Welcome to Revelation Unraveled, I'm your host, William Tapley, also known as the
Third Eagle of the Apocalypse and the Co-Prophet of these End Times.
Every year on this date, at least for the last six or seven years, I've been
celebrating my anniversary because 10 years ago today, July 31st, 2008, I posted
my very first video to YouTube; and it was about the meaning of the number 6 6 6.
And on these anniversary dates, I try to do something a little different for your
benefit and for my own benefit to kind of take a break and to mark the
beginning of a new year as far as my uploading videos go. And about 35 years
before that first date, in other words, back in the early 70s, I had just started
working at Ethan Allen furniture and on weekends I would very often take a break
and play the piano. I was trained to play the piano when I was in high school or
actually, before that, and I remember on this particular day I wanted to learn
how to play Chopin's 'Waltz in C-sharp Minor',
one of my favorite pieces. And I was playing along and after the
first, I think, 16 bars, he suddenly changes the key and I think he had it at the
beginning in four sharps and then he switches to five flats, if I remember
correctly. And I said, 'this is crazy'. I mean, I always hated to play sharps and
flats anyway and so it occurred to me there's got to be a better way and that
was the start of a new musical notation and I worked about 10 years on it and
after that I got into sculpture more and then, of course around 2001, I retired
from Ethan Allen, I had gotten into Bible prophecy, so my new music notation
system, which I called 'Gabriel Music Notation', after the Archangel, I had kind
of put it on the back burner. But maybe it's time to bring it back out again. Now
at the time that I formulated my new system it got quite a bit
of attention and probably most musicians have forgotten about it since then, but I
thought I would show you some of the magazines that it appeared in. I would
submit an article to a music magazine and more often enough than not, they
would publish it. And now, this magazine is called 'Musart', I guess you can see
that, and this is the Winter 1974, (issue) so that tells you about when I started this
project. And the title is called 'Something Borrowed, Something New' and
it's really, I thought... I was very pleased with it. And they actually gave
me a better coverage and I'll show you in a few minutes. And the next
magazine that covered it was the 'School Music News'. This is the August, 1975 issue:
'A New Musical Notation'. I think you can see that; nice coverage, two pages,
actually more than two pages. The next magazine that covered it was 'Piano Guild
Notes' and this is September-October, 1975, 'An Improved System of Music Notation.
I was very pleased with all of these and I did get some attention. I mean, people
would read these articles and write me letters and some of them... And I published
a book shortly after this and quite a few
ordered the book and I will show you what that looks like in a minute.
Here is another copy of 'Musart', another edition, this was about a year later. This
was the fall of 1975 and a very nice copy of it called 'Details of a New System of
Musical Notation' by William Tapley. Look at how big they printed my name there!
Isn't that something! Anyway, at the time I was really excited with all this. Now
this is probably my most famous printing; this was 'Contemporary Keyboard' magazine;
very popular at the time among keyboard artists and this was one of their first editions.
It was called Contemporary Keyboard then. It has a young Herbie
Hancock on the cover. I think they changed the name to 'Keyboard' shortly
after that. And it was a mainstay for all pianists for I guess, 41 years. Now last
year they, I believe, they stopped the print edition. I think they merged with
another company so you can't find this anymore on the news stands but at the
time that this was printed, this was really quite a coup for me. And as you
can see they did me up brown as well. Didn't they do a great job? So
that was a real thrill for me. And now, this is August of 1976, 'Southwestern Musician
Combined with Texas Music Educator'. They also gave me quite a bit of publicity;
covered the new music notation. Here is the 'School Musician Director and Teacher';
this was August-September of 1985. Now, this is about 10 years later. I was still
working on it but I was going at it from different perspectives, trying all the while to
promote my system and I began submitting to magazines again,
and once again, they were very interested as you can see; very nice
article. And this is the last one that I had printed,
this was March, 1988, (Massachusetts Music News)
and as I say in the early 90s I switched and I became interested in sculpture but
at this time I was still working on my 'Gabriel Music Notation-A Proposal For
Progress'. Again, I was very pleased with all this notation, so as you can see (all
of these articles) so as you can see I got a lot of publicity at the time and
quite a few people corresponded with me and we talked about it a great deal.
