Re: [abcusers] variant-octave key signatures

[John Chambers]

Jack Campin writes:
| I quoted this tune, and its bagpipe origin, as an example of where
| key signatures that allow for different pitches in different octaves
| might be handy:
|
| X:1
| T:Oh I Hae Seen the Roses Blaw
| M:6/8
| L:1/8
| K:G =f ^F  % low F's sharp, high F's natural
| D|G2G B>AB|c2A F2D|G>AG B2c|d2g d2c|B2c d2e|f2d B2G|d>ed cBA|G3 G2:|
| d|g2d B2G |c2A F2D|g2d  B2c|d2g d2c|B2c d2e|f2d B2G|d>ed cBA|G3 G2:|

That tune wasn't on the Net any place my tune finder knew  of,  so  I
added it to my test suite. My abc2ps clone failed miserably the first
time, but not because of the key signature itself.  The  problem  was
the  embedded spaces.  So I decided it was time to go along with what
seems to be the consensus.  It now accepts all those spaces and  does
the Right Thing with this example. If you ask the tune finder to look
for "roses" or anything else likely to match, you'll  see  this  tune
with  a  key  of  G=f^G, and if you ask for any of the output formats
other than midi, it will work.

The one unaesthetic thing is that the two accidentals  really  should
be aligned vertically rather than offset as they are now.  Maybe I'll
look into this.

One of my motives is that my web site is expected to read  abc  tunes
from  all  sorts of other sites, no matter how weird they are, and do
something sensible with them.  Much of the email that I get is  about
abc files that either produce no music or music that is obviously not
what was in the abc.  So my personal interest is in an abc  formatter
that is as accepting as I can make it.

Getting abc2midi to work with things like this is another topic ...

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[abcusers] variant-octave key signatures

[Jack Campin]

I quoted this tune, and its bagpipe origin, as an example of where
key signatures that allow for different pitches in different octaves
might be handy:

X:1
T:Oh I Hae Seen the Roses Blaw
M:6/8
L:1/8
K:G =f ^F  % low F's sharp, high F's natural
D|G2G B>AB|c2A F2D|G>AG B2c|d2g d2c|B2c d2e|f2d B2G|d>ed cBA|G3 G2:|
d|g2d B2G |c2A F2D|g2d  B2c|d2g d2c|B2c d2e|f2d B2G|d>ed cBA|G3 G2:|

What I entirely forgot to mention is what I *actually* do with that
tune, which makes an even better example.  I play it with a clarsach
(diatonic lever harp) player.  What she needs to know is which levers
to set before playing; harpists can flip levers in mid-tune, but it
gets in the way of doing anything interesting with the left hand.  So,
she sets the lever that sharpens the low F and leaves the upper one
unset.  Variant-octave key signatures are exactly right for notating
what she does.  An accidental before each note tells a harpist FLIP A
LEVER HERE AND PUT IT BACK AS SOON AS POSSIBLE, which (in the absence
of pencilled annotations) lets the player in for unnecessary work.

On her wire harp, this notation is even more useful - there are no
levers, so you have to use a fixed tuning for the whole piece.

Now can somebody suggest a key signature for Carlos Salzedo's trick
of threading a banknote through some of the strings?...


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