| Erik Ronstr=F6m writes: | | What the accidentals =3D, ^, _ mean? Are they "absolute" (e g "_e" means | | "e flat") or are they in relation to the key (e g "=3De" means "e flat" | | in Bb major)? | | They're absolute, just as in conventional music notation.
Just out of curiosity, are there any musical traditions/styles that use a relative (or cumulative) approach? I've never seen any, but that doesn't mean they don't exist. I'd imagine that this could make the music difficult to read at times. You'd have to stop, backup, and add up the accidentals to figure out how to play a note. In a measure with many accidentals, the capacity of a mere human's short-term memory could be easily overflow. This seems somewhat related to the old question of the persistence of accidentals. Current conventional practice is that accidentals last to the next bar line, but there are several musical styles that use the "only the one note" rule. This is true for European music before 1600 or so, and also for much modern music (especially atonal). It makes sense in these styles. The early European music didn't use bar lines, so "until the next bar line" didn't work. The modern music is too difficult to read if accidentals have persistence. It might be interesting to learn of a type of music where cumulative accidentals make sense, because this makes the music easier to read. Does anyone know of any? To subscribe/unsubscribe, point your browser to: http://www.tullochgorm.com/lists.html
