> Jean-Francois Moine skribis:
> |
> | Let's go further. Someone in the ABC-land will soon write:
> |
> | K:C ^e_f
In a less flippant vein, we might observe that this sort of
criticism, while it sounds significant, really isn't. The reason is
that in any language that is at all useful, it's alway possible to
write nonsense. If you notation can't express nonsense, it probably
can't express much of any value, either. So giving examples of
nonsense is merely entertaining, but is otherwise not relevant to any
serious discussion.
The important question is whether a particular piece of notation can
express something that is otherwise difficult or impossible to say.
This is the primary argument for the above notation. The tonic+mode
notation of ABC was a Good Idea, because for a large class of music
(in every musical tradition), it gave a way of expressing the key in
a way that is more natural than the way standard staff notation does
it. People normally say "We're playing in D" or "We're in G minor";
they normally don't list the accidentals. This is pretty much true in
every kind of music in any language. So the original ABC notation was
good because it satisfied the "something that is otherwise difficult"
criterion.
But in doing this, it violated the "impossible to say" criterion. It
can't express some scales at all. Staff notation can express many of
them easily, since you can draw any accidentals you like anywhere on
the staff. A pen and piece of paper don't restrict you to classical
scales. Some publishers might refuse to print your music, but that's
a different and unrelated problem.
The main argument for adding accidentals in the key signature is thus
that is corrects the "impossible to say" problem. It's inferior to
the tonic+mode approach when that works. But when that doesn't work,
it gives you a way to express what you need in a way that's no more
clumsy than the key signatures of staff notation. In fact, it's just
an ascii version of such key signatures. There's a one-to-one map
from accidentals in a K: line and accidentals on a staff.
This one-to-one map onto the staff leads us to the other argument for
the extension: It makes life easier for musically naive transcribers
who are trying to convert a page of music to ABC. The music they're
looking at doesn't tell them the key; it only tells them the key
signature. If they can't figure out the correct tonic and mode, they
have the option of just entering the key signature. While this isn't
as good has having the correct tonic+mode, it is better than having
the wrong tonic+mode.
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