Compose styles
Rather than blending styles toward a middle, this gives them roles. The first one carries the structure, the next comes in as the accent, and anything after that shows up in a single detail. Where they fight each other, it says so before you start.
How to divide the work
- Composition
- Follow Graphic Notation: Show which direction on the page carries time before anyone plays
- Type
- Set in Graphic Notation's manner (Few kinds of sign, with the range where one shape holds one meaning), and let Player Piano Roll's lettering (Hole length is duration and lateral position is pitch, never varied) appear only where you want the eye to catch.
- Material
- Ground in Graphic Notation's material (Line weight mapped to loudness, kept dark enough to print clean); bring in exactly one thing from Player Piano Roll (Paper moves with humidity, so leave reading tolerance between holes).
- Colour
- Build on #ffffff, #fb6546, #343636 and admit one accent from #e5e9e8, #7d715a, #1a1b18.
Where they fight
- Graphic Notation and Player Piano Roll both belong to Notation Systems, so the difference is small. Push the roles further apart than feels comfortable.
Caution
- Graphic Notation Freedom claimed without a key or any agreed convention scatters interpretation across players, and the score gets treated as a doodle.
- Player Piano Roll Punching every fine note thins the paper bridges until they tear, and the performance breaks down partway through the roll.
Image prompt
Produce four original images that take their structure from Graphic Notation (style, 1950s–) and their accent from Player Piano Roll (style, 1896–1930s). ## What to make Make the kind of thing Graphic Notation exists for: handing improvisers a map instead of a list of instructions, or making the page of a piece into a figure worth hanging on a wall. Choose one subject and hold it across all four. ## Structure comes from Graphic Notation - The staff abandoned - Instruction by shape and line - Pages open to interpretation - The score as artwork Composition: Show which direction on the page carries time before anyone plays. Type and lettering: Few kinds of sign, with the range where one shape holds one meaning. ## Accent comes from Player Piano Roll, used sparingly - Rows of perforations - The scrolling roll - Machine-readable music - Performance physically recorded Let one material quality come from it: Paper moves with humidity, so leave reading tolerance between holes. ## Colour and feeling Build the ground on #ffffff, carry the structure in #fb6546 and #343636, and let a single accent come from #7d715a. These are read off real works, so a direction rather than a fixed palette. Feeling to carry: rebellion, play, calm, technique, nostalgia. ## Where they fight - Graphic Notation and Player Piano Roll both belong to Notation Systems, so the difference is small. Push the roles further apart than feels comfortable. ## What goes wrong - Graphic Notation: Freedom claimed without a key or any agreed convention scatters interpretation across players, and the score gets treated as a doodle. - Player Piano Roll: Punching every fine note thins the paper bridges until they tear, and the performance breaks down partway through the roll. ## Across the four Keep the roles fixed in all four. Vary the framing, the scale and the arrangement so the set shows what this pairing can do rather than four versions of one picture. ## Constraints - Do not imitate, reference or name any specific artist, studio, brand, character or copyrighted work. - Do not reproduce the composition of an existing work. - Produce original compositions in the general period languages described above.
Related entries
- Graphic Notation 1950s– / Style / Notation Systems
The scores Cage and Cardew drew when they abandoned the staff: shapes, lines, map-like pages. Opening performance to interpretation rather than instruction, the score itself became visual art.
- Player Piano Roll 1896–1930s / Style / Notation Systems
A recording medium of rolled paper on which the punched holes are the performance itself. It marks the turn from scores read by people to codes read by machines, and it is the ancestor of the punch card and the digital sequencer.
Share this composition:https://indexstyle.org/compose?ids=graphic-notation+player-piano-roll