First: thanks for a really reasonable posting! On Fri, 5 Apr 2002, John Chambers wrote:
> Atte writes: > | > | > - people who can't distinguish between a single standard that allows > | > chords to be machine-readable, and 'you've left my pet notation out' > | > | I also proposed one, didn't catch on. I don't think the reason is the > | above. I think only very few people use abc for jazz. > > This is a rather succinct description of the situation. What I'd > suggest is that: > > 1. ABC users who play jazz and other styles that need "fancy" chords > should discuss the subject with the idea of coming up with one > machine-readable chord standard, and I'm in! > 2. Musicians who don't need such chords should be casually ignored. OK :-) > We might add that the case of the root and bass note letter is not > significant. This is a good idea because current practice isn't at > all consistent here, and it doesn't really make much difference. Note > that this does eliminate the common practice of using lower case to > mean "minor". As elegant as that might be, we're probably better off > if abc doesn't adopt it. (Just as we should officially ban the use of > "B" to mean B flat and "H" to mean B. ;-) Well, well, well. I personally never use slash-chords (as they are called), simply I'm not involved in music that deals with this kinda stuff. Basically you can say that it is a shorthand for a *voicing* and as such doesn't really describe what the chord is. A couple of examples: C/D is actually Dsus7(9) without 5th, but D/C is actually D7 with the 7th in the bass I don't think it would make any sense to try to get player programs to understand slash-chords, but I don't think they should be forbidden. Band In A Box only plays a single note in the bass and the simple chord in the "right hand" when stuff like this happens. That's probably the best way for player programs to treat this, anyways. -- l8er Atte To subscribe/unsubscribe, point your browser to: http://www.tullochgorm.com/lists.html
