Here’s a new method for writing sheet music for piano that makes it easier to learn to play everyday songs. Traditional sheet music relies on symbols, scales and memorization, and can be difficult to learn and read, so this new notation uses visual cues by showing “fingers and hands” on keys. It’s read from top to bottom, with each circle being a finger placement (blue is the left hand, green is right), with the trailing colors showing how long you hold the notes. The gray lines are the black keys and the spaces between are the white keys, plus, the C keys are shaded for easier navigation.
Reading traditional sheet music can be difficult. Many people, like professional musicians and dedicated hobbyists, put in considerable time and effort to learn how to read it. Most people don’t.
This is a personal project where I’m trying to A) solve a problem, B) get a conversation started, and C) have fun thinking about a hobby I love. I’m addressing the casual piano player, one who wants to learn how to play songs well, but doesn’t have the time or attention to learn from traditional sheet music. This target user is probably learning easy, contemporary songs, and already knows what they sound like before they learn them. Maybe they’d even like to sing over the music!
What this project is not:
A professional project: There’s no “real user research” here, just a designer, some crayons, and friends willing to give feedback.
Exact visual forms and shapes: I’ve used basic shapes and formats. These are simply mockups intended to demonstrate a concept.
(thanks, Wikipedia), and it’s amazing! A professional instrumentalist can sit down in front of any piece of sheet music and play it, even if they’d never heard it before. That notation is flexible, precise, and has stood the test of time. But, as I mentioned, there’s a hefty learning curve. My new notation is for new audiences, not for those already proficient with traditional sheet music.
So here’s what I came up with…Overall Form
It looks like a keyboard: doesn’t it? Recognizability is critical here, that the student sees a note on the sheet and can associate that with a physical location (a key). The challenge with this approach minimizing the amount of visual noise, so I chose to use thin lines to represent black keys, and the adjacent negative space represent white keys.