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Notation Must Die: The Battle For How We Read Music

Tantacrul · 1.8M views · 2023-11-03 · 1:16:21

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Overview

Tantacrul's 76-minute deep dive into the history of western music notation and the many proposed replacements, such as piano rolls, colored notes and the jubilate. He explains why none have displaced the current system.

On Hacker News

Repeatedly recommended as the definitive, well-made explanation of why attempts to reinvent music notation fail and what tradeoffs the current system makes.

Recommended by 6 HN people across 6 months · HN mentions 2023–2026

Topics

Music theory, synthesis & productionUX & UI design
Search by tags
music notationmusic theorypiano rollhistory of musicmusescore

What people said

PaulDavisThe1st · 2024-02 · Strong recommendation

[VIDEO] "Notation Must Die" ... excellent deep-ish dive into music notation by the inimitable Tantacrul

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Slow_Hand · 2026-06 · Recommendation

If you want an excellent explanation of why proposals for new notation systems like you’re suggesting have been developed (and failed) Tantacrul has made an excellent video describing the history and tradeoffs that lead us to our current system: [VIDEO] He’s product lead at MuseGroup developing notation software and his expertise lies at the intersection of music composition, UX design, and programming.

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midenginedcoupe · 2025-11 · Recommendation

Pro jazz trombonist here. All there is to usefully say about piano roll notation, with or without colours has pretty much already been said. And if you want more (much more) detail, then Tantacrul (designer on MuseScore) has done a great video. [VIDEO] The only useful head's up I can give is the current position marker on your playback is quite a long way behind the audio, around 1-2 beats on the one piece I tried.

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Sources

Video by Tantacrul, played through YouTube.

Data and selection notes

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HN Library: HackerTube export (2026-10-31) and open-index/hacker-news. Upstream summaries and classifications may contain AI errors.

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