Numbered musical notation
Thus the dots below numbers do not always vertically align with each other, since some of them may be moved slightly downward so as not to collide with the note length lines.
The underline, along with its joining, are analogous to the number of flags and beaming in standard notation.
When notating rhythms without pitch, such as in many percussion instruments, the symbol "X" or "x" replaces numerals.
It is possible to print a small fermata above a bar line; this represents a brief pause between the measures either side of the barline, as in Western notation.
The same accidentals in the standard notation are used, and as in common practice, an accidental is placed before the notes "1 2 3 4 5 6 7" to raise or lower the pitch and placed after the note names "C D E F G A B", which are used for key signature and chord markings in the numbered system.
They may be accompanied by symbols that represent the note's degrees at previous and present key signatures.
Usually, the time signature is formatted as two numbers placed vertically on top of each other, with a horizontal line separating them.
It is either represented by a bolder dot further away from the music line or by the staccatissimo sign instead, which is an inverted triangle.
and hairpin crescendos and diminuendos are written below the line of music to which they apply, as in Western notation.
Other instrument-specific symbols that are sometimes used include one resembling three slashes progressing diagonally downward, placed to the lower right of the numeral.
Another symbol is formed of a line proceeding from slightly to the right of the top right corner of the numeral and curving upwards, ending with the left half of an arrowhead.
This denotes a slide to a higher note (the exact pitch not always being specified), equivalent to portamento in Western music.
However, if a one-off chord results in many digits being stacked on top of each other and also has a roll symbol, it is possible to place that roll symbol above any slur or tie line to save space (to avoid moving the slur or tie any higher than the chord has already needed to move it).
Extended glissandi (over several octaves) are also possible, usually written with a longer diagonal wavy line that is nearly touching the numbers on either side of it.
The franciscan priest Jean-Jacques Souhaitty [fr] introduced numbered notation in 17th century.
Due to its straightforward correspondence to the standard notation, it is possible that many other claims of independent invention are also true.
[3] Although the system is used to some extent in Germany, France, and the Netherlands, and more by the Mennonites in Russia, it has never become popular in the Western world.
Number notation was used extensively in the 1920s and 30s by Columbia University, Teachers College music educator Satis Coleman, who felt it "proved to be very effective for speed with adults, and also as a means simple enough for young children to use in writing and reading tunes which they sing, and which they play on simple instruments.
This was first introduced in Japan, later adopted by several Chinese overseas students including Li Shutong.
[5] Indexing with numbered notation makes it possible to search a piece of music by melody rather than by title.
It is a natural extension and unification of the gongche notation widely used in ancient China for recording music.
For example, the first stanza of "Amazing Grace" can simply be transcribed as below:[citation needed] A number of Chinese-language Microsoft Windows applications are available for the WYSIWYG editing of scores (optionally with lyrics) in numbered musical notation.
It was possible to add numbered notation to Sibelius scores via a Chinese-language third-party plugin which is no longer distributed.
[13][14] In 2019 a project was started to create a cross-platform English-Chinese scorewriter that can print jianpu, Western or tablature staves and saves its scores in MusicXML using LGPL components.
[16][17][18] Duolos SIL Cipher is a free font developed by SIL International and released under OFL license, it makes use of Graphite and OpenType smart font technologies for laying out Jianpu and Kepatihan, makes it possible to edit and print scores in numbered musical notation with word processors, desktop publishing software and others, although it lacks of support for the slurs in OpenType applications.
Unlike Duolos SIL Cipher, it doesn't require extra line height.
