To be fair, it's also because "proper" vertical spelling of enharmonics in highly chromatic music (like jazz, and like a lot of interesting pop/B'way/etc) frequently results in less legible parts than you'd get by spelling parts in a horizontally logical fashion.
At one point, I experimented with spelling every accidental according to Hoyle, regardless of the resultant double-sharps and double-flats, etc. The musicians I presented this to universally *hated* it, even those with extensive classical backgrounds. The expectation in jazz (and pop etc) is that you will spell accidentals with a minimum of fuss, and players get ornery if you get too cute, even if the accidentals are technically correct. I'm all for spelling basic chord tones consistently on parts that actually show the entire harmony (piano, guitar). At no point should anyone ever write a B major seventh chord with an Eb and A#. But at at a certain point, musicians of all stripes learn to tune by ear, not by eye. So no, I'm not that sympathetic to the idea that string players tune an F# and a Gb differently, because in point of fact, *good* string players learn to hear where they are in the harmony and adjust accordingly, enharmonics be damned -- just like wind players and brass players. Cheers, - DJA ----- WEB: http://www.secretsocietymusic.org On 10 Jun 2012, at 12:33 AM, Christopher Smith wrote: > Well, G flat in the key of G is not completely out of the question, but I get > your point. > > A lot of pops arrangers come from a jazz background, where proper enharmonic > spelling seems to be valued much less. Maybe it's because they don't realise > that string players actually choose a different finger to play an F sharp > than a G flat, and the two notes are tuned quite differently in most > contexts. After all, the piano plays them both exactly the same way. > > Another factor is most jazz musicians don't know about augmented sixth chords > and how they should be spelled, and don't realise that their treasured > Tritone Subs are actually augmented 6th chords. So an Ab7 chord resolving to > Gmaj7 in the key of G should have an F sharp (aug 6th), not a G flat. So that > might be considered to be illiteracy. > > Possibly some of those flipped enharmonics comes from Finale itself, where > hitting the 9 key in Speedy does not flip the enharmonic in a bulletproof > fashion. I have often come back to a part that I was certain I had spelled > correctly, only to find that some of the enharmonics I had flipped had > changed themselves back again when I wasn't looking. I sure hope they fix > that bug soon. > > Christopher > > > On Sat Jun 9, at SaturdayJun 9 7:06 PM, Robert Patterson wrote: > >> I see as much pops rep as any pro horn player, and almost all of it has key >> sigs, so you are certainly going with the flow. Nevertheless I greatly >> appreciate when the parts don't. Key sigs are not a problem except when the >> (often just momentary) key of the piece is different than the key >> signature. That's when they turn into a pain. That's when I wish users of >> computers would follow the old practice of adding courtesy accis when notes >> are chromatic to the momentary key. For example, if the piece is in F but >> has momentarily modulated to C, any B-flats should have courtesy accis, >> even though they are in the key sig. Or if the momentary key is Ab, then >> D-natural should have a courtesy acci. >> >> The other thing that drives me crazy in pops charts is gross mis-spellings >> of notes. These are the result of working at lightspeed with Fin/Sib, etc., >> and not always the result of a flatly illiterate arranger. At least I'd >> like to think so. (I can't tell you how many times I've seen F# in the key >> of G spelled as G-flat!) Ironically, this is a hazard mainly of providing >> parts with no key sig, so pops arrangers just can't win. :-P > > _______________________________________________ > Finale mailing list > [email protected] > http://lists.shsu.edu/mailman/listinfo/finale _______________________________________________ Finale mailing list [email protected] http://lists.shsu.edu/mailman/listinfo/finale
