Compose two styles
Rather than blending two styles into a middle, this assigns them roles: one carries the structure, the other appears as an accent. Where the two fight, 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 #e9e6dd, #67635d, #171615 and admit one accent from #e9e6dd, #67635d, #171615.
Where they fight
- Both belong to Notation Systems, so the difference is small. Push the roles further apart than feels comfortable.
- Roughly 1939 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
An original image that takes its structure from Graphic Notation (Style, 1950s–) and its accent from Staff Notation (Style, 11th century–). Structural cues: The staff abandoned; Instruction by shape and line; Pages open to interpretation; The score as artwork. Accent cues, used sparingly: The five-line coordinate system; Time running left to right; Clefs and key signatures; Bars dividing time. 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. Let one material quality come from the second style: Thin staff lines, note heads printed darker than the spaces. Mood: Rebellion, Play, Calm, Trust, Technology. Color: build on #e9e6dd, #67635d, #171615 with a single accent drawn from #e9e6dd, #67635d, #171615. Constraints: do not imitate, reference or name any specific artist, studio, brand, character or copyrighted work. Produce an original composition 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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