SIGN/e: writing music with moving shapes and colours

The standard method for scoring Western music is known as Common Western Notation. For centuries, it's been used to successfully encode music, acting as a vital bridge between composers and performers, and enabling the dissemination of a vast musical repertoire from classical to jazz to pop and beyond.

Traditional notation relies on a relatively predictable link between a note and its sound. But in electronic music there is no such stability. Instead, sounds emerge from complex processing chains and are modulated in real time across multiple parameters.

“Even if a composer specifies that a musician should produce, for example, a square wave with 20 per cent filtered noise, different performers will reconstruct that sound in very different ways,” explained Bernier.

This variability renders descriptive methods like Common Western Notation inadequate. This prompted Bernier to shift the core focus of musical notation to live movements.

“We can, for example, concentrate on the action to be performed, such as which knob to turn, which slider to move and, above all, at precisely what moment in time,” he said.

By shifting from the sound itself to the performer’s movements, the composer can better capture certain performative practices. This avoids the struggle of trying to fix a sound that is, by nature, unfixable.

Bernier and his team have now brought this vision to life with SIGN/e, which stands for Symbol-based Interface for Graphic Notation Edition. The platform can be integrated directly into Ableton Live, a software already used by a vast community of musicians.

Currently, creating a graphic score is a logistical nightmare. Composers have to draw their score in software such as Illustrator or Photoshop, export the image, and then try to align it within their music software.

“If a symbol needs to be shifted even just one pixel to the left, they have to re-export the whole thing,” Bernier explained.

SIGN/e brings all these steps together in a single environment. Symbols can be placed directly on a timeline to be edited and animated in real-time. Instead of static sheet music, the score becomes a fluid visual that shifts in perfect sync with the sound.

This integration paves the way for new forms of visual notation where symbols can evolve over time to represent dynamic physical gestures. For example, “a circle can rotate to indicate a roll, or a line can scroll to guide a glissando,” explained Bernier.

Alexandre Sasset-Blouin, a master’s student in UdeM’s Faculty of Music, composed his first piece using SIGN/e. His composition is featured in a three-minute video that uses a split-screen to show the composer and a harpist performing on one side, perfectly synchronized with the dynamic musical score on the other.

The score relies on a direct correspondence between gesture and symbol. For example, colour might indicate which parameter to manipulate (e.g., volume or pitch), while the shape specifies the action itself: a line represents a continuous movement, while a circle signifies a brief action.

This summer, Bernier will continue pushing the boundaries of SIGN/e by collaborating with guitarist Simon Trottier. “Our goal is to create a piece for folk guitar sampled in real-time, using a score built with SIGN/e,” he said.

The graphic notation used by SIGN/e is just one of many methods in use today. To organize this variety, doctoral student Pierre-Luc Lecours analyzed 250 documents from the existing literature to create a standardized framework for electronic and contemporary music notation.

His taxonomy highlights a wide range of methods. In live coding, for instance, the composer writes and edits computer code in real-time to generate music.

Another approach is the inherent score, where the musical instructions and compositional boundaries are embedded directly into the instrument, digital or otherwise.

The framework also explores different mediums, from traditional paper and digital screens to virtual reality, where musicians physically navigate a digital space to discover their instructions.

“Lecours’ work helps untangle the entire vocabulary of music notation and provides a solid foundation for the musical analysis of tomorrow,” said Bernier, his thesis advisor.

This shift toward digital music notation brings a new challenge: longevity. While paper scores can last centuries, digital systems are fragile, depending on software environments that are in a constant state of flux.

“Unfortunately, as soon as there’s a technological component, the system is often doomed to stop working one day. After two years, sometimes less, an update can be enough to make a system unusable,” explained Bernier.

“This is exactly one of the challenges that motivated the creation of SIGN/e. We wanted to develop a tool that would be as stable as possible over time,” he continued. “For this reason, we use relatively basic programming integrated into the Ableton Live software, which is not going to disappear anytime soon and has a long history of stability.”

SIGN/e will also help preserve the legacy of electronic music, Bernier believes. By enabling the notation and transmission of such practices, it paves the way for the electronic works to be performed by musicians other than their original creators, he said.

“I think electronic music will benefit greatly from being notated—and not just notated, but performed. There is immense value in musicians playing pieces by other composers."

The goal is not to freeze electronic music into a single fixed version, he said, but to give it the tools to circulate, transform and endure for generations to come.