Lines a Tritone Apart,  2 Lines per Octave

From the Guided Tour: These systems have two lines per octave, evenly spaced at a half an octave apart (one tritone or six half-steps). Bold, dashed, or ledger lines are used to help identify lines when multiple staves are stacked contiguously. Some systems use notehead color or shape to help differentiate between adjacent pitches.

 

MUTO Notation by MUTO Music Method Foundation

The basic staff has three lines spaced a tritone apart. The middle line represents F#/Gb and the bottom and top lines are bold and represent C. Between any two adjacent lines there are five elevations at which notes can be placed, three of which use ledger lines. One pair of ledger lines represents D and E, and the other pair G#/Ab and A#/Bb. If you include the ledger lines, each line of the staff is evenly spaced at a whole step apart, resulting in a 6-6 line pattern of alternating line-notes and space-notes.

Website: MUTO Music Method Foundation

Earliest documentation: 1995

Source: MUTO Music Method Foundation Website

Thumline Notation by Jim Plamondon

The Thumline staff is similar to the MUTO system above, except that it has alternating solid and dotted lines spaced a tritone apart. Between these lines are two ledgerlines that provide a 6-6 line pattern of alternating line and space notes.

However, unlike the other notations on this site, the lines and spaces of the Thumline system do not represent particular pitches. Instead, it takes a relative pitch approach much like moveable-do solfege note syllables (shown in the image above), shape note notation, or the Nashville number system. Instead of absolute pitches, its lines and spaces represent the degrees of the chromatic scale, starting from the tonic note Do. The pitches that correspond to these scale degrees are indirectly determined by the current key signature. The solid lines always represent Do and the dotted line Se, whatever pitch they may be in the current key. The arcs at the beginning of each staff help with visual orientation, with the points of the arc always pointing to the Do line, and the Se line falling at the middle of the arc. A symbol system is used to indicate key changes and how far up or down in pitch the key has modulated.

Note that in minor keys the basic underlying diatonic pitch pattern remains in the same position on the staff. Do is still located on the bold line, but it becomes the third degree of the scale as the tonic note shifts to La. In other musical modes (Dorian, Phrygian, Lydian, etc...) the tonic also changes places on the staff while the basic diatonic pitch pattern stays fixed. The current tonic note is given in the key signature, indicating whether a key is major or minor, or whether the piece is in some other mode.

An advantage of this relative pitch approach is that it makes it easy to recognize common interval patterns (like those of the diatonic scale) as they occur across different keys, since they will consistently appear at the same vertical position on the staff. A disadvantage is that a note's pitch is not directly given, but must be calculated indirectly through reference to the key signature. This may make it less than ideal for use with instruments that are difficult to play by reading only the interval relationships between notes. In other words, for instruments where it is important to be able to easily read the pitch values of notes in the notation. (Thumline was designed with the Thummer in mind, an electronic isomorphic button-field instrument that emphasizes playing by interval relationships.) For this reason it is not clear how well Thumline would work as a general-purpose notation, and it might not pass the MNMA's third criterion for being "readily adaptable to all instruments". Nevertheless this approach is worthy of consideration, and could be used in conjunction with various chromatic stave systems by those interested in it.

Website: Thumtronics

First introduced: 2005 (Thumtronics website)

Source: Jim Plamondon, Thumtronics Website

Express Stave by John Keller

The basic staff consists of three lines. The middle line represents D, while the top and bottom lines represent G#/Ab. Notehead color corresponds to the 7-5 pattern of the piano key colors, with 'sharps and flats' being black, and naturals white. Between any two adjacent lines there are five elevations at which notes can be placed. The white notes B and F each sit midway between two lines, touching neither, and may be further identified by having a center dash or spot. The remaining notes all touch a line, either 'lightly' or with a slight overlap. These notes are distinguished by their notehead color, and in handwritten form no distinction in vertical position is required. Keller has aligned the staff with the 7-5 keyboard pattern and its two centers of symmetry, D and G#/Ab. This gives a symmetrical pattern of black and white notes around each line. By enclosing the white key set ABCDEFG, the staff resembles the traditional bass clef.

