Re-discovering Klavarskribo
Back in college, I majored in piano performance and have mostly been out of practice since then. I tell people that I’ve always had a love/hate relationship with the piano. Recently I picked up a Brahms Intermezzo I learned years ago, so I could play it at the memorial service for my wife’s grandmother. This has got me back to wanting to learn more music again. But I always run into the same mental difficulties when learning music. I long for a more efficient way to load musical information into my brain/body. Deciphering traditional music notation has never been fun for me. Some cases are worse than others. Atonal music is particularly frustrating to learn from the traditional notation.
Consider the first phrase of #2 from Ned Rorem’s Eight Etudes for Piano.
These chords look like a bunch of triads, but that completely obscures what’s really going on. They’re actually very dense chords, and it would be folly to try to play triads with each hand. I got so frustrated after spending a little time trying to (re-)learn this piece, so I decided I needed some way to capture the information after decoding what was written, rather than traversing it repeatedly and hoping some of it would stick, when in reality it would keep falling right out of my brain because I had no way to easily read it.
Short of having someone play it for me repeatedly, so I could watch the correct keys being depressed (or short of owning a Disklavier which could also do that for me), I fired up Vim and started making some ASCII art:
| | | | | | | | | | | | | _ _ _ _ _ o o o _ o o o _ _ _ _ | | | | | | | # | | | | | _ _ _ _ o o o _ o _ o _ _ _ _ _ | | | # # | # | | | | | | _ _ _ _ _ o _ _ o o _ _ _ _ _ _ | | | | | | | | | | | | | _ _ _ _ _ o o o _ o o o _ _ _ _
The rhythm is easy enough to read with traditional notation, so I ignored that part. I just wanted to capture the notes of the chords. The vertical bars provide a template representing the black-key landscape of the keyboard. The circles are white key notes, the # signs are black key notes. After seeing this on the screen, it reminded me of Klavarskribo (Esperanto for “keyboard writing”), which was invented in 1931. I’ve never investigated Klavarskribo very closely. For some reason, I never got inspired by it before today. But now I have this feeling that I’m going to become the next Klavarskribo evangelist. It’s like DDR notation for piano. (Why not?)
Thanks to the fantastic and free KlavarScript software, I mocked up the corresponding phrase (including rhythm this time) in Klavarskribo:
Learning Klavarskribo will be challenging, but I have this feeling that after just a little effort the floodgates will open for me. Most of what I’ll need to do is un-learn what I already know about traditional notation. I see an analogy with imperative programmers trying to learn Haskell (or XSLT) for the first time. They’re trying to overcome “being brain-damaged by years of imperative programming” (their words, not mine). Thankfully, I didn’t have that obstacle in the programming world, because XSLT is where I started. But with music notation, I indeed will need to overcome years of brain damage, not to mention psychological distress, inflicted by traditional notation.
Russell said,
November 2, 2007 @ 4:18 pm
Check out keyplay
The website is keyPlay c o u k
You will need to register, then download keyPlay program from the download page. You will then need to put your email address in Internet settings (F12). This will enable you to connect to the website from inside the program and download any music in the library. I am happy to send you free examples of printed sheet music, please let me know the style and level of music you want. If you want help getting started please contact me, russellambrose at hot mail com, regards Russell
Terry Thorpe said,
December 30, 2007 @ 12:46 pm
read your thesis with great interest and to some extent awe of your abilities wish ing you all the best with Klavar;and thanks for transcribing the phrase klavarscribo “great stuff” all the best Terry
Simon Attfield said,
January 1, 2008 @ 7:09 am
I learned klavarscribo as a child (is it a ‘c’ or a ‘k’?) and am just re-discovering it and finding I can slip right back into it. I agree with you about the difficulties in interpreting the 5 bar stave representation. It seems the ‘mapping’ between klavarscribo and the keyboard seems far more direct and so requires less mental translation. Its far more usabile. Of course, by representing the keyboard it is limited to keyboard instruments (I think other versions exist for other instruments). But then music is generally written for one instrument.
I’m going to check out the software you mentioned Evan. And also keyplay mentioned by Russell. thanks
Simon
Evan said,
January 2, 2008 @ 12:42 am
I wouldn’t assume that Klavar notation is limited to keyboard instruments. It just happens to map physically very closely to the piano. Traditional notation doesn’t map physically to any instrument, but does that make it unusable for every instrument?
According to the rules-with-no-exceptions of Esperanto, you’d always use the same letter for the same sound. So “Klavarskribo” is correct and “Klavarscribo” is incorrect. The letter “c” in Esperanto doesn’t make the same sound as “k”: http://www.webcom.com/~donh/ecourse/ealfabet.html
I made this mistake when I first posted this article and corrected it shortly thereafter.
Evan said,
January 2, 2008 @ 12:47 am
Russell, thanks for the link to keyPlay. It looks very interesting. Kind of a hybrid approach to notation, or an incremental reform. This may hit the sweet spot for people who have traditional notation hard-wired into their heads (especially the rhythmic symbols) but who still have trouble finding the right keys to play. I will keep my eyes on it and perhaps review it more closely at some point.
Fons Doomen said,
January 6, 2008 @ 10:07 am
Antother member of the board of Klavar Vereniging Nederland pointed out this site to me. In fact the invention of Dutch Cor Pot in 1931 is still much vived, e.g. in the Netherlands 25 % of the organists in protestant churches use it.
All information on Klavarskribo (indeed a word in Esperanto, with two K) can be found in several languages (Dutch, English, French, German and Esperanto) on the website of Klavar Vereniging Nederland, http://www.klavarvereniging.nl. Information on published sheet music and courses is to be found in the site of Klavarskribo Foundation, the remains of the once very big Institute founded by Cor Pot: http://www.klavarskribo.nl
Fons Doomen
Johan van Kooten said,
January 6, 2008 @ 2:45 pm
In addition to Fons Doomen’s reaction: free Klavarskribo sheet music is available in pdf-format at http://www.klavarpianist.nl and http://launch.groups.yahoo.com/group/klavarpianofiles/
After registration the files can be freely downloaded.
Evan said,
January 6, 2008 @ 4:41 pm
Fons and Johan,
Thank you both for the links. I’ve spent some time on those sites, but I didn’t get very far, because I couldn’t find much information in English (and I haven’t learned Dutch yet). I did find this page: http://www.klavarvereniging.nl/nl/taalversies.lp?ID=1000
But that’s the only information in English that I could find.
I will keep digging to see what else I can find. I did download some of the PDF files from http://klavarpianist.nl, but I’m still hungry for more!
Jeanne Mirck said,
January 21, 2008 @ 3:14 am
I received your emails via MNMA and am now studying the contents of your blog.
I may have some very interesting hints for your video-game.
I am a convinced Klavar fan and promoter since my conversion to it at age 17, now 60 years ago. I made books and games for french children and teach many adults.
Please give me time to study all your ideas.
It might be very interesting if we could meet!!
Jean
Jeanne Mirck said,
January 21, 2008 @ 12:19 pm
Information on Klavarskribo in english: http://www.klavarmusic.org
Evan said,
January 22, 2008 @ 1:08 am
Jeanne, thanks for posting the link to the Klavar Music Foundation. I probably should have done that earlier.
Yes, I’d love to hear more of your thoughts about the video game and whatever input you might have.