Posts Tagged hard boiled

Important development in the comments section of the last post of the Numerical Notation category. In fact it was the not only the most recent post, but the final post before changing the name of the category, which is now: A0̸

I’ve tried to make it look nice and unambiguous, but it can be commonly known as “A0 Notation”, pronounced “A-Zero” or if you prefer, “A-Oh”.

As suspected, there is already an almost identical system. It is called Integer Notation. Very easy to search for if you know what it is called, and also supposedly easy to find if you’re stumbling around music theory wikis so that’s slightly embarrassing. It is also used in the John Woo film Hard Boiled which is even more annoying to me because I have to admit I hadn’t seen it before a few days ago:

Chow Yun-Fat and the lovely Teresa Mo crack the code

I first figured this was something unrelated made up for the movie, a trivial point. But no, it’s really standard Integer Notation. [Ed: Not quite, there’s no zero. It’s using the numbers 1-7 for the diatonic scale, regardless of key.]* The above is the melody line for Lionel Ritchie’s Hello, written in C:

So C=0 or do. C=1. Simple enough. But later in the film Mona Lisa is used, which is in F:

F=1 here. And they’re also using the “movable do” Solfege system. So I don’t have to point out that this form of numerical notation is just a form of that which is easier to input into a DOS computer from the 80s, but I will. Done.

So whadda I got? Mine would be a “fixed do” system where A=0, but it’s 12-tone so forget about the “do” thing. Remember the the charts I made for the saxes in different keys? Probably not but forget those too, gotta make new ones. That system just makes it easier to sight-read staff notation—once you learn the fingerings for one sax, you can play any (theoretically) just pick up any sax and start sight-reading that part, and you just have to not think about how the notes coming out of the horn are totally different. I don’t think my system can replace lettered notation or staff notation entirely but I think it could in a lot of situations, especially learning where you should be internalizing the names of the concert pitch notes regardless of your instrument of choice.

So I’ll just be making some new charts then. %

*Altho it could be considered a ~type~ of "Integer Notation", what's used is the movie actually might be unrelated and just made up for the movie and therefore, in fact, trivial. But it's still a fun example of alternate notation.