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Re: Lilypond's internal pitch representation and microtonal notation


From: Graham Percival
Subject: Re: Lilypond's internal pitch representation and microtonal notation
Date: Mon, 20 Sep 2010 14:22:29 +0100

On Sun, Sep 19, 2010 at 11:50 PM, Joseph Wakeling
<address@hidden> wrote:
>
> *A key assumption of this approach is that there is a one-to-one
> correspondence between accidental and alteration value.*  This clearly
> holds for conventional Western 12-tone notation.  However, it does _not_
> hold for many _microtonal_ notations.
>
> For example, if we are using the very common 'arrow' notation for
> quarter-tones, there are two distinct accidentals that can be used to
> represent the alteration +1/4 (i.e. quarter-tone-sharp): the first is a
> natural sign with an up arrow, the second is a sharp sign with a down
> arrow.  There is currently no effective, well-defined way to indicate
> which of the two is desired at any given moment.

Hmm.  This is similar to the distinction between cis and des, correct?
 Am I also correct in assuming that d-3/4 is not sufficient?  Also, is
there a frequency difference between c+1/4 and cis-1/4 ?  Or is this
purely a difference in graphical notation?

I believe that this is a valid feature request -- a single
"alteration" value is not sufficient to distinguish between c+1/4 and
cis-1/4.  For an ideal enhancement request:
1) prepare a Tiny .ly showing what you want to do.  Something like:

// made-up syntax
#define qis as "one quarter-tone sharp"
#define qes as "one quarter-tone flat"
\displayMusic {
  // these should have different representations!
  cqs2 cisqes2
}


err, ok, I already made up the example, so you don't need to do this.
NB: this request is only about the internal representation, not the
graphical output.

As a general rule -- please take the time to prepare a tiny .ly
example showing what you wanted to do.  It took me about 10 minutes to
read your email, think about it, and prepare a good tiny example.
Since you're more familiar with this material, you probably could have
made the example in 2-3 minutes.  Having an example makes the
difference between a developer understanding the issue in a matter of
30 seconds vs. 3 minutes, and when we have over 400 open
bugs+enhancement requests, that difference is significant.

Please note that I'm not trying to be snarky or lazy here.  It's just
that I've honestly seen the difference between well-written (i.e.
small) proposals and vague requests -- better proposals tend to get
action sooner.  Recall Pascal's "I apologize that this letter is so
long - I lacked the time to make it short."


2) make a scan of some published music that uses this notation.  This
will immediately silence anybody who wants to argue (as I somewhat
did) that a single fraction is sufficient to show any microtonal
notation.

3) send it the bug list so that it gets added to the tracker.

4) wait.  Maybe offer a bounty to entice somebody to work on it.

Cheers,
- Graham



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