Tonic Solfa keyboards & notation in Music Learning Theory Forum Forum

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Tonic Solfa keyboards & notation

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JimPlamondon	Tonic Solfa keyboards & notation	Lead	[-]
Posts: 7 Jun 30 08 11:22 PM Reply Quote More My Recent Posts	Tags : isomorphic note-layout, isomorphic keyboard, geometry of music Here's something I found on the web a few years ago: the isomorphic keyboard, which presents each given tonal interval with the same simple, consistent geometric shape wherever it occurs. See the patterns? - The vertical axis = octaves; - The horizontal axis = major seconds; - Up-and-right hexagonal axis = perfect fifths; and - Up-and-left hexagonal axis = perfect fourths. A minor second is up-and-left-then-two-left (e.g., from B2 to C3). The major scale, in any key, is tonic, right, right, up-and-left-then-two-left, right, right, right, up-and-left-then-two-left. That is, it's (from tonic) M2, M2, m2, M2, M2, M2, m2. Doesn't matter what pitch the tonic is, the major pattern on the keyboard is always the same. The other modes of the diatonic scale all have the same circular pattern, just starting on a different place in the circle (of course). Check out the diatonic triads. All of the major triads have the same shape. Look at C-E-G, F-A-C, & G-B-D -- they all have the same shape, of an upward-pointing triangle. Same within a given key, same across all keys. Minor triads all have the shape of a downward-pointing triangle. The diminished fifth, B-D-F, is a single diagonal line (of two stacked minor thirds) slicing right through the diatonic scale. What's going on here? The whole note-layout is defined by just two intervals: the up-and-right hexagonal axis of perfect fifths, and the vertical axis of octaves. All other intervals are defined by a combination of movements along these two axes. For example, a major second is two perfect fifths up-and-right, minus an octave; a major third is four perfect fifths up-and-right, minus two octaves; and so on. All of the notes' locations can thus be derived from a combination of perfect fifths and octaves. Music theorists will recognize this as being the means by which the Pythagorean and meantone tunings are derived (and also 12-tone equal temperament, if the perfect fifth is tempered to 700 cents). In fact, this keyboard note-layout presents every tonal interval consistently across a very wide range of tunings, including the inharmonic indigenous tunings of Indonesia, Thailand, and Mandinka Africa. Thus, the keyboard's note-layout captures, in its geometry, something deeply fundamental about the structure of music. The keyboard is thus a form of tonnetz, or tonal lattice, as used in neo-Riemann analysis, and as implicated in research into music cognition. I don't know about you, but I think that that this keyboard is pretty cool. It makes the underlying consistentcy of music's patterns quite obvious, don't you think? Could this be a useful tool in music education? Last Edited By: JimPlamondon Jul 1 08 1:01 AM. Edited 2 times.
JimPlamondon	Isomorphic note-layout on a computer keyboard	#1	[-]
Posts: 7 Jun 30 08 11:32 PM Reply Quote More My Recent Posts	The isomorphic note-layout shown above maps quite nicely to a standard computer keyboard: Could that be useful for music education software?
JimPlamondon	Tonic Solfa Keyboard	#2	[-]
Posts: 7 Jun 30 08 11:45 PM Reply Quote More My Recent Posts	Since the above note-layout is on a COMPUTER, perhaps we could use the computer's power to electronically slide the same pitch-pattern across the keyboard, associating the notes of the "current diatonic scale" with the white keys, kinda like this: The result is a "tonic solfa keyboard," which is as transposable as the human voice, and for which the use of tonic solfa is as appropriate. (In the above graphic, the flat solfa syllables [se, le, te, etc.] are used for both the sharp and flat notes, but that doesn't have to be the case. The flat names can be on the left-hand black notes and the sharp names on the right-hand black notes.) This all fits very nicely with "moveable Do with a La-based minor." But, what about staff notation?
JimPlamondon	Tonic Solfa Staff Notation	#3	[-]
Posts: 7 Jul 1 08 12:10 AM Reply Quote More My Recent Posts	If you've got a tonic solfa keyboard, then you need a tonic solfa staff notation, too -- perhaps something like this: That's a "chromatic staff," with seven lines and six spaces in between -- enough for all twelve notes of the chromatic scale. Over on the far left, there's a stack of "scale indicators," indicating which notes are in the current scale. The bottom indicator is diamond-shaped instead of the usual circle, indicating the location of the tonic -- on the Do-line, so we're in Ionian mode (major). If the diamond were on the La-space instead, it would indicate Aeolian mode. Using this staff, with traditional rhythmic notation, you'd be able to notate any piece of music independently of key or octave. Just placing a pitch indicator (e.g., "Bb") next to the tonic diamond, way over