IV.

Other Notational Systems

Alphabetical notations were used in ancient Greece and elsewhere. Jazz charts may indicate only the harmonic structure, leaving all the rest to the performer. In addition to their western uses, neumes have also been employed in China, Japan, and the Near East as well as for Tibetan chant.

Tablatures are compact notations that use signs, numbers, or letters, usually to notate fingerings rather than pitches. Modern popular guitar tablature is a small grid in which vertical lines represent the strings and horizontal lines represent the frets; black dots indicate where to put the fingers.

Writers discussing music sometimes use the following system to specify pitches: CC-BB = third C through third B below middle C; C-B = second C through second B below middle C (that is, C = C below the bass staff); c-b = C through B below middle C; c¹-b¹ = middle C through the B above it; c²-b² = C above middle C through the B above that; c³-b³ = second C above middle C through the B above that (that is, c³ = C above the treble staff).

In the 20th century, composers of “indeterminate” compositions leave many elements deliberately vague and to chance; this is also true of their unconventional notation.

See also Basso Continuo; Harmony; Score.