John Chambers wrote:
>I'd wonder whether the transposeplay= clause is the best (i.e.,
>clearest to your typical non-computer-geek musician) way to give a
>pitch. I suspect that most would have to try a number of times to get
>it right, and we'd have confusion similar to what currently happens
>when people try to describe clefs as "transposition". Another scheme
>that was proposed was to give the pitch of a specific note, as:
> A=880
> A=220
> _B=440
Well, I thought about that, but the trouble is that it looks like a
tuning command, and inevitably users will expect to be able to enter
A=443.8 and expect to get exactly that. Not that a tuning command
isn't useful under some circumstances. (BarFly already has one:
you can put tune=n in the V: header field where n is in units of
1/256 semitones. It's useful to slightly de-tune intruments which
are playing in unison so you can hear them as separate instruments.)
>OTOH, both transposeplay=<n> and <note>=<pitch> could be useful, if
>we were to interpret the transposeplay clause as instruction to show
>the music transposed. But there's a problem with using semitones as a
>measure of how displayed music is to be transposed: If some music is
>written in A, and I say to transpose it -3, there is no clue as to
>whether I want F# or Gb.
Yes, I don't think we really need to deal with the problem of
transposition for display purposes. I already have a utility for
that which generates a new abc tune in the required key.
>| In the absence of these subfields, the defaults are as follows:
>|
>| clef= treble
>| middle= depends on the current clef:
>| treble: B
>| alto: C
>| tenor: A,
>| bass: D,
>
>This does seem to be a point of disagreement. There seem to be three
>equally reasonable sets of defaults, depending on the set of users:
>
>1. People typing or reading ABC directly, who prefer the defaults:
> treble middle=B
> alto middle=c
> bass middle=d
> The reason is simply that this minimizes the number of commas
> needed. This is irrelevant to people using GUI tools, since they
> don't need to type the ABC and thus don't care if it's awkward to
> type or read. It is objectionable to people using players, who
> prefer that a given ABC note always have the same pitch regardless
> of staff.
>
>2. Keyboard players, who would prefer:
> treble middle=b
> bass middle=D
> The reason here is that this puts the unmarked ABC notes in the
> middle of their double staff, and again minimized the number of
> commas and apostrophes needed in the music. Keyboard music is the
> worst casefor any notation, of course, and is a good stress test
> for any notation's usability. (I'm very aware of this, since my
> main instruments are keyboards, and I find ABC not very useful for
> such music.)
>
>3. GUI and player users, who would prefer:
> treble middle=B
> alto middle=C
> bass middle=D,
> This has the advantage of a one-to-one mapping between ABC notes
> and pitches. It has the disadvantage of being difficult to type or
> read, but this population of users generally doesn't do those
> things, so they don't consider it a disadvantage.
>
>So far, the users of abc2ps and its derivatives seem firm that they
>prefer case 1, which is hardly surprising, since they are the people
>who type the ABC and tend to read it directly. The users of GUI tools
>and ABC players are equally firm that case 3 is the Only Right Way.
>As a keyboard player, I stand firmly in the middle, with the attitude
>that neither is Right (since both make life difficult for me). The
>best solution would be to come up with a simple keyword that says
>which of the three schemes was used, and not specify an official
>default at all.
>
>I'm not sure what would be the best such keyword. Considering the
>three types of uses, I could suggest "display", "keyboard" and
>"player", but it's not obvious that these are at all the best terms.
>
We are probably not going to agree on a common default - at least with
the proposed system the program users will soon learn that when they
encounter a tune on the bass clef which displays all on leger lines
they can fix it by simply adding m=D, or m=d to the K: field (depending
on whether the leger lines are up or down). If somebody were to fix
abc2ps to adopt this then anyone who transcribes a piece of music
on the bass clef can make sure that it will work correctly for everybody
else by including the appropriate m= field.
I think you are quite wrong to suggest that users of GUI based programs
don't type or read abc. Offhand I can think of five such programs:
abc2win, abcmus, BarFly, Melody Assistant and Muse. Of these, the first
three expect you to type the abc in. Only the last two enter notes
by clicking on a staff display. Using BarFly to enter abc is no different
from using emacs or vi (except that you can view the staff notation as you
go, can enter multiple commas with a single keystroke and don't have
to spend an hour reading the man pages every time you want to do an
operation you've never done before:-).
I think if you look at the numbers of tunes on the net you will find
that far more of them originate with people who use one of those three GUI
based programs as their primary abc tool than with people who use a text
editor plus abc2ps. Some of the nicest transcriptions also come from
users of these programs. Look at Henrik Norbeck's meticulously
accurate transcriptions of Irish music (abcmus), or Robert Bley-Vroman
and Jack Campin's beatifully laid out text (BarFly). It's quite clear
that these people care a lot about the appearance of the text as well
as the resulting staff notation.
Phil Taylor
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