Re: proposal: second style for quartertone accidentals

[Trevor Bača]

On 1/27/07, Orm Finnendahl <address@hidden> wrote:
> Hi,
>
> for a while I wanted to suggest adding the option of using a different
> style for microtone accidentals. I personally prefer the use of up or
> down arrows on extended vertical lines of the standard accidentals
> (see attached example). The advantage of this style is a better
> differentiation of enharmonic spelling which makes reading and
> performance better suited to the way those pitches are produced on
> different instruments or the musical context (like in the spelling of
> chords). In this case an extended syntax for the accidentals would
> make sense.
>
> I give two examples with the different enharmonic spellings and the
> proposed lilypond syntax:
>
>
> 1. pitch: quarter tone below a
>
> glyphs                                    lilypond syntax
> -----------------------------------------------------------------
>
> "a" with natural with arrow down          aeh
> "a" with flat sign with arrow up          aesih
> "g" with sharp sign with arrow up         gisih
>
> 2. pitch: quarter tone above a
>
> glyphs                                    lilypond syntax
> -----------------------------------------------------------------
>
> "a" with natural with arrow up            aih
> "a" with sharp sign with arrow down       aiseh
> "b" with flat sign with arrow down        beseh
>
>
> I designed the glyphs in a postscript font and can provide them if
> anybody is interested (they stem from a very old version of the
> Petrucci font and probably will have to get adjusted to the more
> beautiful Feta glyphs, but the basic work is done).
>
> What do you think?

Question: would it be possible to have access to *both* sets of
glyphs? It seems to me that I've seen both types of glyphs mixed
together in single scores; usually the existing quartertone glyphs
show exact quartertone alterations while the arrowed glyphs show
approximate alterations.

I actually had never considered substituting arrowed-accidetals for
the existing glyphs, but thinking about it now I can see exactly why
you would want to do so ... they really do have a cleaner look ...

So, I definitely vote for the incusion of the new arrowed-accidentals
and, if possible, I'd like to continue to have access to the existing
quartertone accidentals for use at the same time. (I don't know what
this says about the input syntax, though ...)


--
Trevor Bača
address@hidden