Reducing the Cognitive Load in Reading Piano Sheet Music
After 40 years or so playing the piano, on and off, I still find it hard to read sheet music, let alone sight reading of music in real-time, and not even thinking about music with many sharps and flats. All these years I have been wondering a) what are the impediments that make reading sheet music so hard (for me and perhaps others), and b) what could be done to facilitate this mental task (again for me, and all beginners who struggle to get over this hurdle). This story is an extension of my previous article on European Music Notation: History, Deficiencies and Alternatives, but tries to propose simple and back-wards compatible suggestions. Musescore was used to produce various representations.
Identification of Issues
The more or less bijective notation system created by Guido of Arezzo mapped absolute positions on a staff to concrete notes (or tones), one-to-one: every note in an octave of a major scale comprising 7 tones corresponded to one unique position on the staff. This is still true for a C-major (or A-minor) scale using only white keys on the piano. As music evolved over the centuries and became more complex: more notes were added to the scale through “modifiers” on notes such as flats (♭) and sharps (#) resulting eventually in the 12 tones per octave in European music. The modifiers can be applied to individual notes or as a collection called key signature to an entire music piece at the beginning of each staff; all together the modifiers introduced a one-to-many mapping of a note symbol on the staff to the actual tone to be played or sung: a certain symbol in a position on the staff may be interpreted as different tones depending on the key signature or through accidentals shown below.
Consequently, when reading sheet music, the brain needs to remember the key signature and apply the transformation when the eye encounters a certain symbol on a position a few bars down the staff. For instance, the note at the position of an F sounds as F, unless at the beginning of the staff a key is specified through a sharp (#) on the F that requires every F to sound as an F#, unless again it is suspended for a certain location through a natural symbol (♮). The eye cannot trust the symbol and its position alone which is exacerbated by the existence of different clefs: a note on a certain position means one tone in one clef, and a different tone in another clef. For instance, the first bottom ledger line in treble clef encodes a C4, in the bass clef the same symbol encodes an E2. All results in a higher cognitive load when parsing sheet music: the note to be played is a function of absolute staff position as well as context (clef, key signature, accidental).
Most musicians have learned to cope with the shortcomings of the established notation system through long and tedious training: similarly to the evolution of Western music, every child starts with C major and all its 7 white keys; then flats and sharps are added as are different clefs. According to most musicians the only way is to get over and on with it until the system becomes second nature. Given that this systems is now so engrained in Western culture (including myself), and given the wealth of sheet music expressed in this notation, it would be difficult to un-learn it and learn a new system. It would be equally challenging to transcribe all music, even if a better system was around, such as a horizontal version of Klavarskribo. Nevertheless, perhaps small modification could address some shortcomings while remaining compatible with the traditional notation system. They could lower the entrance barrier and reduce the cognitive load on our brain, for me and all others who struggle.
One Clef Class Only
The simple rule is: use only one clef, the treble clef as it is the most common. For piano staves it is recommended to use the normal treble clef for the top (right hand) and the treble clef offset by two octaves for the bottom (left hand). Consequently, the reader only needs to learn one set of position to note mapping, half of the cognitive load.
Adaptive Octave Offsets
Since it is always difficult to read notes on ledger lines, simply shift the affected bars by the necessary number of octaves into a more legible area inside the staff. Consequently, the reader only needs to learn the positions of notes within the staff, again reducing cognitive load.
Colour-Coded non-naturals
In order to give a visual clue whether a note is as it appears by position or whether it needs to be lowered (flat) or heightened (sharp), all non-naturals (depending on key and including accidentals) are colour encoded in a configurable manner allowing a unique one-to-one mapping between symbol and note (tone). This should lower the cognitive load even further and allow faster processing of sheet music.
Shape-Coded Non-Naturals
There were attempts to create a notation system where every note on a chromatic scale is given its own position. However, there are two downsides: first, an octave is stretched out vertically quite a lot, and second, even if a staff might look similar to a traditional staff, common note positions have different meanings. For instance, if one has seen and worked with the traditional notation system, certain positions became engrained in one’s brain, e.g. the C on bottom of the staff. It is better to stay with the density of the traditional staff, but make sure that all non-naturals (including accidentals) are shape encoded in a configurable manner allowing a unique one-to-one mapping between symbol and note (tone) as suggested below, either with or without additional colour.
The proof of the pudding is in eating it. Ludwig van Beethoven’s Sonate №8, “Pathétique”, Opus 13, 1st Movement, 1st bar is shown below.
Musescore allows to change the palette for note heads in principle through its graphical user interface as well as programmatically through a “plugin”. The follow-up story talks about the Simplicior plugin that has realised the suggestions in this story:
