Reflections On Previous Notation Proposal

I've had some time to think about my initial proposal for a notation system. I think I'm on the right track but need to refine the system.

Thinking again about music I realized that a musical score doesn't tell the entire story; there's tremendous room for interpretation within the bounds of the notes on a piece of paper. A notation system for MA should have the same property; it needn't specify the form down to the smallest nuance. Rather, focusing back on the original problem, it just needs to be better than English (or your language of choice) in describing the form. I imagine that a performance of a form based on a literal "reading" of the notation would look rather wooden.

That being the case, I expect that using the notation to describe something like a front ball kick is a dead end. No matter how hard you try, you can't use the notation to convey the nuance of executing a front ball kick correctly, so why try? Rather, basic strikes need to be treated as axiomatic/atomic; when you say "front ball kick" you have to anticipate that your audience knows how to do that.

I also noted, in my previous post, that I know forms which would be difficult to describe using the proposed notation. Some of them are esoteric, but the first form I learned also breaks the system. The problem is that I didn't provide any way to deal with the 3D nature of a form. Most forms don't exist on a single, straight line; they change direction and range over an area.

So we have to establish some way to change direction. Direction, at least in the systems I've studied, is a function of your hips; the direction you are facing is perpendicular to the line defined by your hip sockets. But that's only part of the story; striking/blocking also has direction. Additionally, there is also a direction of "attention", e.g. what am I paying attention to as I execute the form. These three directions are correlated to some degree, but any system of notation needs to be flexible enough to allow each of them to vary individually.

So here's what I'm thinking: I need to add a couple of lines to the "staff" that I proposed earlier. Rather than 4 lines there will now be 6 lines. The first line from the top is the "head" line. We use this line to indicate changes of attention (though I suppose it could also be used to indicate a head strike if need be). I've also added a line between the hands and feet that represents both the hips and the dan tien; since the relation between those two regions is more or less fixed there's no need for them to have separate lines. We use this line to indicate changes in direction and also sudden/unusual shifts in mass. For example, I know a form that involves jumping, turning, and landing in a new stance; the "jump and turn" portion of that can be indicated using this line.

But that still leaves the issue of indicating the direction of a block/strike. I'm inclined to think that direction should be

• Indicated as part of the basic strike notation.
• Measured in relation to the center line that runs perpendicular to the line defined by the hips e.g. the performer's direction.

Most actions are executed with 0 degrees offset from this direction vector; to keep the syntax clean its not necessary to indicate direction in those cases. Its only necessary to indicate direction of action when it deviates from this center line. For example, if I execute a "front punch" it goes straight out and comes back parallel to my center line; this is the standard, default behavior, so there's no need ot indicate anything special about it. However, if I'm to execute "spear hand to left 45 degrees", this needs to be noted.

In addition to having a direction strikes and blocks also have a target. It's important to have some mechanism to indicate target because a single strike can often have multiple targets which make sense. At the same time most strikes also have a "canonical target" e.g. they're typically delivered to a particular area. Again, going back to the "front punch", this strike is usually delivered to the chest/solar plexus, but it can also be delivered to the face, the stomach, or even the groin.

I'm still toying with notation for all of this. I figure that the best way is to try translating a form and see what seems to work best. More as I have time.

Book Review: "Chinese Martial Arts Training Manuals: A Historical Survey"

One of the things I've noted before is that its really hard to find good books on the martial arts. It's doubly hard to find critical texts given that the martial arts as a whole doesn't have a strong history of self-criticism. Even the non-woo-ish books tend to present their material without feeling the need to question or defend the presentation.

So I was quite pleased to find Chinese Martial Arts Training Manuals: A Historical Survey by Brian Kennedy and Elizabeth Guo one day while browsing the MA section of my local bookstore. It is exactly what it claims to be, a historical survey of Chinese MA training manuals spanning a period from the late 16th century to the mid 20th century. More importantly Kennedy and Guo aren't rooting for a particular school or style. Rather, the seem genuinely interested providing solid information regarding the evolution of the martial arts in China.

The book is divided into two sections. The first part, which I found most interesting, is a general history of Chinese MA and training methods. It has all sorts of good stuff including a commentary on the academic study of the martial arts, a investigation of the historical evolution/understanding of 'qi', and a discussion of the amount of pure BS that is to be found in historic manuals. They also introduce a interesting character, Tang Hao, an early historian of the martial arts who did quite a bit of primary research in the field.

The second section is a review of various exemplar manuals. Its interesting to see how manuals have evolved over the year and how they compare to modern publications, but I found this section to be less useful overall than the first.

As I said above, I think this book makes a good addition to a MA library because of its critical nature. One of the recurrent concerns of MA practitioners (in the US at least) is that we've inadvertently ruined a noble discipline due to the commercial nature of most of our studios. In reading this book you quickly realize that Chinese martial arts was as a whole never some pure, spritual practice unsullied by commercialism or pragmatic concerns. The way we "do" the martial arts in the US is certainly no worse than historic practice and may indeed be (a slight bit) better because we're more open to empirical/historical inquiry than past practitioners have been.

One improvement that I might suggest to Kennedy and Guo for a future revision would be the inclusion of a "Further Reading" list of some kind that's accessible to English speakers. Some of the sources cited in the text are available in reprinted form from Lion Books, but being reprints rather than translations they're all in the original Chinese. I, for one, would love to read Tang Hao's works, but I've had no luck finding English translations.

Back. W00t!

Turns out that I'd much rather write about the martial arts than spend time on my MBA. Most of my free time is being sucked up by another project so it's unlikely I'll get around to my grand MA synthesis any time soon. But I've continued to ponder the idea of a MA notation; that's a smaller chunk that I might actually may manage to make progress on.