"Bob Archer" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
>I like this. I'm just not sure that I like it for the same thing that
>Laurie does. I quite often want to put in little bass lines as
>transitions between chords. Assuming the '/' mechanism is for
>specifying the bass note of a chord it seems to me to make sense
>to be able to write:
>
>"G/g" "/f#" "/e" "/d"
>
>(or something similar depending on what exact rules we end up
>with for case & accidental).
I was thinking of the same use that Bob was (probably not what Laurie was
thinking of, I admit). I'd add my vote to lower-case letters preceded by
slash for single bass-line notes. It differs from the Nottingham Database
system I illustrated earlier in that the NMD system doesn't require a slash
unless there is also a chord given. Requiring a slash is an advantage: it
is more fail-safe than relying on lower-case alone and it doesn't preclude
using ^f rather than f# for a bass note (as the slashless notation does,
since slashless "^f" will collide with the over-staff comment syntax.)
(Developers' note: the syntax might require a slash followed by a
lower-case note; however, some users will use a lower-case note, omitting
the slash and some will use an upper-case note with a slash. These would
both be errors, of course, but one might be tolerant to some extent--at
least one could give an informative warning message, perhaps making a guess
at what was intended.
Likewise, I think the chord and bass-note notation should use the f# style
rather than the ^f style, just to avoid colliding with the above-staff text
syntax when the user mistakenly omits a slash, but here, too, one might be
a little accepting of error, especially since the intent is often clear in
intent: "D/^f" could hardly mean anything else but "D/f#".)
The only problem is that some people are accustomed to using slash notation
for alternate chords. But, we already have the parenthesis notation (in the
proposed revision) for this case. It would probably be best to reserve the
slash notation for bass notes.
Robert Bley-Vroman
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