Editing Numbered musical notation (section)

==History and usage==
The [[Order of Friars Minor|franciscan]] priest {{ill|Jean-Jacques Souhaitty|fr}} introduced numbered notation in 17th century. A similar invention was presented by [[Jean-Jacques Rousseau]] in his work presented to the [[French Academy of Sciences]] in 1742. Due to its straightforward correspondence to the standard notation, it is possible that many other claims of independent invention are also true. [[Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians|Grove's]] credits [[Émile-Joseph-Maurice Chevé|Emile J. M. Chevé]].<ref>Grove Music Online (subscription required but many public libraries are subscribed; URLs vary). China, §II: History and theory.  Alan R. Thrasher, et al.</ref>

Although the system is used to some extent in [[Germany]], [[France]], and the [[Netherlands]], and more by the [[Mennonite]]s in [[Russia]], it has never become popular in the Western world. Number notation was used extensively in the 1920s and 30s by Columbia University, Teachers College music educator [[Satis N. Coleman|Satis Coleman]], who felt it "proved to be very effective for speed with adults, and also as a means simple enough for young children to use in writing and reading tunes which they sing, and which they play on simple instruments."<ref>Coleman, Satis. 1939. Your Child's Music. New York: Van Rees Press:165-171</ref> See the external links for more information.

The system is very popular among some [[Asia]]n people, making conventions to encode and decode music more accessible than in the West, as more [[China|Chinese]] people can sight read ''jianpu'' than standard notation. Most Chinese traditional music scores and popular song books are published in ''jianpu'', and ''jianpu'' notation is often included in vocal music with staff notation. This was first introduced in Japan, later adopted by several Chinese overseas students including [[Hong Yi|Li Shutong]].<ref>{{cite web |first=Mei-Lien |last=Liu |title=音樂簡譜不是毒蛇猛獸 |language=zh |url=https://tamed.yam.org.tw/news05.htm |website=Taiwan Music Educating Association |access-date=19 June 2023}}</ref>

Indexing with numbered notation makes it possible to search a piece of music by melody rather than by title. An actual example can be found in the [[Chinese New Hymnal]]. [[Parson's code]] on the other hand contains information on rise and fall in pitch only but precise pitches can be decoded from numbered notation. This way, a children's song book can be indexed like this:

:<code>|1·&nbsp;&nbsp;1·&nbsp;&nbsp;|1&nbsp;&nbsp;<u>2</u>3·&nbsp;&nbsp;|</code> "[[Row, Row, Row Your Boat]]"
:<code>|1 1 5 5 |6 6 5 ‒ |</code> "[[Twinkle, Twinkle Little Star]]"
:<code>|1 2 3 1 |1 2 3 1 |</code> "[[Frère Jacques]]"

A reason for its popularity among Chinese is that ''jianpu'' fits in with the Chinese music tradition. It is a natural extension and unification of the [[gongche notation|''gongche'' notation]] widely used in ancient China for recording music. ''Gongche'' uses a number of characters to indicate the musical notes, and ''jianpu'' can be seen as using numbers to replace those characters. The [[monophony|monophonic]] nature of music in Chinese tradition also contributes to widespread use because so few elements are needed for monophonic music that music can be notated with little more than a [[typewriter]].

Compared with the standard notation, the numbered notation is very compact for just the [[melody]] line or monophonic parts. It is even possible to transcribe music in between the lines of text. Transcribing [[harmony]] can be done by vertically stacking the notes, but this advantage diminishes as the harmony becomes more complex (or [[polyphonic]]ity increases). The standard notation, with its graphical notation, is better in representing the duration and timing among multiple notes.