Than you Phil Taylor for a sensibly argued case. A welcome change from the this-is-my-opinion-and-I'm-sticking-to-it attitude that has been prevalent lately. Unfortunately I didn't agree with any of it.
He wrote - >In order to describe a piece of music completely, you need to >know any two of the tonic, mode and key signature. The key signature is sufficient alone. Tonic and mode are implicit in the tune. >Conventional musical notation gives only the key signature, which is >inadequate, and has led to the practice in classical music of including >the tonic in the title of the piece. I have been taking classical oboe lessons for three years and have never been given a piece with the tonic in the title. I think this practice died out years if not centuries ago. One of the tests my teacher occasionally springs on me is to put a piece in front of me and ask for the key or give me a key and ask for the key signature. >If the law was changed to make IOUs legal tender It was. A long time ago. They're called banknotes. The economy suffers if there are a lot of counterfeits in circulation which, in abc, there are. People are blatantly passing off Edorian tunes as K:D. >Please note Bryan, that I'm not objecting to this suggestion on the >grounds that it's likely to be popular Perhaps not; it's a subtle distinction. You ARE saying that you think a large number of people are not that concerned about having the tonic and mode and that the explicit key signature format would be widely used. You think that they should be prevented form doing so because you know better. My concern is that they will still find it simpler to say K:D to get two sharps because it's easier than K:^f^c. Perhaps it's tonic alone that should be outlawed (except that we can't of course, because it's too late.) >Finally, if we want to make life easier for people transcribing >from manuscript by permitting them to use an incomplete description >of key, perhaps we should do the same thing for those transcribing >by ear, and permit them to specify only the tonic. After all, >any competent musician who was familiar with the tradition concerned >should easily be able to figure out where to put the necessary >accidentals in order to make sense of the tune. But the user might not be familiar with the tradition so you'd have to include a sound file. In that case you wouldn't need a tonic (or the notes for that matter). abc software requires the K: command so the resulting abc would be something like - X:2312841276 T:The Pig and the Parlour Maid C:Trad N:From the playing of Gilbert "Hairy" Scrotum F:PigMaid.wav K: I don't think I'll be implementing that just yet. (Actually, come to think of it, it wouldn't be that difficult.) Bryan Creer To subscribe/unsubscribe, point your browser to: http://www.tullochgorm.com/lists.html
