Hummingbird – a fresh take on music notation

It’s hard enough learning a new instrument, but mastering notation at the same time can make music just too much of a struggle for youngsters.  Blake West and Mike Sall in Austin Texas have come up with an alternative notation, which they say visualises the music in a more intuitive way.  No more counting ledger lines, or memorising rest symbols – everything has both a symbol and a spatial element.  They’ve called it Hummingbird.

Here’s an example of conventional notation:

And here’s the same piece of music  in Hummingbird:

Here’s the notation in essence:

And here’s a video, courtesy of Blake and Mike, which explains it in more detail.

Hummingbird Music Notation Intro from Blake West on Vimeo.

The Hummingbird website has more, and you can download example songs for free.  They’re building open-source software at the moment so you can translate music XML files into Hummingbird sheet music, and if you’re a music teacher, they are happy to translate specific songs into Hummingbird if it helps.

I don’t teach children myself, but I would be very interested in the comments of teachers out there who do.  What do you think?