Re: Numbered Musical Notation

[David Raleigh Arnold]

On Thursday 08 January 2009, Yogi wrote:
> I am currently researching to build a library of LilyPond files for
> praise/worship songs. While musical notation is great for musicians, 
the same
> can't be said for the local non-musical churchgoers here, who are 
somewhat more
> accustomed to reading numbered musical notation.
> 
> Here's the article, if you don't know what I'm talking about
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Numbered_musical_notation
> 
> So I'm wondering if LilyPond can support such notation and render it 
alongside a
> musical notation, or on its own, without major changes in the input 
files. I've
> done a little Googling and found no such program yet, but if anyone 
can point me
> to the right direction, please do so :)

I used a very similar notation for ten hole harmonica tablature
because it can be written very fast. I finally abandoned it in
favor of the system you can see on my web site. The problem
as I saw it was that the dashes don't go anywhere. They are
like a short cut to nothing. You could use numbers for notes
and put the time values on a single line staff. If you could
get your parishioners to read the time on the line, weaning
them from the numbers would be much easier. Regardless of the
cultural context, basing notation for singers on notation developed
for a stringed instrument is a very old bad idea that has led
most world musical cultures, ancient and modern, to a dead end.
Regards, daveA

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