Jean-Francois Moine wrote
...
> 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?
The many centuries of work were only the work of one group of
musicians who never had much to do with klezmer or Balkan
or flamenco music (and you can probably add a lot more "or"s too).
There are many pieces in these traditions which simply have scales
that "standard" (meaning the rather narrow "classical" musical
tradition) doesn't have.
K:C ^e_f is musically silly, in much the same way as I could write
out a tune where every E was represented by F flat and every
F by E sharp. Logically consistent maybe, but silly. Nobody wants
to do that. On the other hand, the scale
E F ^G A B c d e
is well known to many musicians, and to not put the ^G in the
key signature would be like writing a piece which is in G major
without the ^F in the key signature.
All the musicians who play this sort of music would at once
recognise that scale and know it as "standard". It is true
that all musicians need standard key signatures, but the
stuff played by a symphony orchestra is a very narrow
standard that will not meet all needs.
incidentally, it's my experience that when a "classically trained"
musician encounters this stuff, the funny key signature is
the very least of his problems. They play it note perfect
at first sight, but then they have a hard time getting the
feel of the music and learning to play it as it should be.
Laurie
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