Very much this. Tradition is a terrible way to measure something's merits. And even if it did 'work', that's no reason to not try and improve it (though, I'd agree that just throwing something out there that might fragment things isn't terribly helpful either).
There are some good things about traditional sheet music notation, but that doesn't take away the fact that it's bloated with historical baggage. It's really not terribly efficient at communicating the 'essence' of music, it's just that we've all gotten used to translating piano notation into practical [insert_your_instrument_here] implementation in our heads. It's neither a useful 'source code' for other instruments to interpret, nor is it an efficient 'byte code' to describe the fundamental elements of music.
That's not to say that I have a solution to these problems of course (yet -- been working on my own project for a while that will eventually try to address this), but the issues aren't hard to spot, and they certainly seem like areas that can be optimized. And there will always be the problem of adoption, but I don't think that's even an argument we should bother raising until somebody proposes either a system that's either truly an upgrade, or a system that starts getting so much traction and starts fracturing music notation without any added benefit.
Personally, I sympathize with the aims of this project here, and think some of the ideas are clever, but considering how many things it changes, I don't think it really adds much efficiency when parsing/writing it in return. It actually strikes me as odd why they wouldn't just move to a chromatic grid system if they were getting rid of key signatures, that way they'd just eliminate accidentals all together -- or if not, then just combine them into one, since the key is a big reason for why they even have 2 designations in the first place. Which brings up the point that those symbols are all really quite complicated to be able to parse very quickly; the controversial 'note names' especially, but the accidentals really did not have much of a reason to be changed other than to just look 'fancier' -- which just makes them harder to parse, and to draw (IMO, but I have terrible hand writing).
Oh well, I wish them the best anyway. This isn't a terribly progressive field so I'm just glad to see anything happening.
There are some good things about traditional sheet music notation, but that doesn't take away the fact that it's bloated with historical baggage. It's really not terribly efficient at communicating the 'essence' of music, it's just that we've all gotten used to translating piano notation into practical [insert_your_instrument_here] implementation in our heads. It's neither a useful 'source code' for other instruments to interpret, nor is it an efficient 'byte code' to describe the fundamental elements of music.
That's not to say that I have a solution to these problems of course (yet -- been working on my own project for a while that will eventually try to address this), but the issues aren't hard to spot, and they certainly seem like areas that can be optimized. And there will always be the problem of adoption, but I don't think that's even an argument we should bother raising until somebody proposes either a system that's either truly an upgrade, or a system that starts getting so much traction and starts fracturing music notation without any added benefit.
Personally, I sympathize with the aims of this project here, and think some of the ideas are clever, but considering how many things it changes, I don't think it really adds much efficiency when parsing/writing it in return. It actually strikes me as odd why they wouldn't just move to a chromatic grid system if they were getting rid of key signatures, that way they'd just eliminate accidentals all together -- or if not, then just combine them into one, since the key is a big reason for why they even have 2 designations in the first place. Which brings up the point that those symbols are all really quite complicated to be able to parse very quickly; the controversial 'note names' especially, but the accidentals really did not have much of a reason to be changed other than to just look 'fancier' -- which just makes them harder to parse, and to draw (IMO, but I have terrible hand writing).
Oh well, I wish them the best anyway. This isn't a terribly progressive field so I'm just glad to see anything happening.