Phil Taylor quoted:
| $ A slash after the chord type is used only if the optional bass note is
| $ also used, e.g., "C/E". If the bass note is a regular part of the
| $ chord, it indicates the inversion, i.e., which note of the chord is
| $ lowest in pitch. If the bass note is not a regular part of the chord,
| $ it indicates an additional note that should be sounded with the chord,
| $ below it in pitch. The bass note can be any letter (A-G or a-g), with
| $ or without a trailing accidental sign (b or #). The case of the letter
| $ used for the bass note does not affect the pitch.
Hmmm ... I see a real possibility for confusion here. I've seen a lot
of music written with such chords, but with few if any accidentals
used with the bass note. The convention seems to be that the key
signature applies to such notes. The immediate problem is that
there's no way to indicate "natural", which does get used in
chromatic bass runs in such cases. The more general problem is that
people typing the abc but not listening to it will often not include
accidentals on the bass note, because it won't occur to them that
accidentals might be needed. "Huh? I gave the key signature; what
more do you need."
A quick look around my own collection turned up a few tunes from
various people that use this notation already. Some of them had
accidentals on the bass notes; others didn't. My quick sample had
more of the latter, but the sample size is too small to be
significant.
For people proofreading the tune by hearing it played, the problem
will tend to get fixed, of course. But I and others rarely do this,
and if it looks right on the screen, we'll likely assume that it is
right. This will give us another ongoing annoying inconsistency.
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