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 Neume Notation: Signs on four lines, leading wide enough for the text to breathe
- Type
- Set in Neume Notation's manner (Text leads and signs follow, set small directly over each word), 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 Neume Notation's material (Black and red only on a parchment ground, staff lines in red); 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.
Caution
- Neume Notation Curves drawn as ornament lose their correspondence with melodic motion, and the notation sinks into decoration nobody can sing from.
- 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 Neume Notation (Style, 9th century–) and its accent from Staff Notation (Style, 11th century–). Structural cues: Curves as melodic gesture; Four-line staves and square notes; Manuscript red and black; Signs floating above the words. Accent cues, used sparingly: The five-line coordinate system; Time running left to right; Clefs and key signatures; Bars dividing time. Composition: Signs on four lines, leading wide enough for the text to breathe. Type and lettering: Text leads and signs follow, set small directly over each word. Let one material quality come from the second style: Thin staff lines, note heads printed darker than the spaces. Mood: Calm, Nostalgia, 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
- Neume Notation 9th century– / Style / Notation Systems
The West's oldest musical writing: melodic inflection recorded in curves like the motion of a hand. The gesture of melody before pitch was fixed to lines, still alive in the manuscripts of Gregorian chant.
- 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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