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Re: what about simplifying music notation?


From: Paul Morris
Subject: Re: what about simplifying music notation?
Date: Tue, 15 Mar 2011 13:45:52 -0400
User-agent: Postbox 2.1.4 (Macintosh/20110308)

Marc Weber wrote:
Wouldn't it be easier to assign notes (c,d,e,..) natural numbers?
then define

could be:
---O- nr 16
---O- nr 12
---O- nr 8
---O- nr 4
---O- nr 0

to be always 4 semitones?

Hi Marc, If you still want to experiment with this kind of alternative notation in LilyPond, here are a couple of snippets that will help:

http://lsr.dsi.unimi.it/LSR/Item?id=694
http://lsr.dsi.unimi.it/LSR/Item?id=755

They show how to remap the vertical positions of the staff to regular intervals (semitones, wholetones, or whatever you want). The followingpage on the music notation project wiki collects more info on how to use LilyPond with these kinds of alternative notations:
http://musicnotation.org/wiki/LilyPond


David Kastrup wrote:
The_only_  non-fringe (and you
might debate that) instrument I know that has controls_deliberately_
designed around a chromatic scale (note that string instruments have
their controls dictated by physics) is the chromatic button accordion.
Every_other_  instrument, even woodwinds and percussion, has its
controls designed around a diatonic scale, and where that scale is not C
major, the instrument is often written down in transposed notation.

For anyone who's curious, here's a listing of instruments that have been designed to be key-neutral and scale-neutral. There are saxophones, flutes, vibraphones, panpipes, string instruments, keyboards, accordions, etc:
http://musicnotation.org/wiki/Isomorphic_Instruments

A benefit they offer is that, like voice or stringed instruments, once you learn the pattern for one diatonic scale, it's the same pattern for every diatonic scale. Whereas on a piano (based on C major), you need to learn a different fingering for each scale/key. They may be more "fringe" than other instruments, but I'm still interested. It seems like it would be easier to learn to improvise on one of these.

Basically, one approach treats different diatonic scales/keys as modifications of a built-in C major scale/key, the other sees diatonic scales/keys as the same diatonic pattern, just starting from a different note within a key-neutral chromatic series, like on a guitar.

Mike, thanks for sharing your script for using different note names.

Cheers,
Paul



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