I just took a quick look, but as an instrumental musician (4th grade - freshman year in college), what I'm gathering is this notation lets you use the shape of the note's head to tell you where it is in position to the fundamental of the key the song is in.
That's great if you process music in those terms... but as a mostly sight-reading instrumental musician, I'm thinking about what note is written, and what fingering that requires on my instrument. When playing from sheet music, it never really mattered much to me what key we were playing in, or if I was playing the fundamental or a third; maybe if I were better attuned, I might adjust my fingering ever so slightly, but if I did that, it was unconscious and by ear.
Now, when I was playing in Jazz band, improvising bass lines, the key makes a real big difference, because I'm going to play like 1-3-5-3 and such, but then I'm just working from a chord chart, not sheet music, and note shapes still don't help me.
I was never very good at choral music, and never thought in do-re-me, etc. But I can see it being useful for people trained in that; move the do to the new fundamental, and go from there. Not sure how (or if) they handle accidental sharps and flats that take you away from the key signature... maybe not, since the emphasis seems to be on simplification.
The other thing that was touched on is arrangement --- rather than a melody and harmonies arrangement, it seems like each part is arranged to sound nice on its own as well as together. This makes it easier to practice the parts individually --- sometimes harmony parts sound really iffy by themselves, so you don't want to practice it.
I don't think there's necessarily much lost by using these shapes more, but I don't think there's much gained. And of course, it adds more labor to typesetting or hand writing the scores --- until you get to computer based typesetting where you can probably convince the computer to do the shapes for you.
That's great if you process music in those terms... but as a mostly sight-reading instrumental musician, I'm thinking about what note is written, and what fingering that requires on my instrument. When playing from sheet music, it never really mattered much to me what key we were playing in, or if I was playing the fundamental or a third; maybe if I were better attuned, I might adjust my fingering ever so slightly, but if I did that, it was unconscious and by ear.
Now, when I was playing in Jazz band, improvising bass lines, the key makes a real big difference, because I'm going to play like 1-3-5-3 and such, but then I'm just working from a chord chart, not sheet music, and note shapes still don't help me.
I was never very good at choral music, and never thought in do-re-me, etc. But I can see it being useful for people trained in that; move the do to the new fundamental, and go from there. Not sure how (or if) they handle accidental sharps and flats that take you away from the key signature... maybe not, since the emphasis seems to be on simplification.
The other thing that was touched on is arrangement --- rather than a melody and harmonies arrangement, it seems like each part is arranged to sound nice on its own as well as together. This makes it easier to practice the parts individually --- sometimes harmony parts sound really iffy by themselves, so you don't want to practice it.
I don't think there's necessarily much lost by using these shapes more, but I don't think there's much gained. And of course, it adds more labor to typesetting or hand writing the scores --- until you get to computer based typesetting where you can probably convince the computer to do the shapes for you.