Ah, but some Japanese (and Chinese) notations now follow the European model, with the voice in staff, the shamisen in 3-line tab, and the shakuhachi characters, normally written top to bottom, right to left, printed under the staves, left to right . I can tell you, very disorienting for the shakuhachi player. I've seen this for folk songs, which probably wouldn't have been written down at all until 50 or so years ago.
It appears to me, though, that it's part of a world-wide movement toward notating music, at least ensemble music, following European staff notation norms. I think in part this is because an increasing number of musicians want to be able to read music for any instrument in one notational form, and staff is the fallback. When among ourselves, though, at least us shakuhachi players revert to the "old" (about 1700) ways of notating. In short, they're all conventions. People like conventions, and dislike having the ones they're comfortable with changed to accommodate the ones someone else is comfortable with. Most, however, get used to it, and are willing to do so to be able to play with others. Best to all, and keep playing from the notation(s) of your choice, Chris. >>> Ed Durbrow <[email protected]> 4/18/2009 7:38 AM >>> Why not compromise and go up and down like some Japanese notations? On Apr 18, 2009, at 2:35 AM, <[email protected]> wrote: > Dumb question, some (perverse?) writing systems are contrary to > western > music notation, how does one set hebrew or arabic lyrics to western > music? > > Only way I can think of is to transliterate phonetically into the > roman > alphabet, as in - > > hava nagila, hava nagila... > > I realize this presents certain cultural issues, but what is a music > typesetting program to do? I suppose it could be written to set > the music > right-eft, but that could be a bit challenging to the members of the > band... > > -- > Dana Emery > > > > > To get on or off this list see list information at > http://www.cs.dartmouth.edu/~wbc/lute-admin/index.html Ed Durbrow Saitama, Japan [email protected] http://www9.plala.or.jp/edurbrow/ --
