Sheet music and falling notes as one picture, and five answers to the sharps and flats · round 1 · 2026-09-27 · real excerpts, no spend
The ask
Lionel: "we have sheet music mode (left right scroll) and falling notes mode (top down scroll). but what if we have something more 3-dimensional ... when the falling keys come down, they are not just keys, they are NOTES on the sheet music. you show the 5 line staves for treble clef and bass clef, but they are oriented so that the treble is on the right side and the bass clef is on the left side, so that it matches the piano when you look at it from the front view ... basically we are merging the 2 modes ... i think the hard part is handling the sharps and the flats that happen 'between' the 5 lines."
Why it works at all
One staff position is one white key. Lines and spaces alternate along the white keys, so the grand staff is eleven evenly spaced lines with middle C's left out, and the five lines of each clef run straight into the keys they name: G B D F A on the left, E G B D F on the right. A note's place on the staff is its place on the keyboard. The clef stops being something to decode.
Why it is hard
A black key sits between two white keys, which is between a line and a space, where notation has no place to put anything. On paper a C sharp sits on C's line and wears a sign. On the road that note comes down C's lane and lands on the wrong key. Each design below is one answer to that, and to the key signature, which is the same problem asked about a whole piece.
–notes across – published pieces were read for how they are WRITTEN
–left in doubt: every spelling agrees with the sign the engraving prints
–have no head of their own (grace notes, a trill's turns) and are spelled from the key
0changes asked of the pipeline: it is all in the three files the game already loads
What every design keeps
Bass on the left, treble on the right, five lines each, laid on the road so a line runs into its key.
The head wears its value: hollow with no stem is a whole note, hollow with a stem a half, filled a quarter, one beam or flag for an eighth, two for a sixteenth; a dot is a dot. Stems stand up off the road, so a note looks like a note, a chord hangs on one stem, and the beams are the engraving's own groups.
Ledger lines travel with the note that needs them and nothing else is drawn. A right-hand note that dips under middle C simply lands on the bass staff's lines: between the staves only middle C ever needs one.
An octave sign moves the staff: the five lines bend an octave to the right for 8va (left for 8vb) and bend back, so the notes stay on the lines the score prints them on.
The hand is the colour (cyan right, orange left), because the staff no longer says which hand.
Try it. The bench below is live. 1 to 5 flips the design at the same moment of the same music, Space plays and pauses, the arrows step three seconds. A MIDI keyboard plays it (🎹 I play); so does the pointer on the keys.
What is real: the excerpts are the published pieces, read by tools/staff_fall_lab_data.py off each engraving (spelling, note values, clefs, octave signs, key signatures). What is written for the lab: "The hard cases", sixteen bars with one difficulty each. What is not drawn yet: rests, ties (a tied note is one head with a long hold), slurs, dynamics and articulation.
The bench
One road, five ways to draw it. Flip between them while it plays: the music does not move, only the picture does.
·
The music
Tempo
How far ahead you see
The road
The staves
Who plays
On the notes
1–5 design · Space play · ←→ three seconds
The hard cases, side by side
Ten awkward bars, each frozen with its notes in mid-road, drawn five ways. Read down a column to judge a design; read across a row to see what a case costs each of them. Click any frame to play that bar on the bench.
A
By the Book
the page, laid on the road
Exactly what the score prints, nothing added. The head rides the line or space it is written on and wears the engraver's sign beside it. The key signature waits at the foot of the staff and you are trusted to remember it; an accidental holds to the bar line. This is the control: the purest reading trainer, and the hardest to play.
Für Elise: the D sharp comes down D's space and wears its sign; the dashed hook in the last stretch is the one concession to the keyboardThe Nocturne: three flats at the foot of each staff. The B flats, E flats and A flats above them look like any other note
A black key
rides its written lane, a white key's. The sign says the rest.
The sign
to the left of the head, standing, only when the score prints it.
The key
at the foot of the staff, remembered by the player.
The landing
on the written lane. In the last sixth of the road a dashed hook points to the key that is meant, and that key lights.
E sharp, F double sharp
like any accidental: a sign beside the head.
For
It IS sheet music. Everything learned here transfers to paper, key signatures and bar-long accidentals included.
The cleanest road: nothing to learn for anyone who reads.
Chords and runs keep the shapes a reader already knows.
Against
The head lands on the wrong key. In six flats almost every landing is wrong.
No help for a beginner: remembering the key is exactly what a beginner cannot do.
Signs to the left collide in chords and seconds, as they do on paper, with no engraver to space them.
A black-key note steps half a lane toward the key it plays, so every head lands on its key. Its head takes the key's own shape: a white key's note is a wide oval, a black key's is slim and long, which reads from the far end of the road before any sign does. The sign, when the score prints one, stands on the side the note stepped FROM, so it still marks the line the note is written on.
Für Elise: the D sharp has stepped right, off D's space and onto its key; its sharp stands to the left, where it came fromThe Nocturne: the notes the key flattens are slim and step left, with no sign, because the score prints none
A black key
a slim, long head, half a lane off its line, in the lane of the key it plays.
The sign
beside the head, on the side of the written line (left for a sharp, right for a flat), when the score prints one.
The key
at the foot of the staff, and every note it alters steps aside on its own.
The landing
on the key, always.
E sharp, F double sharp
a wide oval a whole lane over, on the white key it plays, its sign on the side it came from.
For
Every head lands on the key it plays.
Black or white is read from the head's shape, at any distance, with no sign.
The fewest marks of the four that land on the key: a head, and a sign when the score has one.
Signs appear exactly when the score prints them, so paper habits still form.
The same picture flat or in perspective.
Against
A slim head is not an engraver's notehead: one new shape to learn.
