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Comment by Kye | Hacker News Reader

Western notation is a complex written language developed over centuries. It's easy to render the symbols in isolation, but not the meaning they convey to the musician who's expected to perform it. Even something like whether to render a flat or a sharp depends on context and intended use.

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^ This is "the problem". A lot of music students try to "solve" it after getting frustrated with the staff, but eventually decide that couple hundred years of bad notation still has most of the bugs worked out.

You're really looking for patterns on the staff rather than the exact pedantic notes that are present in the notation.

Me? Still learn best by ear. Unfortunately this is also the slowest method....

Learning by ear is the best by far, and we live in a period where we can listen to every music every produced. When I learned music, music wasn't as available so you had to learn the pieces the hard way.

There is also the problem that human memory has limitations, and if I stop playing something, I will forget it after a couple of weeks, so again musical notation is very helpful.

> You're really looking for patterns on the staff rather than the exact pedantic notes that are present in the notation.

Exactly. Playing the exact tune becomes boring after a while; music is a fun creative exercise for me, so the notes and chords are a general direction, not a precise roadmap. If I wanted a perfect interpretation, I'd listen to the recorded piece instead of play it.

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