John Chambers wrote:
>
>.........
> given, major is assumed. It has been suggested that in my extended
> K:<tonic><mode><signature>
> syntax, the same default should apply. I think this is a bad idea. In
> my implementation in abc2ps, what I did was to say that if only the
> <tonic> is given, with no <mode> or <signature>, then major is
> assumed. This is a subtle point, but I think it has significance.
>
> To see why, consider a musician trying to transcribe a tune in what a
> middle-eastern musician would call "E hejaz" or a klezmer musician
> would call "E freygish". I'd write this as
> K:E^G
> That is, the tonic is E and the signature consists solely of a G
> sharp. (It could obviously be K:^g if you prefer.)
>
> Note that there is no mode stated. If the mode defaults to major, the
> result will be that this will appear with four sharps, as if K:E had
> been written. The musician will, of course, be baffled by this, and
> will probably conclude that the software is broken (or doesn't yet
> implement key signatures). The ^G seems to have been ignored.
>
> Now, to the musicological expert, there's no puzzle here. You need to
> include a mode to cancel the major default. What mode do you use? To
> the expert, it's obviously "phr". But to the other 99% of the
> musicians in the world, it's not obvious at all. Even worse, what's
> needed to cancel the major default is different for every tonic.
>
> Most musicians will never be able to learn or remember this.
>
> However, they will quickly learn that there's another solution:
> K:^G
> This gives the desired signature. If you don't tell the software the
> tonic, it can't add an incorrect default major key signature. And we
> have lost the tonic and the ability to do our lookups.
>
> So the effect of making major the default mode is that we will see
> more ABC without a tonic in K: lines. But if we use the rule that the
> default is major only if no <mode> or <signature> is given, then
> K:E^G will work exacly like you'd expect, and we've subtly encouraged
> musicians to include the tonic when they know it.
>
> (Now if we could only think of a way to do something about the ABC
> tunes that have K:G for K:Em or K:Ador or K:Dmix. ;-)
>
Why so awkward? I've already shown how to do this quite simply with
J:<key sig>, [<tonic>] and in the K:<tonic><mode> you still have the
logic flaw. It's going to be a developer's nightmare to resolve any
inconsistanies in the triple K:spec.
Bandaids on K:spec isn't going to fix it's logic flaw. And by
modes it seems to be implied that it's that of the tune, not that
it's scoring mode, often very different things. There's a
tune in the Stanford-Petrie collection of Irish music that has no
sharps or flats on the key signature, and obvious keynote A.
Minor, right?. No! Every F, C, and G has an 'accidental' sharp,
so it's A major. Of course you can score it as minor, and K:spec
doesn't care if it's correct or not, because it doesn't have much
to do with keys and modes, it just limits the possibilities.
I had problems with an ABC that I made from Simpson 'The British
Broadside Ballad and It's Music'. My program didn't come out
right on scoring mode and letter notes, although got the mode#
of the tune correct. I spent 2 hours searching for a bug, that
turned out not to be there. Simpson had put in brackets a flat
on the key signature for E, and there was a single E in the tune
with an accidental natural not in brackets. So it was inconsistant
tune notation that fouled thing up. My ABZ program isn't fooled
by any scoring (that's internally consistant), and will give the
real mode of the tune in either case for that Irish tune, scored
as you prefer.
Note that pentatonic pi1 can be easily scored as lydian, ionian,
or mixolydian. The tune isn't lydian, it isn't ionian, and it
isn't mixolydian, it's pi1. My mode# (330=pi1) determines the
mode of the tune, from whats in the tune and is independent of the
scoring mode, and it can easily be inverted by simple math to give the
tune's [12TET] scale relative to the key, and the tune can be rescored
in any key and scoring mode you like. There are many other examples of
this kind of thing where it's obvious that scoring mode is simply
convenience or whim, and doesn't mean much. The 4 11 note tunes
coded in file COMBCOD2.TXT are from tunes all scored as minor
modes, but they is no way of telling whether they are expanded
minors or majors. That scoring is just a convenience for
minimizing the number of accidentals required for a scoring.
If you don't reform ABC, on the K:spec, but just patch it with
bandaids, I think your precious patient will die. And lets get it
straight what are scoring modes and what are tune modes.
Bruce Olson
Old English, Irish and, Scots: popular songs, tunes, broadside
ballads at my website (no advs-spam, etc)- www.erols.com/olsonw
or click below <A href="http://www.erols.com/olsonw"> Click </a>
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