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Notational conventions


From: Hans Åberg
Subject: Notational conventions
Date: Wed, 9 Nov 2016 00:07:30 +0100

> On 8 Nov 2016, at 23:41, Thomas Morley <address@hidden> wrote:
> 
> 2016-11-08 22:20 GMT+01:00 Hans Åberg <address@hidden>:
> 
>> And a reason of writing a complex time signature might be to make it 
>> impossible for the performer to follow it: In Balkan music, one plays by 
>> ear, and the variation is greater than the irrational time signature 
>> examples I gave. A Western musician when seeing 12/8, 12 = 3+2+2+3+2 with 
>> quadruplets on them, might try to play it as exactly as possible, but that 
>> is not how it should be performed.
> 
> Let me step in here.
> 
> This sounds (partly) like obfuscating the music to force the reader of
> the score to do some thorough studies before trying to perform.

Western composers have done it for a long time. Somebody wrote time signatures 
with e and pi decades ago, and modern complexity takes it to an another level. 
Cf.
  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=46w99bZ3W_M

As for myself, I just happened to discover a way to typeset it.

> Isn't it a good idea to do _always_ such studies?
> You can't even perform baroque-music adequat without them.
> Another example, I recall several printed editions of
> Flamenco-Alegrias in 3/4, but following exactly the 3/4 would come out
> completely wrong. It's often easier to get an raw glance, though.
> 
> Reading a score is not (and never was) enough to get an impression how
> the music _should_ sound or to perform it.
> 
> So I ask myself, why make it even more difficult for the reader with
> impossible things?

But for whom do you notate? Flamenco music does not notate the correct time 
signature. If you would toss skilled Western musicians a score, how would you 
notate it? Getting them to study Flamenco music and its notational traditions 
would be very costly.





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