Phil Taylor writes:
| John Chambers wrote:
| >It would be better to adopt notation that says unambiguously how the
| >clef and ABC notes are to map to the staff. ...
|
| This is the scheme I've adopted for the next version of BarFly.
| Four extra fields can be (optionally) added to the K: field -
|
| clef= <name>
| middle= <note>
| transposeplay= n <semitones>
| capo= n <semitones>
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
The third would be for a Bb instrument, of course. Music formatters
could ignore this sort of thing, as it is only meaningful to players.
A player of a Bb clarinet would expect that _B to be displayed on the
page as _B, even though it sounds as A.
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.
| 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.
To subscribe/unsubscribe, point your browser to: http://www.tullochgorm.com/lists.html
