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 Staff Notation's lettering (Uniform head and stem weight, accidentals given clear space ahead) 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 Staff Notation (Thin staff lines, note heads printed darker than the spaces).
- Colour
- Build on #ffffff, #fb6546, #343636 and admit one accent from #d5c3aa, #b15832, #23190e.
Where they fight
- Graphic Notation and Staff Notation both belong to Notation Systems, so the difference is small. Push the roles further apart than feels comfortable.
- Graphic Notation and Staff Notation stand roughly 900 years apart. Keep one of them recognisably period rather than letting both drift into the middle.
Caution
- Graphic Notation Freedom claimed without a key or any agreed convention scatters interpretation across players, and the score gets treated as a doodle.
- Staff Notation Setting every bar to the same width breaks the link between spacing and duration, so fast passages jam and sight readers fall out.
Image prompt
Produce four original images that take their structure from Graphic Notation (style, 1950s–) and their accent from Staff Notation (style, 11th century–). ## 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 Staff Notation, used sparingly - The five-line coordinate system - Time running left to right - Clefs and key signatures - Bars dividing time Let one material quality come from it: Thin staff lines, note heads printed darker than the spaces. ## Colour and feeling Build the ground on #ffffff, carry the structure in #fb6546 and #343636, and let a single accent come from #b15832. These are read off real works, so a direction rather than a fixed palette. Feeling to carry: rebellion, play, calm, trust, technique. ## Where they fight - Graphic Notation and Staff Notation both belong to Notation Systems, so the difference is small. Push the roles further apart than feels comfortable. - Graphic Notation and Staff Notation stand roughly 900 years apart. Keep one of them recognisably period rather than letting both drift into the middle. ## 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. - Staff Notation: Setting every bar to the same width breaks the link between spacing and duration, so fast passages jam and sight readers fall out. ## 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.
- Staff Notation 11th century– / Style / Notation Systems
Notation that fixes pitch to a coordinate, running from Guido's invention of the line to the five-line staff. Time reads left to right and pitch up and down, a flat design still in use after a thousand years and the longest-lived format in information design.
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