It is now unnecessary -- and it should be unacceptable -- that we relegate most of our citizens to a role of illiterate spectators in their favorite art!  The great educational deficit among normally educated people is music. 

Most adults remember just one lesson from their music classes -- "Music is too difficult!" Music majors go to college needing "fundamentals," like English majors who haven't yet learned the parts of speech.  A majority of today's professional musical performers can't read music.  Such is the state of music education, a prisoner of tradition.

Contrary to conventional wisdom...

Implementing an alternative (compatible) 
music notation -- with enormous benefits 
to education, to our music industries, and to 
society's entire relationship with music --
is more than feasible! We can do it easily, 
gaining much and losing nothing.

Musical experts who have not explored alternative notation extensively should yield the floor for a time to those experts who have.  Myths, biases, and fears have ruled the thinking of the music field, barring from serious consideration what should become the most significant single advance for human education in our time.  Even the most serious and professional research is subjected to irrational scorn, making progress arduous and costly, but a wonderful new truth will now become undeniable. 

There are no graphics here.  Musicians usually assume that examining a system's graphic design is the first and most important step in evaluation, but it isn't.  Actually it only aborts consideration of more important matters.  The following are the necessities for the system, and they have all been accomplished:

that it is music's natural (chromatic) resource, striking musicians as "the system we should always have had," and coexisting constructively with traditional notation;

 

that the prime concerns in its design have been logic, beauty, and maximum usability;

 

that it has passed the scrutiny of many discerning professionals in many face-to-face group demonstrations;

 

that it has been tested and refined through years of both transcribing music and teaching all segments of society;

 

and that its creators are prepared for it to absorb further refinements, adaptations, and expansions from professionals in the field through an independent regulating body. 

With a basis for comparison comes a paradigm shift.  Music itself is different from our perception based on traditional notation, which exaggerates complexity and dictates approaches that actually cause student failure and professional confusion.  Standard programs and famous methodologies barely address music itself -- giving primary concern to solving the impediments of traditional notation. A more direct and literal representation shows the logic and simplicity of music, replacing routine failure with routine success.  Everyone can reconsider concepts of who can learn, how they can learn, and whether musical intellectuals can reason clearly with only seven letter names for twelve pitches.

Two systems are easier than one!  The new system is simultaneously an option to the old one and the best tool for explaining it.  Most adults who learn the new one then want to prove they can learn the old one, and at last they can, easily and well, when it isn't the first one and the only one.

When the system is right it becomes the missing piece to an age-old puzzle.  All long-standing arguments against alternative notation dwindle and disappear.  Some are wive's tales that don't come true; some once-formidable barriers are now gone; and some arguments are only musicians' fears that they themselves might not survive a change. This is not that kind of change!

Superior sequences, aids, illustrations and methodologies become obvious, attacking the essence of why musical laymen are illiterate and music students are ill-prepared for higher education. Those are not related problems -- they are the same problem, and we can't solve just one of them. Music, taken on its own terms, proves that it is not naturally one of our most difficult subjects, but that in traditional notation the tail wags the dog.  Using it exclusively is our whole problem.

Musicians learn the new system quickly, respect it, enjoy it, and range effortlessly between old and new.  They recognize it as a boon to teaching.  Many notice improvements in their own musicianship and confirm that dealing with two systems is not confusing but is actually mind-clearing.

Beginners of all ages understand immediately and progress faster.  Adult Laymen, as students or as parents, see that they and their children are no longer "locked out," and the level of their enthusiasm forecasts a revolution ahead. High school and middle school beginners can learn in a few months of class instruction to deal with all tonalities in both systems, including transposition.  They at least lose all fear of those things. Young children can begin with transposition, and they take to music so readily that they begin teaching their friends and siblings. Attrition, the eternal plague of music study, is essentially eliminated.  The whole world wants to learn music, and when the process isn't defeating they don't quit!

New possibilities come into play as music transcends the domain of the specialist.  Adult beginners can help in elementary grades, in special education and rehabilitation.  [Research has proved this resource to be supreme for cognitive stimulation of the impaired.]Adults help teach their children, read with them, and read with other adults in social settings -- chamber music for laymen!

But "permission" is withheld!  Many good musicians are convinced and many students learn more than ever before, but they are surrounded by armies of the uninformed who assume that any use of another notation system is heresy.

When those same people give us their time, skepticism becomes respect.  Many would teach the system immediately, given support or an exploratory movement with some kind of "official" approval.  They often confess amazement that the system and many of its uses are already "so well worked out." They agree that the role of music in our society could be easily and fundamentally transformed if various important entities of business and government would explore it, with each acting only in its own interest.

The consensus of those who have studied it most is that true music literacy will realistically, slowly, and certainly become our norm when the system is implemented in a reasonable environment.

Basic music will be common knowledge like everyday math and language, so young children will learn from everyone around them and begin music reading before kindergarten.  Any given level of musical understanding will be reached years earlier.  Anyone who studies privately will know more as he begins than most students do now after a year or more.  First there will be more readers of music  and then more readers of traditional notation -- than could ever result from traditional means.

Pure rote learning in schools will become a thing of the past, and true music literacy will be acquired by "all students," as projected for several years but never realized.  The cross section of college freshman will be able to pass the "fundamentals" test that most entering music majors can't pass now.

Music appreciation will succeed as classes participate at keyboards with the recordings they study. Newspaper features will make palatable music instruction a daily fare in the public consciousness. Music instruction on television will easily be as effective and successful as that in painting, sewing, and carpentry, but it will have a larger audience.

Music will become "important."  As in the history of language literacy, music literacy is thought of as relatively "unimportant" only while it is rare.  When music readers have grown from 2% to just 10% music literacy will be extremely important at school board meetings.  Music in the schools will have abundant support when it isn't seen as only "programs for someone else's kids."

Demand for products and services will grow exponentially.  Many more students will push demand for teachers beyond the supply. Every public school will need a keyboard classroom and every home a keyboard or piano.  Music publishers, like translating books to a language more people can read, will realize new demand for properties they already hold, but there won't be several "languages" to serve because one "translation" fits all.  Then new teaching materials, classics, and new products for new activities will be demanded.  Piano buyers, now mostly non-pianists with good intentions who disappoint themselves, will succeed and multiply. The general public, now being groomed only as spectators, will be more avid and discerning spectators when they are also participants.

Music in higher education will be greatly improved.  In addition to beginning with better prepared students, it will be better equipped for teaching such elements of musicianship as sight singing, analysis, and set theory.  Symphony orchestras will increase both audience and employment for their players, teaching keyboard-oriented music appreciation to concert goers.  Any concert in the schedule contains music that can be reduced to a variety of levels for keyboards.

The world will have several decades to compare systems.  Eventually, professionals who have grown up with both systems will decide their various uses.  Our role is to give them options.

We have persevered more than most people thought reasonable.  We have learned many things that most people didn't expect.  Now we see a future that most people haven't imagined.  All are invited to join the conversation.  It will help if you can temporarily suspend any assumptions that this should not be done or can not succeed, but all dialogue is good!

For now, demonstrations must be face-to-face with the goal of small community-wide explorations.  When a national charter group of pioneering musician/teachers has formed, and the first explorations are underway, introduction to this resource will be made more accessible.