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Re: Lilypond's internal pitch representation and microtonal notation
From: |
Joseph Wakeling |
Subject: |
Re: Lilypond's internal pitch representation and microtonal notation |
Date: |
Mon, 20 Sep 2010 16:56:57 +0200 |
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Mozilla/5.0 (X11; U; Linux x86_64; en-US; rv:1.9.1.12) Gecko/20100915 Lightning/1.0b1 Thunderbird/3.0.8 |
On 09/20/2010 03:22 PM, Graham Percival wrote:
> Hmm. This is similar to the distinction between cis and des, correct?
Yes, exactly, it's an enharmonic equivalence.
> 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?
Indeed, d-3/4 is not sufficient [1]: in arrow quarter-tone notation you
want to be able to indicate quarter-tone raising or lowering of any of
the 12 standard tones.
There should be no frequency difference between c+1/4 and cis-1/4. Some
composers do use the arrow notation to indicate approximate
quarter-tones, but many assume that the quarter-tones are exact.
I did prepare a "cheat" implementation of quarter-tone arrow notation
where there were subtle pitch differences (c+999/4000, cis-999/4000).
This kind of works but it generates all sorts of nightmares with
transposition and means having to write out a HUGE accidentals list (see
discussion in Issue 694).
> 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.
Yes -- but it goes beyond arrowed quarter-tone notation. I was a bit
long-winded and abstract because I wanted to stress that it was a
general problem for many different microtonal notations, rather than
just arrow quarter-tones.
> 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.
Yes, I'll try and do that in future.
> 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.
For arrowed quarter-tones the notation is described (and recommended) in
Kurt Stone's book "Music Notation in the Twentieth Century". I don't
own a scanner :-( but will try and take a copy of the relevant page
(it's pp.67-70 IIRC; I was looking at it last night).
There are various other notations to consider that have a similar
character. I'll try and prepare a variety of representative examples.
> 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.
Hans Aberg's work looks promising. I don't understand it properly yet,
but I'll try and prepare a set of examples to test whether it could
provide a solution.
Best wishes,
-- Joe
[1] There used to be a "how to do arrow quarter-tone notation" example
somewhere in the docs, which "solved" the problem by simply not having a
cis-1/4 symbol. That was what got me thinking about the whole issue in
the first place.
- Re: Lilypond's internal pitch representation and microtonal notation, (continued)
- Re: Lilypond's internal pitch representation and microtonal notation, Carl Sorensen, 2010/09/21
- Re: Lilypond's internal pitch representation and microtonal notation, Graham Percival, 2010/09/21
- Re: Lilypond's internal pitch representation and microtonal notation, Hans Aberg, 2010/09/21
- Re: Lilypond's internal pitch representation and microtonal notation, Benkő Pál, 2010/09/21
- Re: Lilypond's internal pitch representation and microtonal notation, Hans Aberg, 2010/09/21
- Re: Lilypond's internal pitch representation and microtonal notation, Benkő Pál, 2010/09/22
- Re: Lilypond's internal pitch representation and microtonal notation, Hans Aberg, 2010/09/22
- Re: Lilypond's internal pitch representation and microtonal notation, Hans Aberg, 2010/09/22
- Re: Lilypond's internal pitch representation and microtonal notation, Hans Aberg, 2010/09/21
Re: Lilypond's internal pitch representation and microtonal notation, Graham Percival, 2010/09/20
Re: Lilypond's internal pitch representation and microtonal notation, David Kastrup, 2010/09/20
Re: Lilypond's internal pitch representation and microtonal notation, Graham Percival, 2010/09/20
Re: Lilypond's internal pitch representation and microtonal notation, Han-Wen Nienhuys, 2010/09/21