And I found out that it is a hard nut to crack: the music industry and printing
music because whenever I wrote to publishers, music publishers, they
they would not dream of publishing music in a new system. I would have to,
I figured at the time, I finally decided that I would have to start a
music school to prove to people that my system was far superior to the standard
notation. Our standard notation was invented by a Benedictine monk by the
name of Guido d Arezzo almost a thousand years ago in Italy and it took
a long time for Europe to accept it. The countries in Northern Europe, they
wouldn't accept it for four hundred years.
They said: 'What good can come out of Italy'? But eventually they did, they had
to, because without music notation there would be no Bach, Beethoven, Mozart or
Wagner or Tchaikovsky or any great composer because
before that, music consisted of folk music; one or two instruments and that
was it, because everybody memorized music. There was no way to transcribe it from
one generation to another. But, of course, since the invention of....since Guido
d'Arezzo invented music notation, that enabled music to expand into the
great orchestras that we have today. However, there are a lot of problems with
Guido's notation system and I'm going to show you the problems and I'm going to
compare them for you. And on the top here I have an example of what I call Guidonian
notation, this is standard notation, and the exact same passage (in Gabriel) is
printed out below. Let's take a closer look: in the Guido transcription
above, these are just five bars from Chopin's 'Waltz in C-sharp Minor'.
Notice there are seven sharp signs, five natural signs, six double sharp signs,
plus four sharp signs in the key signature.
Unlike most composers, Chopin used many different scales freely and that's much
to the consternation of average piano players such as myself. In fact, most
popular composers today use one or two flats or sharps
at the most; not because it doesn't sound better but because it's harder to
read. In the Gabriel transcription below there are no accidentals and only one
chromatic key signature. So as I say, most composers avoid any music written in
more than two or three sharps or flats because it is so hard to read, not
because it doesn't sound better. Now people like Chopin, they didn't mind
writing with a lot of sharps and flats because they were experts; I mean, they
were tremendous piano players and they didn't worry about whether you could
read it or not but most modern songwriters use very few sharps and
flats. In fact they would probably rather use C major in all of their writing. Here
is another comparison: take a look at the Guidonian, or standard
notation, at the top, compared to my notation on the bottom. Notice in this
musical passage how the octave notes look alike in the Gabriel notation on
the bottom because they repeat at the exact same staff location whether in the
base or the treble clef and even into the ledger lines. Since octaves sound
alike shouldn't they also look alike in the notation? However, in the Guidonian
notation on top, the octave notes never repeat; sometimes they are on a
line, sometimes on a space. So now, here is what a keyboard looks like and I'm sure
all of you are very familiar with a piano keyboard. Keyboard design is a
marvel; it's a brilliant design. If you make electronic instruments today you
don't make, let's say a trombone, sound like a tuba, or a violin that sounds like
a saxophone. You make a keyboard instrument that sounds like all of
other instruments and in some cases even sounds like an entire orchestra. That's
because this is the most simple, most perfect way to express music. And that's
because this expresses the structure of music very naturally. Music is divided
into white keys, or the C scale, and sharps and flats, or the black keys.
But Guido's notation does not recognize this. Guido's notation is based on the
white keys only and these (black keys) are called accidentals and they should not be.
In music, the black keys are just as easy, in fact, a lot of people say they're easier
to play, than white keys. Music should be written in four and five sharps and
flats if it's to benefit the performer, if he could read the music. The only
reason, as I say, music is not written with a lot of sharps and flats is
because it's more difficult to read, not because it's more difficult to play.
Music notation should be as easy to understand as this keyboard. Notice that
the black and white keys are differentiated from each other by color,
size, shape, and position, just like in my new Gabriel notation. Notice how octave
notes are always in the same relative location. Actually, Gabriel notation is
slightly better than the wonderful keyboard design because all half and
whole note separations are accurate whereas on a keyboard
the distance between E and F, for example, is the same as a distance between, F and
G. In other words, in some cases half notes have the same separation as whole
notes. Now here's the better example of what I was just talking about: these are
two different, actually four different chords, two in the treble clef and
two of the bass clef. They look alike. This chord looks like this one, this
chord looks like this one. They're NOT alike; they're completely different!