A flat's sign ends up to the RIGHT of its head, the opposite of paper.
The key signature is still memory (unless the road is painted, 🎨).
A hollow slim head (a half note on a black key) is the least obvious of its shapes.
The ledger-line idea, used for black keys: a rail that exists only while a note needs it. A black-key note rides a short black sled the shape of its key, with its sharp or flat printed on the sled behind the head, where the note in front can never cover it. No sled means a white key. The key signature is applied for you, on every note it touches.
Für Elise: the D sharps come down on black sleds, between the lanes of D and EThe Black Keys étude: six flats, and the picture says what the title says
A black key
a black sled in the key's own lane, the head on it.
The sign
printed on the sled, always: it is how a C sharp differs from a D flat.
The key
applied. Nothing is pinned and nothing is remembered.
The landing
on the key, the sled sliding into it.
E sharp, F double sharp
an ivory plate instead of a black sled: a sign that lands on a white key. A printed natural is an ivory plate too.
For
Reads from the far end of the road: a black plate is a black key.
The sign has a place of its own and never collides with a neighbour's head.
A falling-notes player already knows it: the sled is the old falling bar, kept for black keys only.
Nothing to remember, so it is the kindest to a beginner.
Against
The written line is gone: spelling lives only in the sign.
It never teaches a key signature.
The heaviest picture in a piece that lives on black keys.
The third dimension does the work. On a piano the black keys stand above the white ones, so here black-key notes fly above the road on a pole, over their own shadow, and come down onto the top of their key in the last third. The sign is painted flat on the road beside the shadow, on the side of the line the note is written on. Height says which row of keys; the road stays a staff.
Für Elise: the D sharps fly over their shadows and come down onto the key; their sharps are paint on the roadThe Torrent étude: four sharps at speed, two decks of notes
A black key
flies at cruising height over its key's lane, on a pole over its shadow, and descends onto the key's top.
The sign
painted flat on the road beside the shadow, when the score prints one.
The key
painted at the foot of the staff.
The landing
on top of the black key, which stands up off the keyboard.
E sharp, F double sharp
stays on the road (it plays a white key), a lane over, its sign painted beside it.
For
Uses depth for the one thing about a keyboard that really is three-dimensional.
Black or white needs no symbol and no new shape: the heads are the engraver's.
The landing is the most physical of the five: a note comes down onto a key that stands up.
Dense music separates into two layers.
Against
Needs the perspective: on the flat road the height is only an offset.
A head in the air sits where a LATER note on the road would: the pole and the shadow have to be read to place it in time.
The most marks per note: head, pole, shadow, paint.
The key signature is painted down the whole length of every line and space it changes, amber for a sharp and violet for a flat, and each painted lane bends into its black key as it reaches the keyboard. A note on paint needs no sign. An accidental brings a patch of its own paint with its sign on it; a natural wipes the paint away behind itself and goes straight on.
The Nocturne: B, E and A are violet lanes in both staves, and each bends left into its flatRondo Alla Turca: A minor turns into A major and three amber lanes begin where the key changes
A black key
rides its written lane for most of the road, then follows the bend onto its key.
The sign
on a patch of paint trailing the head, when the score prints one.
The key
paint, for as long as it lasts. A key change is where the paint changes.
The landing
on the key, after the bend.
E sharp, F double sharp
a patch and a bend a whole lane wide.
For
The key signature, the hardest thing for a learner, is visible all the time and exactly where it applies.
The far road reads as the page and the near road as the keyboard: both, in order.
Two channels for an accidental: a colour and a sign.
A natural visibly undoes the key.
Against
The bend is sideways motion in the last moment, where the eye wants stillness.
Colour carries meaning, so a colour-blind player is back to the signs.
B, The Sidestep, with E's paint under it (🎨), and A kept as a setting.
A game that judges keys has to land its notes on keys. That rules A out as the default and leaves four. Of the four, B changes the page the least: the signs are the ones the score prints, where it prints them; the head's place still names its letter, half a lane off; and the one new convention, a slim head for a black key, is the keyboard's own shape, so it reads from the far end of the road with no sign at all. It has the fewest marks per note of the four, and it is the same picture flat or in perspective, which is what a phone will need.
Its weakness is the key signature, which it leaves to memory the way the page does. E's paint fixes that and costs B nothing: with 🎨 on, the lanes of the key's black keys are painted down the whole road and the slim heads ride them. Put the Nocturne on the bench, press 2, tick 🎨. That is the combination I would build.
C is the clearest picture for a player who has never read a note and the heaviest for one who has: the right "training wheels" step if the mode gets one. D is the showpiece and should not be the default; its landing, a note coming down onto a key that stands up, is worth keeping whatever is picked. A stays as the setting for a reader who wants the page exactly as printed.
What the round leaves open
Stems and beams, or heads alone? Untick "stems and flags": the road is at its cleanest, and a head then says only whole or half against everything shorter.
The hold behind a note. Drawn now only for a quarter note or longer. On, off, or as it is?
A clef change. The grand staff stays where it is (the default): a left hand written in the treble simply lands on the treble lines. "Follow the clefs" slides the staff across the road instead, as the score has it, and it is a lot of road to move.
Where it lives. A third view beside Sheet and Falling notes, in every mode, or a mode of its own?
Rests and ties are not drawn. Ties matter more: a tied note is one head with a long hold behind it.
The camera fits the keyboard to the piece, so a piece five octaves wide is drawn small. It could follow the hands.
The port. The lab reads the engraving in Python, ahead of time. In the game it is either the same reading in the browser, over the SVG the sheet already parses for its clefs and key signatures, or four fields the pipeline adds to a note (piano-fingering's call, and its contract).