Jianpu

You’re almost certainly familiar with western staff notation 🎼, even if you don’t know how to read it.

But this isn’t the only system for recording music. I’m particularly fond of numbered musical notation, which seems to be more commonly used in China, where it’s sometimes called jianpu, meaning simplified score.

In western staff notation, the shape of a symbol indicates that note’s duration, while the vertical position of the symbol indicates the note’s pitch.

In jianpu, by contrast, the shape of the symbol indicates its pitch.

The digits 1-7 are used to indicate the notes of the scale do re mi fa so la ti, while 0 indicates a rest.

For example, Twinkle Twinkle Little Star can be written

| 1 1 5 5 | 6 6 5 - | 4 4 3 3 | 2 2 1 - |

| 5 5 4 4 | 3 3 2 - | 5 5 4 4 | 3 3 2 - | 

| 1 1 5 5 | 6 6 5 - | 4 4 3 3 | 2 2 1 - |

The dashes indicate that the previous note should be extended by one quarter note. Like in staff notation, a dot after a note indicate that a note’s duration should be extended by 50%.

Some other bits of notation:

• Underlining a note halves its duration.
• Placing a dot above or below a note moves up or down an octave, respectively.
• Finally, if notes are vertically stacked, this means they should be played simultaneously as a chord.

These features are demonstrated in the following rendition of Amazing Grace, transcribed from Wikipedia’s page on jianpu.

5 |1' - q3'q1'| 3' - 2' |1' - 6|5 - 5|1' - q3'q1'|3' - q2'q3'|5' -
3 |3 - 5 |b7 -b7 |4 - 4|3 - 3|3 - 5 |1' - 5 |5 -
5, |1 - 1 | 1 - 1 |6, - 6,|1 - 1|5, - 5, |1 - 1 |7, -
1, |1, - 5, | 1, - 5, |4, - 4,|1, - 5,|1, - 3, |5, -   |5, -
 
2'/3'/|5' - 3'/1'/| 3' - 3'/2'/|1' - 6|5 - 5|1' - 3'/1'/|3' - 2'|1' - ||
5 |3 - 5 |b7 -b7 |4 - 4|3 - 3|3 - 5 |1' - 4|3 - ||
7, |5, - 1 | 1 - 1 |6, - 6,|1 - 1|5, - 5, |1 - 7,|1 - ||
5, |1, - 5, | 1, - 5, |4, - 4,|1, - 5,|1, - 1, |5, - 5,|1, - ||

(If the song is too complicated, try just playing the top note of each chord.)

Pages in this group

• Jianpu ASCII Font Posted: Jan 7th, 2023
  A font to quickly jot down jianpu notation using ASCII characters.
• Jianpu Key Signatures Posted: Jan 3rd, 2023
  Some Infographics I made to Help Transpose Music to Jianpu
• Christmas Songs Posted: Jan 7th, 2023 - Modified: Jan 9th, 2023
  Jianpu scores for a few classic Christmas songs
• Stephen Foster's Music Posted: Jan 9th, 2023 - Modified: Jan 9th, 2023
  Jianpu scores for a few songs by Stephen Foster
• Tom Lehrer's Songs Posted: Jan 4th, 2023 - Modified: Jan 7th, 2023
  Jianpu scores for some of Tom Lehrer's Songs