&gt;<i>Therefore it is music notation</i><p>Only in that its a notation for music ENTRY. Not meant to be used in the same way as the traditional music notation that you wrote about (&quot;When I look at a traditional score I see and hear the music in my mind pretty much instantly&quot;).<p>That is, it&#x27;s not meant to be read by players as is, which is the whole point of traditional music notation. It has a very specific, computer related role -- it&#x27;s the equivalent of clicking on buttons in some GUI based notation software.<p>Your subsequent comment makes it evident that you haven&#x27;t gotten what this is meant for:<p>&gt;<i>For example, one of the cases discussed in the article is classical music. I cannot imagine anyone capable of creating scores for orchestras (or even single instruments) not having years of traditional musical training, which would include reading and writing conventional scores.</i><p>This is NOT meant as a replacement for classic notation -- to relieve people from having to read and write it. It&#x27;s not meant to be printed and handed to musicians as is.<p>This is for people (including people who KNOW notation), to enter that data in a textual, CLI way, instead of clicking the mouse or doing step entry in Finale. Or, similar to how people enter notes in &quot;trackers&quot;.<p>&gt;<i>That would be silly. My proposal is that the evolution of our brain over millions of years provides us with unique image recognition, pattern matching and association capabilities --that evolved for other reasons, not for music-- that happen to result in us being really good at symbolic notation.</i><p>That doesn&#x27;t make classical notation any particular fit for our brains. It was developed ad hoc, neither organically nor after actual experiment and there&#x27;s no study proving it&#x27;s &quot;best&quot; music notation we can have. But that&#x27;s another story, as, again, this tool is not meant to replace traditional music notation.