>Let's start from your last example. In the header, there is:
> K:D_B_e=C^F^c
>
> Then, when reading the (automatically printed) score, I will find a
> strange key signature (here with a treble clef) which may look like:
>
> ---- # ----------------
> b
> -----------------------
> #
> ---------- b ----------
>
> -----------------------
>
> -----------------------
>
> -- = --
>
> ('=' for natural sign)
> May I tell I never saw such a thing in my life, and I hope this will
> never happen :) [...]
> Let's be serious: standard key signatures are needed by *all* musicians.
> When there are strange notes in a tune, these ones shall be indicated by
> explicit accidentals. This is (I think) the result of many centuries, so
> why had ABC not to follow these basic rules?
What John describes is absolutely standard practice in Turkish music and
has been for a very long time. What I think is the most-used college
textbook on Turkish art music, Ismail Hakki Özkan's "Türk Mûsikîsi
Nazariyati ve Usûlleri", not only mixes sharps and flats in the same key
signature, it also mixes in microtonal sharps and flats as well, and for
most pieces also needs accidentals, which may also be microtonal.
Özkan doesn't use the variant-octave notation John suggests, but it
would be useful sometimes (in the makam Sabâ, he leaves this variation
notationally implicit, which kinda makes sense as it's one of the
trickiest scales in the repertoire and anybody venturing into it would
presumably know what they were doing without being told by any signs).
Here is a familiar Northumbrian tune that would be most cleanly
represented using John's proposal:
X:1
T:Oh I Hae Seen the Roses Blaw
M:6/8
L:1/8
K:G =f ^F % low F's sharp, high F's natural
D|G2G B>AB|c2A F2D|G>AG B2c|d2g d2c|B2c d2e|f2d B2G|d>ed cBA|G3 G2:|
d|g2d B2G |c2A F2D|g2d B2c|d2g d2c|B2c d2e|f2d B2G|d>ed cBA|G3 G2:|
One reason why this makes sense here is that this was probably a
(keyless) bagpipe tune originally, and those pitches would have
been fixed for the intended instrument. On a pipe like that you
can't do any pitch adjustment of individual notes, so accidental
signs are just an irritating excrescence that breaks up the flow
while you're reading. Putting the tonality in the key signature
tells you what you want to know when you need to know it: can my
pipe play this tune or not?
=================== <http://www.purr.demon.co.uk/jack/> ===================
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