Re: [abcusers] a request to talented programmers
> Well, I think you did not look carefully at my home page ;). Did you > ever try 'tclabc'? Indeed, the job goes slowly, because abcm2ps eats > most of my time, but this tools should offer you quite the same > features as noteedit or rosegarden, with only the simple Tk graphic > library. yes, I did check out! The thing is, I can't compile tclabc because my development machine has a half-working sound card. /dev/sequencer doesn't work, which means that I have serious problems with MIDI in general. And my boss will not buy me a new PC... Thanks, Guido =8-) To subscribe/unsubscribe, point your browser to: http://www.tullochgorm.com/lists.html
Re: [abcusers] RE : tune finder
John Chambers writes: >One of the cuter illustrations of this: There's an old test >for telling whether someone is a scientist/engineer or one >of those humanities types. You ask them "If you call a tail >a leg, how many legs does a dog have?" >The answer, of course, is "Four, because calling a tail a >leg doesn't make it one." (At which point the humanities >types all get indignant. ;-) > Unless they're historians, in which case they say, "Yep, that's a good ole Abe Lincoln story." Cheers, John Walsh To subscribe/unsubscribe, point your browser to: http://www.tullochgorm.com/lists.html
Re: [abcusers] RE : tune finder
Bryan Creer wrote: | Wil Macaulay said - | | > 2. they are in the 'standard' place | | Not sure what you mean. Well, I do have a few tunes that are written with two sharps, but they are ^g^c. (Actually, I'd usually write them K:^G^c to make it obvious that it's not the classical signature. And I might also add =F into the signature, just to make sure that nobody can misread it.) | > 3. E Dorian means E is the tonic. | | Of course it does but does K:D mean D is the tonic or just that the writer | wanted two sharps? Well, it *means* that D is the tonic. People often say something other than what they mean. But the fact that someone misuses terminology doesn't necessarily mean that they're right. One of the cuter illustrations of this: There's an old test for telling whether someone is a scientist/engineer or one of those humanities types. You ask them "If you call a tail a leg, how many legs does a dog have?" The answer, of course, is "Four, because calling a tail a leg doesn't make it one." (At which point the humanities types all get indignant. ;-) The reason that technical types tend to agree with this is that they usually appreciate that language isn't entirely arbitrary. Sure, it's artificial and invented. But its primary function is communication. If you misuse it and use your own meanings for terms, you lose the ability to communicate. This gets even more critical when computers get involved. They have maybe the intelligence of a fruit fly, and aren't very good at decoding misuses of language. In the case of abc notation, it's clear what K:D means. It means that the key is D major. Anything else is a misuse. Yes, you can do that, just as you can make up your own private language for any other topic. But you won't be communicating with others, humans or computers. You'll be misleading them. Now, this is understandable with people who don't quite understand the difference between, say, K:G and K:Em. We all understand that children and newbies can be excused for their misuse of a language. But the right response to this isn't to say that it doesn't matter. The right response is to try to educate them. We do want them to grow up able to communicate with the rest of us. | >Me, personally, just speaking for myself, I can play in (for example) G | Dorian | >without having to remember which flats are there, but I have to puzzle it | out | >if I see a tune written out with one flat and try to figure out which of the | possible | >tonics I should be thinking about. Yeah; I'm the same way. I tend to read new tunes slowly, in part because they don't make sense until I've got the key. Once I've figured that out, I can read much faster, because the music makes sense. This is the reason that I like to use non-classical key signatures. Thus, if a Macedonian tune is in hejaz scale, being told that it's Bb or Gm causes problems until I figure out that that's a lie and the tonic is actually D. Then it makes sense, and my fingers know where the notes of the scale are. A signagure of _B_e^F is useful, even without the tonic, because I know right off that it's not a classical scale, and I go right into "find the tonic" mode. It could also be C, and I know within a bar or two which it is. | So, presumably, you never use books of conventional music notation which | (apart from a few baroque pieces I've come across) never tell you the tonic. | Very few of them give the mode either, certainly none of the collections of | English traditional music that I have and not many of the Irish collections | (Krassen's edition of O'Neill for instance). Those that do give the mode | give it AS WELL AS not INSTEAD OF the key signature. I've often thought that the classical tradition of giving the kay (tonic and mode) in the title developed in part because that is valuable information to the musician. The notation doesn't provide any way to give the reader this information, so you give it in a different manner. | If you have trouble working out the tonic from the notes of the tune does | that mean we shouldn't rely on the accuracy of any tune you post? Of course, | a lot of people know less than you do about modes so their postings will be | even less reliable. That's already true. Bad K lines are a fact of life in the online abc collections. It's one of the main reasons for wanting abc to include explicit key signatures. True, this is less valuable than the tonic+mode. But it's better than an incorrect tonic+mode. Correct information is almost always better than incorrect information. | >I just have an objection to the statement or implication that that is | somehow | >wrong or misleading to the entire abc user community to allow tonic and | modes to be | >specified as a a first order definition. | | I wasn't aware that anybody had made such a statement. I don't think so, either. I think it's a comm
