Two Paths to Adoption
To be in the mainstream music world is defined here to mean that an Alternative Notation is so widely accepted that it is routinely taught by schools of music and private instructors.
As seen in the figure below, there are two main paths to getting an Alternative Notation into the mainstream. Both the bottom-up path and the top-down path converge on student instruction.
In the top-down path, music schools and individual instructors attract and retain students by offering an easier and less stressful approach to learning to play an instrument by using an Alternative Notation. In the bottom-up path, students discover an easier approach on the internet and learn to play using instruction materials developed by an Alternative Notation project.
Klavar was developed in a bottom-up fashion wherein Cornelis Pot marketed directly to new students. His project team developed correspondence courses and printed sheet music. He personally provided the advertising and promotion of his notation as well as the financing of his development project. Ultimately, once Klavar proved its effectiveness and was widely used, the Netherlands school system adopted it. Therefore, in the end, there were both bottom-up and top-down paths to reach a wide audience of students in the Netherlands.
There is no other Alternative Notation that has come close in the development of the tools that are needed to make a notation viable. This includes both sheet music (or an app) and instructional materials. There are a few designers that offer a limited amount of sheet music (created in a manual fashion by the designer). Some can found via the MNMA website. There are a few that have their own websites that document the design but they generally do not provide much sheet music or instruction. There is one designer that has prototypes of both a website and an app, but that notation will be discussed in a separate pitch.