Bryan writes:
My apologies, Laurie. You didn't mention it in your New Version announcement
last month so I missed it. Any chance of you including John Chambers'
K:<tonic><mode><accidentals> proposal soon?
Hmmm ... Maybe I should write up a spec and send it to Chris Walshaw.
BTW, as for the "mixed" notation K:Amix=g (no pun intended;-), I ran
across it twice in the past week in some Scottish tunes for a dance
I'm playing at soon. In both cases, the intent was obvious, to
emphasize to those with too much classical education that although
the key was obviously A, the g's were not sharped. I've put both of
the tunes into abc and kept this key signature. The =g is obviously
not necessary, just as "advisory" accidentals aren't necessary, but
it's useful at times.
In general, I'd expect that few people would use both a mode and
extra accidentals. But in some situations, it is useful. In the above
tunes, having the K:Amix is better than K:^f^c because it can be used
in searches. The extra =g is a bit of redundancy that doesn't
interfere with a search, and helps prevent misreading by those less
musically literate than we all are here.
Of course, I should probably mention again that my own motive for
wanting this notation is so that I can transcribe music that doesn't
fit into the western modes. I play a lot of Balkan, Klezmer and
Middle Eastern music, and I routinely use non-classical scales. I've
put a number of my tunes into scales like K:^f_B_e or K:^G over the
past few weeks, and it makes a noticeable difference in the
transcription. I'm involved in a number of educational operations,
introducing people to music that may be rather diferrent than what
they've played before. A "strange" key signature is very useful; it
gives readers an immediate warning that there's something here that's
may be new, and they'd better pay close attention.
Having the accidentals in the signature rather than before the notes
is especially useful. When dealing with an unfamiliar scale, it can
take a while to understand why those notes are "altered". If the
accidentals are in the signature, it gets across the idea that those
notes are not altered, but are "in the scale". This is much easier
for readers than trying to memorize all the accidentals. Knowing up
front that "the F's are all sharp and the B's and E's are all flat"
makes the music much easier to read and understand than if some of
those notes have accidentals but you can't tell at first which do and
which don't.
The musicians familiar with the style tend to take it in stride, of
course. There's nothing remarkable about a correct key signature,
after all. Some of them have asked me what music software I'm using.
Their experience is often with commercial software that limits them
to only "legal" musical notation. It's can be fun to see the reaction
of a lot of people when I say "Well, this software didn't allow it,
either, so I rewrote it." It's interesting that so many people seem
surprised by the idea that software is something that people write.
Sorta like the people who are surprised (and sometimes a bit shocked)
when they finally realize where milk and eggs come from ...
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