DODEKA Music System

[64Guitars]

I saw this on SonicState and thought it was interesting.

http://www.dodeka.info/

I like how it does away with sharps and flats, and each staff shows exactly one octave from C to C so the notes are always in the same place regardless of the octave. In traditional music notation, a C, for example, can be in a space or on a line. But in DODEKA, the C is always on the bottom and top lines.

Traditional Music Notation

DODEKA Music Notation

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JxNpyXscMnM





PDF documents:

• DODEKA Booklet
  
  
• DODEKA Music Method

[Hook]

I do find it interesting, but the guys description of how hard traditional music is to understand kinda pissed me off. He seems like a whiny Fuck looking for the easiest way possible to do everything so he can (or maybe so others can) apply him(them)selves as little as possible.

With that said, I love making music as accessible as it can be to everyone...so I guess...cool.

It seems like a tab for all instruments...but I've never thought of the system as any harder than any other skill one learns...mechanics, doctors, layers, accountants. If this were an accountant he would say...
"I've always found it so difficult once you get past 10. Taking of your socks, counting your toes... but now your socks can stay on. With my revolutionary counting system we use the space under, between, above and bedside your fingers. Now each hand is capable of counting to 50! That's right if you have 2 hands you can make it to 100...this technique will bring counting to millions who are to unwilling to learn there math facts" ...and so on.

Very interesting though and thanks for sharing this find. In all honesty if it brings music to just those in the video than bravo!
Rock on!

[Blooby]

He seems like a whiny Fuck looking for the easiest way possible

Lord, I'm going to miss you this MET. I just about spoiled me trousers.

Blooby

[AndyR]

/Angry Rant Mode

I'm sorry, the guy is a complete f***ing pillock - very interesting but, sheesh, he's made me angry...

I can't watch the video because I'm at work, but I've just read the Dodeka music Method pdf, and skim-read the brochure. OH. MY. GOD.

And his writing style - a sanctimonious @rse putting down all his forebears with an almost offensive "I know best because I'm more clever and observant than anyone who has been before, aren't you lucky I spotted this solution" attitude.

We've spotted this solution before!!! And we know it doesn't bluddy work!! There have been hundreds of years of VERY clever people looking at this... at least as clever as Mister Jacques-Daniel Rochat... Don't you think we'd be using something more like it if it did work???!!!

It's a cute basic idea - I came across something very similar many years ago - in fact, many of us of a slightly scientific or mathematical mind MUST have considered this when we were initially trying to learn musical theory. When I was in my teens, trying to do music O-level, we were all going "WTF??! Who came up with this crazy system? Sharps and flats? Key signatures? WTF? Surely it's just 12 notes in the scale? We can do better than this surely?"

But as we discovered years ago when we argued with it and our music teacher, the old way DOES almost perfectly express (for western scales and harmonies that sit on the chromatic 12 notes) what is actually going on in the sounds. And any newer mathematical method doesn't solve the intricacies of that. In fact it doesn't solve anything apart from very first impressions for new learners. It just moves the perceived "problems" in the old notation system to elsewhere in the new notation system.

I'm completely with Hook - "easiest way possible to do everything so he can (or maybe so others can) apply him(them)selves as little as possible".

The guy really does not understand what's going on - or maybe it's worse, he does, and he doesn't care if he pushes his idea which hides what's going on.

The thing is, keys and accidentals, once you understand them - and they are difficult to grasp initially - perfectly express the reasons for the emotional responses that these mathematical relationships between notes cause us.

I was able to learn to improvise freely BECAUSE of the traditional keys and accidentals way of expressing it (and the I, II, III, IV, V, VI, VII notation for harmony). They freed me to understand how music works, to transpose on sight, and to be able to REMEMBER the signposts so that I can play from memory and improvise by ear. AND, it means I'm able to communicate easily both with better trained musicians than I am, and with musicians who don't know anything about the notes at all.

Personally, I gave up on the music theory when I was 17 because it was "too hard" (sounds like he did too). I revisited it when I was 19 or so, and it took me just two days to completely conquer it and understand it. It is NOT hard to learn if you accept it's worth learning. This guy, having learnt it, is telling the lazy 17 year-old like me that it's pointless learning it... he should have his mouth washed out with soap, the irresponsible self-centred idiot. It is NOT pointless learning musical theory, it's your choice whether you do or not, but it is NOT pointless.

What made me so angry is how he's arguing this. He's making very bold claims that he has the solution to everything. He barely holds back from telling us that everyone who has gone before him was wrong and stupid for accepting the old system. He's putting his argument in such a way that people will be enticed by it because he's appealing to the improvising musician who hasn't yet learnt the vocab. He starts by claiming he can improve scoring (the musical notation) but then it becomes obvious that the bigger bee in his bonnet is the layout of the traditional western piano keyboard. And why does he need to change it? BECAUSE HIS BLUDDY NOTATION METHOD REQUIRES THAT THE PIANO KEYBOARD IS REDESIGNED!!!!!!

He compares his notation idea to midi piano rolls - oh look they've serendipitously come up with almost the same thing... look how right my idea is! (Actually, the piano roll idea came from, er, traditional piano rolls - a method of instructing an automated piano, a machine, to make musical noise without a human being...)

The expression/representation of the rich and complex relationships between keys and scales is gone with your utterly cr@ppy system mate - what are you going to do when musicians have lost that knowledge if your stupid system is accepted? (incidentally, this is roughly what our music teacher was trying to explain to us when we were going "wouldn't it be better if we did away with this naff system the old dudes like Mozart and Handel etc used...?").

Good luck to him. Some people will like how he thinks it ought to be done - but anyone who learns this method will NOT be able to communicate with musicians and composers of the past... Unless they are able to grasp the stuff left out (and are prepared to learn the old system too!)... He claims that the old system lies... but his seems to completely hide the relationships between key signatures - in fact, he seems to be claiming key signatures, apart from the starting note, are irrelevant...

Seems to me it's another of those "solutions looking for a problem" and, in his document anyway, he's had to severely bad-mouth the tried and tested traditional system to sell his not terribly original idea that must have been thrown out thousands of times over hundreds of years.

/End of Angry Rant Mode


But yeah, interesting stuff

It will be useful to some folk, but I don't think it will catch on. It's a techie solution for something too visceral for a solution like this.

Something like this would be essential for expressing music more easily for a computer to understand or even compose.

But I'm not convinced that's what we really want as humans. And if it is, I'm glad I won't be around to see it.

[kenny mac]

I've always liked the struggle of music,the trying to get better by sitting playing along to stuff.
This in turn gives me pleasure and takes me on a route of writing sometimes something I didn't think I could.
It's the big mystery of what I might be able to achieve that makes it interesting,I tend to stay away from cut and paste and virtual instruments and stuff.
Not because I think I can play as good because I don't.
I cannot play piano as good or guitar as good as I would like but it's the inability to be as good as I want that makes me strive to create something at the top of my ability and in the end it's me your hearing and not a machine.
I guess what I'm trying to say is trying to get where I want to be without making it easier makes the journey interesting and the experiments along the way enjoyable.