Phil Taylor wrote:
>The main ambiguity seems to lie with the use of + and - symbols. "+"
>can mean augmented, sharpened or added, and there's really no way a
>program can determine which is correct. Even human readers have to be
>expert musicians and familiar with the harmony rules for this particular
>genre of music to interpret this correctly. I suggest, therefore, that
>we eliminate + and - from the standard and admit only the explicit
>namings, aug, #, add, dim, b and whatever we decide should mean "omit
>this note".
I agree (1) that there is a reasonable consensus on all core cases; (2)
Phil's suggestion is sensible
While I suppose there might be some reason to have a way of writing "omit
this note", it's also possible that it won't be used much in practice.
Therefore, the main consideration in deciding on a notation should be
careful not to mess up something else. In particular, if there is some
amount of consensus that the slash notation is a good one for bass notes
(that is, "G/b" means a G chord with a B in the bass), then we shouldn't
sacrifice bass note system to get a notation for chords with missing notes.
To be honest, I wouldn't feel bad if, at this stage in the development of
abc, there were no notation for chords with missing notes.
--------------------------
A new idea next (or maybe someone already said this. Is anything really new
on this list?)
Just occurred to me. Of course, for chords missing notes, one can always
write out several notes played simultaneously using square brackets, e.g.
[G,,D,] independent of the quoted chord notation; but what is also desired
is a notation that abstracts away from particular notes in particular
octaves: one wants to notate a chord with the notes G and D and no B, for
example, without saying explicitly what octave these notes are in. How
about this:
When bracketed notes are included in quotation marks, then they are
interpreted as chord-notes, abstracted from octaves. In that case, "[gb]"
means a chord with a G and B note. [gb], with no quotation marks, means
the g and b of the octave above middle C, played simultaneously. "[gbd]"
would be (approximately?) equivalent to "G". I've used lower-case letters
here following the principle that in the chord notation (within quotation
marks), lower-case would refer to individual notes and upper case would
refer to chords.
(Aside: I say "approximately?" since one _might_ make the order significant
in this proposed bracketed chord notation, thus inversions could be
specified if needed. "G" would be therefore more abstract that "[gbd]"; and
"[gbd]" would be different from "[bdg]". Left-to-right would be
low-to-high.)
So:
"G" is a G chord, abstractly
"[gd]" is a fifth, abstractly
and, adopting the slash notation for bass notes:
"G/d" is a G chord with a bass note of D
"/b" is a bass note of B
In none of the above is there any implication of octave. That is, the chord
notation consistently abstracts away from octave.
Any takers?
Robert Bley-Vroman
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