The neumatic notation - the Buddhist of smooth melodic movement

 Western music uses staff notation while Chinese music uses solfege or ideogram notation. These two notations have a common point one symbol represents a pitch. The player perceives the pitches block by block, one note or chord at a time and one after. However, some Buddhist chanting music uses curved lines to notate the music, and emphasise the contour of the voice. It is similar to the western glissando but not in a linear way. The connection between of each text is smooth and flowing.

Japanese Shōmyō

In Japanese Shōmyō, a type of Buddhist chant in Japan, they have a contrasting notation method to the West. The neumatic notation, generally known as hakase (-bakase). straight and curved lines (Tokita, 2008). Same with the Western neume, these notations lack any systematic way of indicating pitch. The lines appear to represent the up-and-down movement of the vocal melody in a simple visual manner. 

A Shōmyō hakase score (Tokita,2008)

The Shomyo notation also improved to ‘Five-tone’ notation:the lines indicating the five tones are arranged in clockwise order from low to high pitch around the model character, with the directions of the lines of adjacent tones differing from each other by 45-degree angles. 
A "Five- tone" notation excerpt. (Tokita,2008)

Tibetan Chod Dbyangs

Chod Dbyangs, is a genre of Tibetan Buddhist vocal music. The phet is the notation for the singer on how to sing the Chod text. Each phet symbol indicates a sound quality, dynamic, articulation and contour (Chong, 2011). Echoing the neumatic concept, pitches of the phets are not confined to any particular scale or range and performers have total freedom to pronounce the phet at any pitch. There are two major types of phet one is short and accented, one is soft and dragging.

A Chod Dbyangs score (Chong, 2011)



  Chong, L.-S. (2011) Tibetan Buddhist Vocal Music: Analysis of the Phet in Chod Dbyangs. Asian music. 42 (1), 54–84.


  Tokita, A. M. & Hughes, D. W. (2008) The Ashgate research companion to Japanese music. Aldershot: Ashgate Publishing.

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