On Thu, 31 Jan 2002 [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: > Just as with standard music notation, if one is reading the ABC, if > you don't specify the sharpness, naturalness or flatness of the second > F in your example, is that F in the second bar supposed to be an > F-natural or F-sharp?
In standard notation, there is no ambiguity. The second F is assumed to be sharp, as a rule. I can't imagine anyone but a complete novice playing it otherwise. I am aware of only two situations where it is recommended in standard notation to draw the second sharp. The first is when the tie continues from the end of one line to the beginning of the next. The other is when the second F sharp occurs simultaneously with an F natural in another octave. In both cases, the additional sharp is merely for clarification. Its absence would not indicate a natural (though it would be poor notation). As has been mentioned before, if you want to slur an F sharp to an F natural, whether you cross a barline or not, the natural should be made explicit. In abc, there is even less ambiguity, because ties and slurs have distinct syntaxes. ^F-|=F is utter nonsense (according to the draft standard), and should be written as (^F|=F) instead. And if ^F-|=F is nonsense, then it is equally nonsensical for abc software to interpret ^F-|F that way. If we are going to start requiring that abc notation make the second sharp in this example explicit, then we should require that *every* accidental be made explicit, for the sake of consistency. But this seems silly to me. abc was clearly designed to mimic standard notation to a large extent, so it already follows many of the same rules (such as accidentals lasting to the next barline). To follow some rules and ignore others will only lead to confusion. Another problem is that if we required this example always to be written as ^F-|^F, typesetting software would by default have to omit the second sharp in order to conform to conventional notation. But you run into a problem if you want to force the second sharp to be displayed. ^F-|^F won't do it. John To subscribe/unsubscribe, point your browser to: http://www.tullochgorm.com/lists.html
