Notating the Non-Notateable: Digital Notation of Txalaparta Practice

This paper explores notation practices related to the ancient Basque musical tradition of the txalaparta. It will firstly present the txalaparta practice, introduce the im-provisational rules of txalaparta playing, and discuss attempts in creating notation systems for the instrument. Due to the nature of txalaparta playing, Common West-ern Notation is not a suitable notation, and we will pre-sent the notation system we have developed as part of the Digital Txalaparta project. This system captures the key parts of playing and serves for both playback and a rich documentation of what players actually perform.