Welcome to the BetterMuse website!

for better music notation

(site currently under construction)

 

This is a website for anyone interested in alternative (preferably better) music notation systems.

 

Better than what?

Better than Common Western Notation (CWN, or also called Traditional Notation). Traditional Notation (TN) is gorgeous. Visually, it is one of the most beautiful products of human creativity. Unfortunately, from a technical standpoint, it is deeply problematic. As a means of communication of the necessary elements of music, it is unnecessarily slow and difficult to learn as a result of its long, complex development as music changed over the last thousand years or so. As generations of composers broke new ground, the existing system didn't quite meet their needs, so little workarounds were added - or very big workarounds - rather than redesigning the system from scratch.

 

For beginners, and for people who just want to play for pleasure, learning to read music is a bit of a daunting task...

Starting out on the climb, learning the "natural" notes, can be deceptively easy, but progressing soon becomes frustrating for many, as the limitations of the traditional system begin to reveal themselves.

How is Traditional Notation limited?

The most obvious limitation in TN is that the staff is designed only to show a subset of the notes. It is a diatonic staff, where each position on the lines and spaces corresponds to one of the named notes, A to G (the white keys on the piano), but as everyone knows, there are black keys in between some of those notes, the sharps and flats.