Notation: Basic Conventions

We've discussed the intent of the system under development at length; now lets try to write something down. I'd like to start with a simple example in order to get an understanding of fundamental issues which need to be resolved before moving on to something which approaches a practical application. Let's start with the following series of movements¹:

1. Start in horse stance.
2. Quarter-moon forward into left half-moon stance.
3. Half-moon forward into right half-moon stance.

What are the key pieces of information which need to be conveyed and what can be omitted to reduce redundancy? Let's look at it line-by-line²:

• Start in horse stance: This is the first line in a sequence of instructions, so "start" is implicit; it's nonsensical to start anywhere except at the beginning.
• Quarter-moon forward into left half-moon stance: Observations on this instruction:
  • It's possible to move both forward and backwards out of horse stance, so the direction of movement must necessarily be included.
  • You can move into any other stance from horse stance, so the desired final position must be indicated.
  • Both left and right variants of half-moon stance are available, so the left/right designation needs to be retained.
  • The "quarter moon" step is the only valid transition between horse and half-moon stances, so there's no need to state it explicitly.
• Half-moon forward into right half-moon stance: Does the left/right distinction have to be maintained, or is it implicit that you would transition from left half-moon to right half-moon in this case? Both left → left and left → right are valid transitions; the former would be accomplished by a shuffling step, the latter by a half-moon. Having specified right half-moon stance, however, the "half-moon" step then becomes implicit.

The sample instructions thus reduce to the following, minimum form:

1. Horse stance
2. Move forward into left half-moon stance.
3. Move forward into right half-moon stance.

In order to capture these instructions we'll need notation for the following concepts:

• Stance
• Relative motion
• left/right

Alright, now we're getting somewhere; we know what concepts we need to record, now we just need to decide how to get them down on paper. Turning once again to Choreo-Graphics, Ms. Guest categorizes notation systems into the following, broad categories³:

• Words and word abbreviations
• Track drawings
• Stick figure (visual) systems.
• Music note systems
• Abstract symbol systems

Can we make any statements at this point about which of these approaches, if any, is likely to suit our needs?

Words and word abbreviations are unlikely to be sufficient by themselves; as we've already seen it's very difficult to efficiently capture the complexity of movement in space and time using natrual language alone. I'm also inclined to eliminate visual systems at this point given Guest's comments on their relative disadvantages:

Visual systems are based on the idea that all dance is visual, that movements are designed to 'make pictures'. This may have been true of classical ballet with its vocabulary of selected, clearly defined positions, but not all movement has 'picture-making' as its purpose, and to try to describe such action in those terms is to force movement into a straight-jacket and thereby change its nature.⁴

MA performances are first and foremost about the use of the body to evade, redirect, and/or apply forces in combat. Rather than existing for its own sake, the external appearance of a form/technique arises as a by-product of this more fundamental concern⁵. This strongly suggests that a visual system is inappropriate for the types of concepts which we're trying to convey.

Lastly, there doesn't seem to be be much reason to consider using a music note system. These types of systems arise in contexts where the intended audience is already familiar with the use of musical notation to convey timing⁶. There's no reason to assume that your average MA practitioners has such a background, which negates any benefits that such a system might have vs. a purely abstract system.

That leaves us with track drawings and abstract symbol systems, both of which show promise. I'm drawn to two systems in particular, Feuillet notation and the vertical staff variant⁷ of Laban Movement Analysis. Feuillet notation indicates left and right by placing symbols on either side of a center line. Given our relatively simple requirements at this point it seems like a reasonable way to make such distinctions.

Laban uses a vertical, multi-line staff which is read bottom to top, left to right. The staff is overkill for our purposes, but I think that reading symbols vertically has the potential to make the system much more intuitive. Let's suppose that we adopt the Feuillet convention for left/right and the Laban convention of reading from bottom to top. Further, let's stipulate that the top of the page always represents "front"/"forward"/"ahead" relative to the performer. Under such conditions symbols on the left of the (printed or implied) center line will always correspond to the reader's left, symbols on the right will always correspond to the reader's right, and reading from one symbol to the next will have an implicit association with forward movement⁸. Looking into the future a bit symbols for rotation, shifts of attention, and the direction of strikes/blocks can use the top of the page (i.e. the readers/performer's front) as the main point of reference, making it easy to render and interpret them. Having provisionally identified a field upon which to record the details of a performance, and a convention for left/right, the next step is to develop a means for conveying the two remaining concepts in our list, stance and relative motion.

