Re: Fw: Vocal music

[Trevor Daniels]

Valentin,

Let's review the background first.

The basic problem is that pretty much all the material in the sections from 
the current 2.1.2 to 2.1.5 is really common to all lyrics and vocals, but 
there is too much of it to cram it all into a single section.  So we have to 
compromise, and one of the effects will be that 2.1.1 Common notation will 
be very short.  No problem with that.  It will be fine with just the refs 
and a sentence saying that much of the material in sections 2.1.2 to 2.1.5 
applies to all vocal styles.  Then there will be enough material to justify 
separate sections on style-specific stuff at the end.

More comments below ...

You wrote Monday, October 13, 2008 11:41 AM


> 2008/10/13 Trevor Daniels <address@hidden>:
>
> > That's because you've put all the different style stuff
> > where it doesn't belong, in "Common notation".  "Common
> > notation" should contain _only_ things which are used
> > in _all_ the styles.  "Common" here means "belonging
> > equally to all", not its other meaning of "appearing
> > frequently, familar".  So anything that is style-specific
> > should not be there, hence there should be no headings
> > like "Opera" in "Common".  Take these out and put them
> > back in a "Specific styles" section, as we agreed
> > earlier, and I'll be happy.
>
>
> Yes, but this 'specific styles' section (hehe, I can't wait to see
> Graham's face when he'll read this title) will look *very much* like a
> "References for vocal music" section, since it will mostly contain
> @ref to external sections and not genuine doc material: e.g. in
> "Spoken music" subsection I'll have to @ref to "Note heads", in "Song
> books" I'll have to @ref to "Chord notation", etc.

A note head ref is relevant only to parlato, so it
shouldn't be in Common; chords are relevant only to
lead sheets, so should only be mentioned there.  I
would suggest the best way is to include an example
of parlato with crossed or slashed note heads in the
Spoken music section, with "more information on note
heads is provided in @ref...".  Same for chords in
Song books (just as you have it now).

> Second problem: _the_ "References for vocal music" in "Common
> notation" will actually not reference every external section there's
> to see about vocal music: e.g. it will not include "Note heads" since
> this will already explained in detail in "Specific styles".

Quite right - it shouldn't.  Special note heads are not needed
for every style.  Not a problem.

> Third problem: if I put all style-specific stuff in a separate
> section, there's no longer enough material remaining to have both
> "References for vocal music" and "References for lyrics", as I
> suggested previously, which is why I merged these two in a "References
> for vocal music and lyrics" subsection.

I'm happy with that.

> *But* then, is it really
> relevant to have a "Common notation" section at all? (since the @ref
> for lyrics will mostly link inside NR2.1 anyway)

See above - the sentence I suggested will cover this

> I was quite happy with the layout we agreed upon, but I could hardly
> fill these subsections in "Common notation".

See if what I have suggested will help.  I bet we can think
of quite a bit more when these sections are fleshed out.

> Suggestion: instead of "Opera" and such, that clearly do not belong in
> a "Common notation section", we could name these subsections
> "References for opera engraving", "References for song books", etc;
> would this help?

I'd prefer to have separate sections so that simple
examples of the use of the notation which is _specific_
to those styles can be shown. Crossed note heads in
Spoken music, spaced out "lyrics" in chants, chords in
Song books, etc.

Look, here's a good example of this.  The notation to
play a note on an open string is produced by \open.
This is the same syntax as any other articulation, but
is not mentioned in NR 1.7.  It should (and will) be
mentioned in NR 2.3 with a trivial example so someone
writing for strings can find it easily.

> Cheers,
> Valentin

HTH
Trevor