John Walsh wrote:
>>I don't mind if you give any random collection of sharps and flats
>>in the K: field as long as you also give the tonic.
>
> It's clear that the twelve-tone crowd hasn't gotten into abc
>yet...
Yeah well, in that case I suppose what's really needed is K:none.
Mind you, I'm strongly of the opinion that while it's quite
possible to write completely atonal music, the result can't be
described as a tune.
>>In order to describe a piece of music completely, you need to
>>know any two of the tonic, mode and key signature. Knowing any two
>>of these makes it quite trivial to determine the other if you need it.
>>Conventional musical notation gives only the key signature, which is
>>inadequate, and has led to the practice in classical music of including
>>
>
> One question strikes me: Phil, is the guitar your main instrument?
How did you guess:-)
>I was glad to get the post, tho, since I'd been wondering what the
>controversy could be about. Now I see that it is more philosophical than
>musical, It hinges on what "completely" means, what information is
>sufficient, and whether or not abc should be content with minimal
>sufficient information, or insist on more. Which in turn depends on what
>one thinks is the purpose of abc. A subject I _really_ hope to avoid.
However, it is a subject which is germane to this discussion.
> I claim that the key signature alone is sufficient to allow one to
>decode the piece. (The proof is that even a computer---which is so dumb
>that it only understands explanations which are so clear they can not
>*possibly* be misunderstood---can correctly play the tune and display the
>staff notation with only the keysig as a guide.) It's true that the
>additional information of the tonic or mode is useful, and it's even
>necessary for some additional things---such as telling the guitarist at a
>session what key the tune is in---but it's not really necessary for the
>musician who just wants to play what is written. Why should we demand
>more?
It's not a case of demanding more - rather of not discarding what
we already have.
> Phil gave three examples where the additional info is needed:
>automatic chord-setting, just intonation, and transposition. In the first
>case, chord-setting, I'd think it's up to the user to get this right.
>(Guitarists are free to disagree. In fact, I may be hard-hearted here,
>since I usually strip the chords off any piece before playing it, so I can
>hear what it sounds like. But I just tried chord setting on a couple of
>tunes, and found to my surprise that abcmus set the same chords to the
>major and the dorian key signatures. That's too few examples to allow any
>conclusions, tho.) In the second case---and by the way, does Barfly do
>just intonation now? Cool!--I'd think that anyone who knew enough to ask
>for just intonation would also know what he or she was doing, so the whole
>problem would be moot.
BarFly does just intonation, Pythagorean intonation and highland bagpipe.
You can also invent your own (subject to a few limitations).
For the first two it has to know the tonic though. It doesn't yet
do automatic chord assignment, so I don't actually know if it's
possible to do that without knowing the tonic (I couldn't do it
by ear though).
> I haven't thought much about automatic transposition, but wouldn't
>it work if the user knew what info to feed it? (Not necessarily including
>the mode or key note.) If you write an E dorian tune with K:D and
>trasnpose D to G, doesn't the tune transpose to A dorian?
Yes, that would work. Even a wrong tonic+mode is better than nothing!
>For the
>explicit key signatures, the program probably has to do extra work, but
>isn't it possible to transpose everything, including the key signature, up
>or down by x semitones without knowing the key note?
I was thinking more of the problem of how to transpose a tune in two
sharps into three flats, but you've actually supplied the answer.
Give it an arbitrary tonic+mode (anything that fits) and transpose
that.
> At any rate, I'm in favor of minimality here: I'd like abc to
>accept the minimal sufficient information to convey the tune, meaning in
>this case that it would accept any of tonic and mode, OR explicit keysigs,
>OR tonic-plus-modifying-accidentals, OR other such, within reason*. I
>agree that tunic + mode is a great way to describe the music I play, and
>in fact, I've learned quite a bit about it from abc, but I don't want to
>force my own prejudices on others.
>
>[* Of course, not everything is within reason. For instance, consider this
>Question: what is K:DMixMix, the mixolydian scale based upon the D
>mixolydian scale? ;-)]
Since only the first three characters of the mode are significant, it's
the same as K:DMixogamous (but different from K:DMyxematosis).
