Table of Contents Reading and Writing Grooves
About Box Notation
Time Unit Box System (TUBS) and Rhythm Squares
For some reason, growing up, I was very interested in learning to read sheet music. It was like a magic code or secret language, and the more I could understand it, the more worlds it would open for me. Understood the basics of reading time-and could work my way through some rhythmic passages but not always that well, and not in a way that made complete sense. There was always a level of guessing exactly how a rhythmic figure would go.
To me, and most of my students, the box notation system intuitively makes more sense. In the western European notation system, the notes are representational but not proportional.
Each one of these notes takes up roughly the same amount of space, but each note takes up a very different amount out time. Some printing is better than others. But the size of the notes don’t show you how long they are played.
In box notation proportions are perfectly clear. Each box gets a equal unit of time. The more boxes, the more time.
So the outer representation of time is more related to how someone innerly represents time.
Each box is an equal unit of time. When you are on that beat, play the sound represented by the symbol in the box.
TUBS (Time Unit Box System) is most useful for showing relationships between complex rhythms, such as polyrhythms, that would be difficult to see in traditional musical notation. TUBS also has the advantage that non-musicians can interpret it much more easily than musical notation, because of its simplicity.
This system lends itself to movement. The grid can be laid on the floor and students can move through it. See the next sections-Walking the Rhythm Squares.
Note: It was originally used by musicologists Philip Harland and James Koetting to notate polyrhythms in African music. However, Joseon composer Bak Yeon invention of similar but unrelated notation jeongganboto notate Korean court music dates back to middle of the 15th century.
TUBS notation has been adapted by several people; the most common adaptations use different symbols in the boxes to represent different sounds, for example different ways of hitting a drum or even different musical pitches. In fact, tracker notation is essentially TUBS rotated by 90 degrees.