Let's start by figuring out how to convey stance. I originally considered using an existing, ideographic language such as Chinese for rendering the names of stances and strikes on account of the fact that it would be more compact than using plain English. On reflection, however, this seems like a bad idea. Most MA practitioners are hobbyists and have neither the time nor the inclination to learn a new alphabet; if we want this system to be accessible to the average student we'll need to find a better approach than rendering actions in Chinese. Can we render actions using symbols which are either already known to the student or at least easier to learn than Chinese?

If that's what we're looking for, a compact, accessible means of assigning unique identifiers to stances, why not just use acronyms or abbreviations? The sample sequence that we want to record contains two stances, horse stance and half-moon stance; I see no reason at present why we can't abbreviate these to "HS" and "HMS". These are relatively compact representations and should be fairly easy to remember; if need be a brief key/glossary can be included with the transcription to help jog the student's memory. This approach need not be limited to stances either; it should work just as well for blocks and strikes.

So let's see what we've got given the conventions we've adopted so far:

Reading from bottom to top this reads: "horse stance", "left half-moon stance", "right half-moon stance". I've place the abbreviation for horse stance directly on the (implied) center line since it doesn't have left and right variants. So far so good, now we need to convey "move forward", which brings us to the consideration of transitions.

I expect that there's going to be a lot to say about transitions eventually, but right now I'm just going to concentrate on the basics. Before we get into the introduction of specific symbols lets think for a minute about how such symbols should be placed relative to the abbreviations denoting stance. Two schemes immediately present themselves; transitions can be denoted via

• "Decorations" on stance (or other) symbols.
• Dedicated symbols.

I believe that the latter is probably more appropriate in the long run. If transitions are made their own, stand-alone symbols it becomes easier to avoid ambiguity w.r.t. sequence; it's harder to intuitively understand the sequence of actions if transitions are associated with specific symbols. This also seems appropriate from a theoretical standpoint; moving correctly from one stance to the next is just as important as standing correctly. Indicating transitions by means of ancillary notation on other actions makes them "second class citizens".

If transitions are going to get their own symbols then it logically follows that, given our concern with intuitively conveying sequence, such symbols should be placed vertically between stances.

Now let's think about indicating movement. In the martial arts movement is fundamentally about displacing your center of mass/dan tien in a controlled fashion. This makes it somewhat different from dance which, per Choreo-Graphics, is concerned not only with movement from point A to point B, but also the style in which such movement is accomplished. The existing notation is intended to describe specific modes of movement (walking, jumping, gliding, etc.), which makes it overly complex for our present needs. We need to come up with some simple notation for conveying "move thataway".

I vote for using arrows for this purpose, since they're easy to draw and easy to understand. That would give use the following transcription of our sample:

This reads:

1. Start in horse stance.
2. Move forward into left half-moon stance.
3. Move forward into right half-moon stance.

I think that's good for now. Let's recap the rules that we've developed so far.

• Symbols are read from bottom to top, left to right.
• The top of the page always represents the performer's front.
• Symbols are grouped around/on an implicit center line.
• Symbols to the left of the center line indicate left-hand variants, symbols to the right of the center line indicate right-hand variants, and symbols placed on the center line indicate an action with only one form.
• Specific stances, strikes, blocks, etc. are indicated using two- and three-letter acronyms.
• Symbols for transitions are placed in between symbols for actions.
• Displacement of the performer's center of mass is indicated via arrows.

That's it for this edition. Interested parties should comment at will.

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1 "Horse stance" is common across a wide range of karate/kung-fu styles, but the rest of the phrases may need an explanation. Briefly:

• Half-moon stance: One foot forward, one foot back, forming a stable base. Hips face forward, 50/50 weight distribution, hands on guard.
• Half-moon forward: In half-moon stance the rear foot arcs inward, touches load-bearing foot, and arcs out again at a 45° angle to land in the forward position. The path traced by the moving foot looks like a half-moon/half-circle.
• Quarter-moon forward: Half of "half-moon forward". In horse stance one foot comes in, touches the load-bearing food, and arcs out at a 45° angle to land in the forward position.

2 This analysis is tied to a specific style, but makes use of the general assumption I wrote about in my previous post that there's usually one "correct" way to execute a particular action. Note also that this assumption is probably only valid in the context of basic MA pedagogy; in advanced studies and/or the real world there may be multiple "good" ways to do something.
3 Pp. v - vii
4 P. 64
5 To a first approximation. The actual extent to which forms/techniques are driven by basic applications vs. appearance can vary widely from school to school.
6 P. 96
7 P. 121
8 I believe that the association between reading successive symbols and forward motion is beneficial since, in my experience, forward motion relative to the performer is far more prevalent than backwards or sideways motion.