>>thought to what the actual tonic (or mode) is. The problem with this
>>suggestion is that it represents a degradation of the abc standard, since
>>the resulting K: field contains less information, and while programs
>>would still be able to display the staff notation or play the notes
>>
>
> Loss of information, yes. Degredation? I'm not sure. One has to
>have a little faith in the user. Presumably, he or she wants to
>communicate some music to a certain audience via abc. If that audience
>understands, it's a success.
Depends what the audience wants to do with the data. If the audience
is searching for a tune in a particular key it won't be found.
I do have faith in the transcriber. In general, I think that most
people who write out and publish music as abc are better able to
determine the correct key than their audience.
>>Furthermore, human nature being what it is, the introduction of this
>>K: format would encourage many users to give up trying to figure out
>>tonic+mode and simply take the easy way out by entering the key signature
>>only. This in turn would inevitably lead to most new abc transcriptions
>>adopting it, and the whole corpus of abc music would suffer.
>
> But we already have this situation! Many people write the major
>key which gives the correct sharps and flats, even for dorian and
>mixolydian tunes. In fact, the O'Neill project even asked that its
>transcribers do just that. (I think there were several considerations
>here, tho.) As a practical matter, I doubt that explicit key signatures
>would ever be used that much, except possibly for keysigs with one or at
>most two accidentals---it's just too much bother to remember which
>accidentals are needed, and to do all that typing; it's easier to write
>K:D, or even K:EDor, than K:^f^g; and it's far easier to proofread. (Note
>the typo.) So my suspicion is that it'll be used mainly by people who
>have a reason to use it.
It will be extensively used by people transcribing abc from printed
sources. It's quicker to type out even seven sharps than to figure out
whether the tune is in D#dor or A#m. I don't think anyone who
transcribes abc by ear would use it though.
>>Finally, if we want to make life easier for people transcribing
>>from manuscript by permitting them to use an incomplete description
>>of key, perhaps we should do the same thing for those transcribing
>>by ear, and permit them to specify only the tonic. After all,
>>any competent musician who was familiar with the tradition concerned
>>should easily be able to figure out where to put the necessary
>>accidentals in order to make sense of the tune. It's not a completely
>>daft suggestion; it just shifts the reponsibility for working out
>>the difficult bit of the K: field from the transcriber to the user,
>>and is exactly analagous to the original suggestion.
>>
>
> Well, not *exactly* analogous. With the key sig alone, good sight
>readers can play the tune correctly right out of the box, but with the
>tonic alone and no keysig, they'd have to play a fair amount of it first
>to figure out what are the "wrong" notes. And even then, it's possible to
>make mistakes. For example, O'Neill printed the Cliffs of Moher in one
>sharp---G major---and Krassen, in his edition, "corrected" that to one
>sharp--A Dorian. Since O'Neill was careless with some of his modes, I
>think Krassen felt there must have been an error there. But, while it's
>usually played in A dorian today, the G major version is, in fact, played
>too---Tommy Keane recorded it that way a couple of years ago, as learned
>from his teacher, who learned from _his_ teacher...so that wasn't a
>mistake in O'Neill, just a different version. (Actually, it's an unusual G
>major tune---except for the keynote, it sounds mixolydian; and in fact it
>sounds quite good if you change the key to K:Gmix. That gives three nice
>tunes for the price of one (G, GMix, and ADor) all sounding different,
>and all sounding traditional.)
Here's another one, from Bernie Stocks' collection. The K: field
had this comment, which I've removed, since it probably won't make
it through email:
K:G %but weird - 'c' very mobile and the 'Bb' slid, actually a slid 'B'
that never quite makes it.
X:59
T:The Cliffs of Moher
R:Jig
M:6/8
H:Paddy Canny
K:G
~g3 agf | d2g fdc | _B2G AGF | DGG ABc |\
dgg agf | dgg fdc | _B2G AGF | DC_B, G,3 |
~g3 agf | dgg fdc | _B2G AGF | DGG ABc |\
d(3.g.g.g agf | dgg fdc | _B2G AGF | DGF GAc ||
~d3 cAG | Add cAG | FGA {d}cAG | FGA cBc |\
~d3 cAG | Add cAG | FGA {d}cAG | DGF G2A |
~d3 cAG | Add cAG | FGA {d}cAG | FGA ~c3 |\
Add edd | ^cdd Bdd | GBd AFA | GBd ~f3 ||
Phil Taylor
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