
Of course, neither of these apply to a modern piano in isolation. But I strongly susect that there’s a degree to which acquired absolute pitch has given, say, E flat major has gained some low-level association with triumphal and often brass-dominated music, meaning that even when used on the piano it still evokes some of that character.
[QUOTE=Frylock]
The piano-roll notation you are responding to puts different notes on different lines. Each line corresponds to one and just one note. Hence, by looking at what lines notes have been put, you can determine the harmonic structure. You (GorillaMan) can’t do this “at a glance” because you’re not used to the notation. But I don’t see why someone raised with that notation wouldn’t be able to do it “at a glance.”
Firstly, no you cannot see in real-time all the notes used. (Imagine if the multiple octave of the ending of the 1812 were being shown.) That’s not about familiarity, but about the human eye and brain not being able to rapidly parse a large number of parallel lines with accuracy.
The vertical ordering of staves according to conventions achieves the same end.
The length of individual notes, yes. The details, such as those of metre, of cross-rhythms, or even and dotted patterns, are all far harder to identify.
Lots is missing. Not least, dynamics. Sure, you could put these on separate sheets (as I presume the colour coding will be), but this hardly advances your argument.
Sorry, hit reply early…
Other details in your sheet music example which could not be readily shown on a midi transcription:
Idiomatic technique and timbre. Tremolo tam tam, pizzicato strings, violin harmonics, articulation…
Closer to the OP…
As others have suggested, playing the song with a sound processor program which will transpose for you would be lot easier than learning music theory, if all you want to do is play along with the recording.
I think the reason so many commercial recordings are not in tune with A=440 (or 435) is because the analog tape machines used until recently for the master recordings were designed to be consistent with the transport speed (low in wow & flutter), but accuracy in speed was not important. If the speed increased, decreased or fluctuated during a recording, for whatever reason, musicians would readily detect it, but if a master machine was 1% too fast, it would never reveal itself until played on another machine where the speed was 1% too slow, for example. And even then, the professional machines had variable-speed motors, and dubbing new tracks onto a slightly off-speed master could be done by adjusting the motor to whatever pitch they wanted.
This used to be a serious problem when I did takedowns in Hollywood years ago. Even a sample LP pressing could be “in the cracks” and although I could tune my playback machine up or down as needed, I learned my lesson once when I wrote down lead sheets for an entire Norton Buffalo album and when the composer looked them over, he exclaimed, “That stupid copyist! He’s got every one of these in the wrong key!” I had tuned to the nearest “standard” pitch, but the LP was mastered so far off that it had differed by more than 1/4 step from the original performance and I went the wrong way. Unfortunately, unless they put an A440 on the master, I have no way of knowing from the recording alone what the original was.
The example fragment I posted on page two is the 1812 and does show the entire activity (look at the octaves listed on the left).
There’s another strip not shown in the screen shot that indicates volume (perhaps not the ideal solution but gives more specific information than an occasional ff or “>”).
I can’t sight-read the piano roll stuff either but I can come closer than I do with conventional bar staves, and it’s far far easier for composing on.
Make that page three, sorry
I believe you, because logically your argument is sound. I can clearly hear differences of mood when transposing a tune to another key, but I don’t know how to explain why some sound brighter and clearer while others sound darker and muddier. On fretless instruments, or a harpsichord in traditional temperament, there would be actual pitch differences involved… but on a piano all the pitches are exactly equidistant.
Maybe if you’ve gotten used to hearing it one way, and then hear the same thing at a different pitch, the difference triggers emotional responses in the brain that are usually stimulated by other means, I don’t know.
My mistake. I thought it showed only the opening. Or maybe it showed very little? 
Not shown? But I thought this was a more concise method?
If you really think that ‘the occasional ff’ is insufficient, then my earlier argument holds sway (that notation and performance need to be taught as one).
And on yet another tangent: if that’s your score for the 1812, what do the players see?
Well, it’s not the whole thing “horizontally” (opening choral notes to final brass-laden flourish)…but it’s the whole thing “vertically” (all the instruments, all the notes, for the section I took a screen shot of). And yes I left out the part that shows how loud each individual note, by instrument, is supposed to be (but I’ll remedy that below).
Here is what the viola player would see for a section of 1812. Here is what that segment sounds like when played (just the viola part).
Here is what the same section looks like with full instrumentation (well, since this is MIDI, let’s assume some arrangement- corners were cut, but it gives you a general feel for full instrumentation at any rate). And Here is what it sounds like with all the instruments turned on.
The part at the top is the volume indicator. Each voice (instrument) has (or can have) markup for how loud each individual note is to be. Long vertical bars are louder than the short ones.
Anything that could be added to a conventional score with staves could be added to piano roll (ff marks, poco a poco retardando instrux, phrase bars (optionally color-coded to indicate which voice they reference), etc; The central difference is that each pitch is represented by a distinct vertical position and each duration by a visual-analog width of “bar”. I see no reason why a musician, if exposed to this in the manner that musicians are exposed to the conventional treble & bass clef, wouldn’t find it a good way to score music.