Rhythm notation is the same as in traditional notation, except that half notes (minims) and whole notes (semibreves) have a short vertical line on each side of the notehead. This is visually similar to a double-whole note (breve) in traditional notation. It is necessary in order to distinguish half notes from quarter notes (crotchets) since notehead color is used for pitch.

The pitch range can extend to two octaves through the use of D ledger lines a tritone above or below the one-octave staff. This ledger line appears for the five notes: C, C#/Db, D, D#/Eb, and E. Pitch ranges of three or more octaves can be achieved by vertically "stacking" standard one-octave staves, spacing them an octave apart, with the usual ledger line representing D occurring half way between them (see links to manuscript paper PDFs below).

The following image shows an alternative "6-6 jazz font" version that has a subtle 6-6 pitch pattern through a variation in the slant of the noteheads. Notice that half of the noteheads are sharply slanted while the other noteheads lie flat. In this version the notes for F and B have no center dash or spot, since their shape distinguishes them from adjacent notes.

The image below shows another version, "Reverse-Color" Express Stave. It reverses the 7-5 notehead color pattern so that the notes ABCDEFG (the white piano keys) are black/solid, and the sharp and flat notes (the black keys) are white/hollow. This makes it look less like a piano tablature.

In this version solid noteheads represent the notes that occur most often (ABCDEFG), especially in the more common keys that have fewer sharps or flats. This provides greater continuity with traditional notation where solid notes also occur more frequently than hollow notes (since they represent notes of smaller duration). This would probably make it easier to learn both systems and to switch back and forth between them. Keller also maintains that the B and F notes that do not touch a line are easier to draw by hand when they are solid notes.

The image above also shows Keller's alternative bass/F clef symbol. Notice how it incorporates the note F. To the left of the staff is another symbol he uses to represent the black keys of the piano. This helps to identify the middle line of the staff as D, and the top and bottom lines as G#/Ab.

* Express Stave has an accompanying note naming scheme that retains the traditional names for the notes A B C D E F G, but introduces new names for the other five "black key" notes: H I J K L. The staff line for G#/Ab is then called L, and it 'links' each 'register' spanned by the staff, the set of twelve notes from A to L:

A - H - B - C - I - D - J - E - F - K - G - L

 

Source: John Keller. First introduced in November 2005, revised December 2007, 6-6 jazz font version introduced February 2009, reverse-color version introduced January 2010.

(In Keller's original version of Express Stave of November 2005, the top and bottom lines representing G#/Ab were bold. A dotted line representing "middle" D was added a tritone above the staff (for a bass clef register) or below the staff (for a treble clef register). Half notes were indicated by a double stem instead of a different notehead. Keller changed his system to its current form in December of 2007, partly because of the difficulty of displaying bold lines, dashed lines, or double stems in Finale software.)

Similar notations: Diatonic Twinline Notation

Video Tutorial on YouTube: Music Theory and Express Stave Notation

Musical works: Beethoven, Moonlight Sonata, 1st movement (with sound)

Miscellaneous examples: Major Scale Comparison   Triad Comparison   Jazz Chords Comparison

Manuscript paper (PDFs): Discontinuous Staves (1-2 Octaves)   3 Octave Stave   5 Octave Stave   Piano Stave  Continuous Stave

Other musical works are available from John Keller upon request. Send an email to

Untitled by Robert Stuckey

Instead of traditional noteheads, numbers and letters are used (0, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, X, N), each representing a particular pitch of the chromatic scale. (It is an absolute-pitch system, not a relative-pitch system like Thumline, above.) They are placed at twelve different elevations on a 3-line staff that spans an octave. The upper and lower lines represent C. The middle line is F#. Stems extend upward or downward from the numbers. Stuckey has now withdrawn this proposal.

Earliest documentation: 1983

Source: Directory of Music Notation Proposals, section/page: 10/30, 11/1, 13/93

Manuscript Paper: Discontinuous Staves  Continuous Staves

 

 

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