The opening 8 bars of “Look for The Silver Lining” (Kern/DeSylva), first in Ab, then F, then C. Despite usage in Germany, France, and the Netherlands, numerical notation has never become widespread in the West, even though its central idea- numbers for degrees of the scale- is used as a sort of shorthand among jazz and country musicians to describe harmonic sequences as relative patterns, rather than absolute values.įig. He is by no means the only person to have thought of representing the notes of the diatonic scale with numerals, and it seems that many variations of this idea have cropped up more or less independently of each other since Rousseau (and possibly even before). In 1742, philosopher, writer, composer and music copyist Jean Jacques Rousseau presented a system of numerical music notation to the French Academy of Sciences, later published in his Dissertation on Modern Music (1743). Finally, I will propose an optimized, modernized system for notating music numerically with suggestions on how it can be put to beneficial use. I will therefore outline the potential I see in the concept, as well as tackle some problems that existing systems come up against. However, I feel that existing systems of numerical notation lack some important developments in order to bring them up to date and optimize them to the task of notating modern music and teaching the skills required for playing it. This concept has enormous potential, particularly in the field of music education, borne out by my own experiences teaching with it. This article is a presentation of the concept and history of notating diatonic music with the use of numerals, of which several systems exist.

Numbered musical notation