to the left, would indicate a specific key...but why would you ever want to do that? Leave that for the director to decide, right before the group begins to play, to accomodate the tessitura of the ensemble at the moment (including, for example, the lead soprano's scratchy throat, which might require bringing it down a bit). This notation wouldalso unify theory and practice. Who needs Roman Numerals to analyze music, if you;ve already got it notated this way? Obviously, there would have to be a means of indicating key changes, mode changes, and the like. But the end result would be at least as expressive of the concepts of tonal music as is traditional staff notation. Using a tonic solfa keyboard and a tonic solfa staff would provide the opportunity to extend music students' time in the tonic solfa world, before thrusting them into the cold, harsh world of pitch-based instruments & notation. In addition, a tonic solfa keyboard & notation could engage more of each student's senses in learning tonal relationships -- sight, from seeing the consistent patterns on the keyboard and in notatiom, and touch, from feeling the consistency of music's patterns under their fingers on the keyboard, independent of key or octave. But wouldn't using this notation and an isomorphic keyboard trap them in some kind of musical ghetto, isolated from traditional instruments?
JimPlamondon	Trapped in the Tonic Solfa Ghetto	#4	[-]
Posts: 7 Jul 1 08 12:23 AM Reply Quote More My Recent Posts	I don't think people will become trapped in a tonic solfa ghetto, for three reasons. First, most people who learn music using tonic solfa first, eventually move out into the pitch-based world, so the wall around the tonic solfa world doesn't seem to be terribly high. Second, the longer a student stays in the tonic solfa world, the stronger their audiation skills will tend to be, which ought to make it easier, later, to learn a traditional instrument and its traditional notation. (Isn't that the reason for using tonic solfa in the first place?) Third, if a new musical instrument -- based on the isomorphic keyboard -- provided a great deal of expressive power and the ability to produce the sound of any other instrument (through electronic music synthesis), then some students might find that it fit their musical inclinations very well, making it unnecessary for them to step outside of the tonic solfa world. The Thummer might be such an instrument. Last Edited By: JimPlamondon Jul 1 08 1:08 AM. Edited 2 times.
JimPlamondon	Pipe Dream?	#5	[-]
Posts: 7 Jul 1 08 12:44 AM Reply Quote More My Recent Posts	One might argue that this whole idea is a waste of breath anyway, because it's absolutely impossible to establish a new music notation or a new musical instrument in the mainstream. Or, is it? Just a few years ago, I might have agreed -- but the world has changed. The MIDI standard, combined with USB, makes it trivially easy to connect a new control interface to a vast array of electronic music synthesis algorithms. Music editing programs like Finale! now include "plug-in APIs" that enable them to be retro-actively upgraded by independent developers to support new music notations as if they'd be programmed in by Finale!'s own programmers. All you'd have to do is download the plug-in from the Internet, and voila! your copy of Finale! would instantly support tonic solfa staff notation. Likewise, the universal adoption of MusicXML among music notation software programs has provided a common music notation file format for all such software programs. All of these changes to the technological infrastructure lower the barriers to the adoption of new instruments & notations. So does the emergence of services such as YouTube, through which word of cool new innovations can spread across the world with incredible speed. Then, of course, there's the example of Guitar Hero, which has DOUBLED the number of instrumental music-makers in the USA in under three years. Admittedly, the novel guitar-like controller and scrolling notation are "dumbed down," focusing almost exclusively on rhythm at the expense of tonality, but nonetheless, Guitar Hero has been an unqualified phenomenon. The success of guitar tab and Guitar Hero suggest that there's a huge pool of demand for music-making skill & knowledge that is not being met by traditional music-education tools. That's a market opportunity. The fact that Guitar Hero has earmed over a BILLION dollars in just a couple of years has made the investor community eager to consider new music-related products. Perhaps the combination of Gordon's Music Learning Theory, the tonic solfa keyboard, and tonic solfa staff notation, could improve the speed and success rate of music education by just enough to provide a compelling commercial advantage. I don't know. What do you think? Thanks! :-) Jim Plamondon CEO, Thumtronics Inc The New Shape of Music(tm) www.thummer.com Austin, Texas
JimPlamondon		#6	[-]
Posts: 7 Jul 1 08 1:07 AM Reply Quote More My Recent Posts	Here's a video that briefly describes the Thummer.�

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