Using Notehead 'Color' for Pitch

Notehead 'color' -- whether a notehead is hollow or solid, i.e., white or black -- is used by some alternative notations to help indicate a note's pitch instead of its duration as in traditional notation. (See Music Notations sorted by 7-5 or 6-6 patterns for examples.) This may seem like an odd and unnecessary departure from traditional notation, but there is a rationale behind it.

Notehead color is arguably the most striking feature of any given note. Glancing quickly at a piece of traditional sheet music, or holding it at a distance, it is easier to notice whether a notehead is black or white than to discern which staff line or space it occupies. However, traditional notation uses this property merely to distinguish between half notes and quarter notes (minims and crotchets):

Without the aid of notehead color it is still possible to tell a note's duration based on other traditional rhythmic symbols, with the exception of half notes and quarter notes:

Some notation designers argue that traditional notation makes poor use of notehead color, and that it would be better employed to help indicate a note's pitch -- since it is the feature that most clearly distinguishes one note from another. These designers typically use hollow and solid noteheads to represent or accentuate either a 6-6 or 7-5 pitch pattern. But if they also want to retain the other basic features of traditional rhythmic notation, they must devise a new way to distinguish half notes from quarter notes.

Some approaches to this issue include using different notehead shapes (Busoni's Organic Notation used rectangles for whole and half notes); using double stems to indicate half notes (Rich Reed's DA Notation; Keller's Express Stave), using stems with new kinds of flags (Lindgren's Nydana Notation, Tom Reed's Twinline). Beyond this there are notations that break more fully with traditional notation, such as proportional rhythmic notation (de Buur's Mirck Version of Klavar; Beyreuther's Chromatic 6-6 Notation) or other more complex rhythmic schemes (Skapski's Panot).

A potential drawback to using notehead color for pitch is that it might make it somewhat more difficult to transition from traditional notation (or to switch back and forth "bilingually"), at least when compared to alternative notations that maintain full consistency with traditional rhythmic notation.

One way to address this would be to have two versions of a given alternative notation, one that retains traditional rhythmic notation and another that goes further and introduces its own alternative rhythmic notation. While this would not work in every case, it could provide an easier and lower-risk way for those trained in traditional notation to try out at least some of the alternative notations that use notehead color for pitch.