If you learned to play a musi­cal instru­ment as a kid, you like­ly remem­ber your first encounter with tra­di­tion­al music nota­tion. You remem­ber being baf­fled by the sym­bols denot­ing quar­ter notes, eighth notes, six­teenth notes. Or the dif­fi­cul­ty of read­ing notes locat­ed above or below the staff. The West­ern sys­tem of music nota­tion goes back hun­dreds of years, and it has been befud­dling stu­dents for gen­er­a­tions. Enter Blake West, a piano teacher from Austin, Texas, who enlist­ed his old friend Mike Sall, a data visu­al­iza­tion wiz, to cre­ate a more intu­itive form of music nota­tion. They dubbed it “Hum­ming­bird,” and between the two videos on this page and this com­plete ref­er­ence guide, you’ll get a quick feel for the con­cepts under­ly­ing this new way of read­ing music. On the Hum­ming­bird web­site, you can also find 26 songs — every­thing rang­ing from Bach’s “Ode to Joy” to Ozzy Osbourne’s “Crazy Train” — rewrit­ten in a for­mat that bud­ding music stu­dents will love.

via Kot­tke

Relat­ed Con­tent:

How a Bach Canon Works. Bril­liant.

85,000 Clas­si­cal Music Scores on the Web

Bob­by McFer­rin Shows the Pow­er of the Pen­ta­ton­ic Scale

Lis­ten­ing to Music (Yale) in Our Col­lec­tion 700 Free Online Cours­es

The Police pulled off the most unlike­ly of musi­cal feats. While sev­er­al bands com­bined the rest­less, raw ener­gy of punk with the rhyth­mic, tune­ful urgency of reg­gae, these guys wrapped it all up in the accom­plished musi­cian­ship and off-kil­ter key changes and shift­ing time sig­na­tures of jazzy prog rock. This had nev­er been done before, and any­one who’s tried it since owes a tremen­dous debt to Sting, Andy Sum­mers, and Stew­art Copeland (no one comes to mind, though). The fact that they were able to retain rock cred­i­bil­i­ty while win­ning pop star­dom and a Gram­my for a rock instru­men­tal (1979’s krautrock-influ­enced “Regat­ta de Blanc”) are all fur­ther tes­ta­ments to the phe­nom­e­nal odd­i­ty that was this band. While I’ve nev­er been much of a fan of Sting’s solo work, The Police have always kind of aston­ished me with their brav­ery and vir­tu­os­i­ty.

And so we come to the act of brav­ery above: in a live appear­ance at Hat­field Poly­tech­nic (now the Uni­ver­si­ty of Hert­ford­shire) in Feb­ru­ary of 1979, the band decides to drop a new, untest­ed song on the enthu­si­as­tic crowd. The song? “Mes­sage in a Bot­tle” from the ’79 album Regat­ta de Blanc, the same record that pro­duced that Gram­my-win­ning title-track instru­men­tal. What’s so brave about that, you ask? There’s often no bet­ter way to try out new mate­r­i­al than in front of an already appre­cia­tive audi­ence. Well, this gig was record­ed for a BBC series called “Rock Goes to Col­lege.” Although The Police were skirt­ing star­dom with the sin­gle “Rox­anne” from their first album, they hadn’t quite made it yet, and their first TV appear­ance was a risky venue for demo­ing a new tune. But they pull it off. The crowd bounces in time and the three Police, who seem on the edge of a mis­take or dropped note some­where, give the song a flaw­less turn.

You can watch the full “Rock Goes to Col­lege” con­cert below, which also includes ear­ly hits like “Can’t Stand Los­ing You” (the open­er) and “Rox­anne” (at 29:45).

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Pavarot­ti Sings with Lou Reed, Sting, James Brown and Oth­er Friends

The First Live Per­for­mance of Nirvana’s “Smells Like Teen Spir­it” (1991)

Two Very Ear­ly Con­cert Films of R.E.M., Live in ‘81 and ‘82

Josh Jones is a writer and musi­cian based in Wash­ing­ton, DC. Fol­low him @jdmagness

A quick fyi: Through­out the week­end, you can watch a live stream of the Coachel­la music fes­ti­val that’s tak­ing place in the desert of South­ern Cal­i­for­nia. Tonight’s line­up includes Moby, New Order, and more. Get the full line­up for the fes­ti­val here, and the stream from dif­fer­ent stages on YouTube right here. Or just watch it above. The three-day extrav­a­gan­za will con­tin­ue through Sun­day night, end­ing with a per­for­mance by The Red Hot Chili Pep­pers.

Fol­low us on Face­book, Twit­ter and Google Plus and share intel­li­gent media with your friends!

How’s this for fusion? Here we have The Sachal Stu­dios Orches­tra, based in Lahore, Pak­istan, play­ing an inno­v­a­tive cov­er of “Take Five,” the jazz stan­dard writ­ten by Paul Desmond and per­formed by The Dave Brubeck Quar­tet in 1959. Before he died in 2012, Brubeck called it the “most inter­est­ing” ver­sion he had ever heard. Once you watch the per­for­mance above, you’ll know why.

Accord­ing to The Guardian, The Sachal Stu­dios Orches­tra was cre­at­ed by Izzat Majeed, a phil­an­thropist based in Lon­don. When Pak­istan fell under the dic­ta­tor­ship of Gen­er­al Zia-ul-Haq dur­ing the 1980s, Pakistan’s clas­si­cal music scene fell on hard times. Many musi­cians were forced into pro­fes­sions they had nev­er imag­ined — sell­ing clothes, elec­tri­cal parts, veg­eta­bles, etc. What­ev­er was nec­es­sary to get by. Today, many of these musi­cians have come togeth­er in a 60-per­son orches­tra that plays in a state-of-the-art stu­dio, designed part­ly by Abbey Road sound engi­neers.

You can pur­chase their album, Sachal Jazz: Inter­pre­ta­tions of Jazz Stan­dards & Bossa Nova, on Ama­zon and iTunes. It includes ver­sions of “Take Five” and “The Girl from Ipane­ma.”

If you would like to sign up for Open Culture’s free email newslet­ter, please find it here. It’s a great way to see our new posts, all bun­dled in one email, each day.

If you would like to sup­port the mis­sion of Open Cul­ture, con­sid­er mak­ing a dona­tion to our site. It’s hard to rely 100% on ads, and your con­tri­bu­tions will help us con­tin­ue pro­vid­ing the best free cul­tur­al and edu­ca­tion­al mate­ri­als to learn­ers every­where. You can con­tribute through Pay­Pal, Patre­on, and Ven­mo (@openculture). Thanks!

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Watch Jimi Hendrix’s ‘Voodoo Chile’ Per­formed on a Gayageum, a Tra­di­tion­al Kore­an Instru­ment

Talk­ing Heads’ “This Must Be the Place (Naive Melody)” Per­formed on Tra­di­tion­al Chi­nese Instru­ments

An Uplift­ing Musi­cal Sur­prise for Dave Brubeck in Moscow (1997)