Evan Lenz

Since I recently posted about the MNMA (Music Notation Modernization Association), including its mission statement, it seems appropriate to forward on the announcement that the MNMA has disbanded and a new organization has emerged to take its place: The Music Notation Project.

The new mission statement from the website is as follows:

The Music Notation Project seeks to raise awareness of the disadvantages of traditional music notation, to explore alternative music notation systems, and to provide resources for the wider consideration and use of these alternatives. We hope our efforts will help make reading, writing, and playing music more enjoyable and easier to learn.

Today’s letter detailing the announcement hints at what some of the practical differences will be:

While we are still interested in research that evaluates different [notation] systems, we believe we can best further such comparative work through the development of software that can rapidly convert a lot of music into a wide variety of systems.

I think this makes a lot of sense. New notation efforts should take new technology into consideration and benefit from it.

The other practical difference, apart from having a new, nicely designed website, is the name change. “The Music Notation Project” rolls of the tongue much more nicely than “Music Notation Modernization Association”. I was just joking today that the name is a bit “shun”-heavy. Well, they fixed that now. 🙂