Now I have printed the exact same ones in my own Gabriel notation. Notice that
they don't look alike because they are not alike. Notice that there's a
separation between some notes indicating a whole tone separation, some a halftone
separation. You do not get that with standard Guidonian notation. Here in
this close-up of Guido's notation, at the left, the notes in the bass clef and the
treble clef appear to be the same, but they are not; they appear to be the same
distance apart but they are not. The same notes, as transcribed in my Gabriel
notation, show that these four chords are comprised of different notes and some
are halftone separations while other have whole tone separations. So now, let's
look at a simplified explanation of the same thing, visual explanation: this is a
G chord in Guido's treble clef, a G chord in the bass clef; let's take a closer look.
Notice that the G chord is located at the same position on the
staff lines in both the bass and treble clefs in the Gabriel notation on the
right but are sometimes on a line and sometimes on the space in Guido's
standard notation. The standard notation is on the left and my new Gabriel
notation, the much-improved system, is on the right. Now, let's take a look at the
Grand Staff so you can see what all the notes on a keyboard look like on the new
Gabriel notation system. Here is what the Grand Staff looks like in my new
notation system. Notice that any given note always repeats at the same
staff location whether in the base or the treble class. The note D, for example
is always the white rounded note between the two staff lines which are farther apart.
Now, if you want to pause this video you can take more time
to see the logic of this new invention. And it is much, much easier to learn than
the old standard notation which I suffered through for many, many years.
Now, I am certainly not the first to try to improve Guido's standard music notation.
In fact, here's a whole book by Gardner Read: 'Sourcebook of Proposed Music
Notation Reforms' and he's got me in here, although he doesn't understand my
system; he knocks it down because he doesn't understand it. And if you take a
look, you'll see there are hundreds of different notations in here. People have
tried for centuries to improve Guido's system; none of them have been
adopted. And the reason is because none of them are superior to Guido's system;
they all have some kind of problem. Mine is the only one that is superior.
Basically, what people understand is that you must have a chromatic scale because
the eight white keys in an octave on a keyboard, only plays C major scale. And
you have to include those five black notes. Guido solved the problem by
putting in sharps and flats. In other words, you play the same white note in
the C scale except it has to be modified: you put a sharp or a flat
in front of it, or a key signature at the beginning, and it is a crime to have to
remember twelve different key signatures all the way up to six sharps
and six flats. It is very discouraging for a pianist, unless you're a genius
like Frederic Chopin. Now the key discovery of mine is that in
order to get all twelve chromatic notes, or thirteen, if you include the octave note,
into the same space as the white keys on a keyboard, the eight white notes,
you must compress the notes together. Then you don't use anymore
page space and it is much more readable. you have to discard the
five lines of Guido's system. You use the same principles that Guido did, but the
arrangement is much simpler; you only have to learn one chromatic scale, you
don't have to learn 12 different chromatic scales. And I wrote a book at
the time and I called it: 'All Keys are Easy' and I transcribed (this was a job,
believe me) I transcribed more than 50 different pieces of music and I remember
sending out quite a few copies of this; I think I charged ten dollars at a time
for these books and I have a few more somewhere. What I think I am going to do
to maybe revive interest in this is: I'm going to get with my web manager in
Australia and I'll see if I can't print a description of this system on my
website and maybe print out some of these pieces that I have. I mean,
I've already done the work, all I've got to do is to copy them over and maybe
take a screenshot and print them out and then you can understand it yourself. You
can study it if you're interested, and if there is more interest, I will maybe
pursue this. I mean, I already have a lot of interests: I'm saying the Rosary
every day at 5 p.m. and I'm also doing regular videos but let me know if you're
interested and I will maybe try to do more videos on this. In any case,
congratulate me for being 10 years on YouTube and I hope that my next
year will be just as good as the last 10!