Piano-playing Made Easy.

Oamaru Mail, Volume XXIV, Issue 7499, 24 April 1899, Page 4

Piano-playing Made Easy.

A new system of musical notation has been invented by Mr A. D. Tyssen, and has been named the Key Board Notation. Its idea is simply that of making the stave a diagrammatic picture of the piano. " Lines are arranged in sets of two or three alternately, to represent the black notes of the piano ; the spaces between them represent the white notes, a double space being left§ where two white notes come together. Thus D, being a white note between two black notes, is shown as a white space between two black lines ; B flat, being ths upper of three black notes, is shown as the upper of three black lines, etc. Every octave is the same, every key equally easy. In five minutes this diagram is mastered and thenceforward the aspirant has only to play ; he has no Btaves to worry over, no sharps or flats to worry over, no sharps or flats to remember. He merely compares his diagram with his piano, and plays his notes as L.e sees them ; at first, slowly and carefully, gradually faster and more confidently, but always correctly, at sight, in the proper key." The whole effect is to substitute eye work for head work, leaving the pleasanter aspects of musical study to be better cultivated when less time has to be expended on the distractions of flats and sharps.