[abcusers] RE : tune finder
Wil Macaulay said - >Yes, it would be 'better and less misleading' for the abc user community that >understands: > 1. 2 sharps Good. > 2. they are in the 'standard' place Not sure what you mean. > 3. E Dorian means E is the tonic. Of course it does but does K:D mean D is the tonic or just that the writer wanted two sharps? >Me, personally, just speaking for myself, I can play in (for example) G Dorian >without having to remember which flats are there, but I have to puzzle it out >if I see a tune written out with one flat and try to figure out which of the possible >tonics I should be thinking about. So, presumably, you never use books of conventional music notation which (apart from a few baroque pieces I've come across) never tell you the tonic. Very few of them give the mode either, certainly none of the collections of English traditional music that I have and not many of the Irish collections (Krassen's edition of O'Neill for instance). Those that do give the mode give it AS WELL AS not INSTEAD OF the key signature. If you have trouble working out the tonic from the notes of the tune does that mean we shouldn't rely on the accuracy of any tune you post? Of course, a lot of people know less than you do about modes so their postings will be even less reliable. >So therefore my, personal >speaking for myself selfish little opinion clearly shouldn't count. Everybody's opinion counts but it would always be nice to know the reasons behind that opinion and that that opinion was open to modification in the face or a reasoned argument. >A a positive comment, I don't have any objection to a notation that allows >the number of flats or sharps to be explicitly notated without tonic information, Thank you. That's all I've ever asked for. (In this context.) >I just have an objection to the statement or implication that that is somehow >wrong or misleading to the entire abc user community to allow tonic and modes to be >specified as a a first order definition. I wasn't aware that anybody had made such a statement. There are those (fortunately a diminishing number) who do not wish to allow the use of an explicit key signature and feel that the use of the tonic should be "compulsory". I have an objection to that. >Skink allows Dmaj or Dion as synonyms for D, if you like. You are assuming D means D major which in the case of K:D % E dorian it clearly did not. Bryan Creer To subscribe/unsubscribe, point your browser to: http://www.tullochgorm.com/lists.html
Re: [abcusers] RE : tune finder
Yes, it would be 'better and less misleading' for the abc user community that understands: 1. 2 sharps 2. they are in the 'standard' place 3. E Dorian means E is the tonic. Me, personally, just speaking for myself, I can play in (for example) G Dorian without having to remember which flats are there, but I have to puzzle it out if I see a tune written out with one flat and try to figure out which of the possible tonics I should be thinking about. But that's just me, personally, just speaking for myself. So therefore my, personal speaking for myself selfish little opinion clearly shouldn't count. A a positive comment, I don't have any objection to a notation that allows the number of flats or sharps to be explicitly notated without tonic information, I just have an objection to the statement or implication that that is somehow wrong or misleading to the entire abc user community to allow tonic and modes to be specified as a a first order definition. Skink allows Dmaj or Dion as synonyms for D, if you like. wil [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: > Eric Forgeot wrote - > > >I thought it was a good idea to use 2 K: fields to write both the > >mode and the key, but this solution of K:D % EDorian is maybe > >better. Will you forgive me if I use it in the future ? :) > > Wouldn't it be better and less misleading to be able to say K:^f^c % EDorian > or better still have separate actual fields rather than a comment to hold the > tonic and mode? > > Just a thought. > > Bryan Creer > > To subscribe/unsubscribe, point your browser to: >http://www.tullochgorm.com/lists.html To subscribe/unsubscribe, point your browser to: http://www.tullochgorm.com/lists.html
[abcusers] some bugs in abcmus2 beta
In abcmus2 beta 1 In the "change default length" tool, I had a "^f>^g a " (in K:Am), and the tool gave " ^f2>_a2 a2 ". I expected " ^f2>^g2 a2 " instead, without shifting notes... (it occurs when the whole tune is processed) Worse, this same tool doesn't seem to care about the rests when it changes length... The way AbcMus interprets the !trill! command, and lower/upper mordents as well, is amazing ! It sounds really realistic for baroque guitar music for example. I like the way AbcMus can interpret the rhythm field, it gives something to the music, but indeed sometimes when practicing music one may need not to have the predefined rhythm definitions because other musicians may not play like that, so the only way to temporary disable this feature was to make a backup of the abcstyle file and remplace it with an empty file... When I export multipart files to midi, there is sometimes some notes in chord which are skipped. Sometimes AbcMus crashes when performing an undo, but I can't describe it better when it occurs. I had also some sequence notes (with slurs) which make AbcMus to give unexpected results. Ask if you want to have a tune with this sort of error, and a picture displaying the difference if the tune is processed with abc2midi (and gives the right notes) I've downloaded AbcMus2 beta2 but I don't see the difference with AbcMus2 beta1 ___ Do You Yahoo!? -- Une adresse @yahoo.fr gratuite et en français ! Yahoo! Mail : http://fr.mail.yahoo.com To subscribe/unsubscribe, point your browser to: http://www.tullochgorm.com/lists.html
