Bernard Hill writes: | In message <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>, I. Oppenheim <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes | >There are to supported syntaxes: | >[A] K:<tonic><mode> <accidentals> | >[B] K:<tonic> <accidentals> | > | >Syntax A will _modify_ the key signature of the mode | >given, rather than simply append accidentals to it. | >Example: | > | >K:Dmaj =c % will give F# Cnat | > | >Syntax B, which only contains the name of the tonic, | >and does not imply a mode, will allow you to spell out | >a key signature in full: | > | >K:D ^f =c % same meaning as above | > | >Note that in syntax B the tonic may be basically | >ignored by the parser; the tonic is only there to make | >the notation comprehensible to other users.
In several discussions, we've also had a number of people request that the tonic be officially optional. One reason is to help in transcriptions where the transcriber may get the key wrong. One objection has been the fear that if we allow this, then tonics will disappear. I suspect that this won't happen at all. Even musicians who are relatively ignorant of music theory understand what it means to say that a tune is "in G" or "in E minor". It's very rare for musicians to tell you the key signature; they usually give you the tonic and/or the mode (even if they don't know those terms). And the counter-argument to this has been from people who feel that it's better to not give the tonic than to give the wrong tonic. This is a matter of personal preference, I suppose. And how liberal an abc program wants to be is probably a matter of the programmer's personal preference. We've already seen that putting global accidentals in the 1.6 standard didn't mean that many programmers would implement it. The same probably applies here. | "Strange" key sigs such as the above (while clear in intent) are very | non-standard. Are they really necessary? I've never played from one and | would actually find it very difficult to play _b ^f They aren't at all strange to a lot of us. Even music publishers are now accepting such things. For example, Mel Bay's recent (and well done) klezmer collection has a lot of non-classical key signatures. A lot depends on what music you play. Part of the pressure for more extensions in abc is from people playing music other than traditional British Isles folk music. Sorry, folks; the musical weirdos have discovered abc, like it, and want to use it. | Anyway: have you abandoned the "global accidentals" idea? I thought it | very good actually. In fact some Bach is written that way - he writes a | key sig of 1 flat and "manually" flattens every E and ends on a G minor | chord! Yeah; I've noticed that in urtext editions. I think what was really going on was that the "official" notation for minor hadn't quite stabilized back then. Bach and some others would use a dorian key signature for minor at times, possibly depending on their feel for which would use the fewer accidentals. I've seen the same thing in urtext editions of Handel, Quantz, Vivaldi and the Louillets, for example. Our notions of the rules for classical key signatures really weren't firm until around 1800 or so. To subscribe/unsubscribe, point your browser to: http://www.tullochgorm.com/lists.html
