WYSIWYP Simplified Notation - Traditional Notation duration symbols

Traditional Notation Duration Symbols

These symbols are unintuitive to read and require a significant amount of learning time to identify and play them with ease. On the other hand, note duration in WYSIWYP is graphic and intuitive because it requires no translation of a symbol to time and can just be seen. In addition, unlike WYSIWYP, Traditional Notation symbols are not fixed in terms of the beat (they are a function of the Time Signature).

There are likely to be some students who decide to learn Traditional Notation after having started out with WYSIWYP. With some confidence in playing music they may then be better able to focus on the complexities of the stem and flag system of note duration. Therefore, to help address the challenge, a new enhancement would be to have a User Preference option of displaying the Traditional symbols instead of the WYSIWYP noteheads. The substitution would remain in place with the notetails still displayed. Another User Preference option would inhibit their display.

Keep in mind that this is intended only as a learning tool and not a full-blown implementation of all the nuances of Traditional Notation's notehead / stem / flag / beam / semi-beam / stem up-down direction / etc. system. It simply gives the student the opportunity to begin to associate the symbols with duration in a relative manner. Thus, this is a basic introduction to the student upon which to build all the complexities of the symbol system.

Here's an example of how a WYSIWYP score would look with Traditional symbols:

Because WYSIWYP encodes the note type, natural/sharp/flat in the notehead shape, there would have to be a way to indicate the sharps and flats without a key signature. Keeping the WYSIWYP notehead shapes is not possible, since Traditional noteheads are used as part of the duration definition (filled vs. unfilled ovals). Therefore, the Traditional noteheads plus stems/flags/etc. will remain the same.

A simple way to indicate sharps and flats is to simulate the way a traditional student might use a text highlighter pen to mark sharps and flats. In this way, there is an explicit definition so that it is not necessary to remember the key signature throughout playing of the score. SNapp would also need to color code the highlighting to indicate sharp or flat.

With the WYSIWYP notetails still shown, the student can begin to associate symbols with duration. To say it again though, while WYSIWYP shows the duration in terms of beats, this is not a constant in Traditional Notation. With the latter for example, a quarter note symbol could represent one beat (time signature 4/4) or two beats (time signature 4/8).

In addition to changing the note symbols, there would also have to be added the Traditional rest symbol system. This learning tool would then again help the student in recognizing them and starting to associate their durations.

After some practice with the notetails enabled, the student could disable them to see how the symbols look without them. The tool would leave the symbols in the same horizontal position unlike the traditional sheet music that would not show them as a true timeline.

Here's how the example would look:

This learning tool can be used by itself or it could be used as a single step in a full transition of all WYSIWYP changes to Traditional Notation. This is a separate future enhancement.