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notation is just a convention for ordering sound--there are other ways to do it/think about it as well--much depends on what kind of thing you want to do--if you are interested in reproducing stuff by other folk, then learning notation is a good thing--useful in any event, but not more than that.
but if you are trying to figure out ways to organize sound for your own purposes, then you might also experiment with graphic notation/scores
(a good place to look for really simple versions that i found helpful when i was starting to play around with this device is anthony braxton's "for alto"--which is one of his earliest records--his later stuff is much more complex and personal---for a cool example of how far you might go with this, have a look at cornelius cardew's
treatise" sometime)
another option is text-scores
(my favorites are from la monte young: "draw a straight line and follow it"--which i use quite a bit for my own purposes, because he does not say how far from the line you are to imagine yourself, and i like to think about following a graphite line at the microscopic level---or "feed a piano a bale of hay: when the piano has finished eating, the piece is over"--which i think is funny)
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a gramophone its corrugated trumpet silver handle
spinning dog. such faithfulness it hear
it make you sick.
-kamau brathwaite
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