Re: [scots-l] Tonic Sol-Fa
Jack Campin wrote: | ... We have problems with inconsistent abc, but abc is a | paragon of standardization in comparison with tonic sol fa. | | That's not true of the notation as used in the UK. It all derives from | one source, Curwen's original texts, and uses it with no variation | whatever that I've noticed. Much more standardized than either ABC or | staff notation. It's still the most commonly used notation for Gaelic | singers. Does anyone have the URL for a spec (or user's guide or whatever)? My search didn't turn up one. Close, in the form of some online teaching docs, but digging the details of the notation out of those would be a lot of work. It looks like a fairly short doc oughta handle most of the notation. | The way I write ABC (with the beats aligned vertically in parallel | phrases or parallel simultaneous voices) is motivated by the same | sort of readability concerns as sol-fa layout; horizontal space | represents elapsed time (mostly). I don't find sol-fa any easier | to read than ABC if both are laid out with equal care. But I don't | expect to persuade the Mod of that. I do a lot of the same sort of aligning. Reading garbage abc that is all scrunched up is really annoying. Of course, a lot of it comes about because people are using GUI tools, and they're not aware of how bad their abc is. Sorta like all the garbage html that you see these days. But then, I'm one of the crowd that reads abc itself, and I like it to be readable. I'd expect most instrumentalists would find abc somewhat more readable, since sol-fa requires the extra step of mapping from scale-relative notes to absolute notes. I've played a chromatic accordion for a couple of decades, so I'm used to doing this translation (though usually in the other direction). I also have a collection of pennywhistles of different sizes, and they encourage you to internalize the same sort of relative-absolute pitch mapping. I wonder how many instrumentalists would find tonic sol-fa easier to read than abc? Assuming well-formatted text in both cases, of course. But this is probably not terribly significant, since TSF is clearly aimed primarily at singers. BTW, in the few TSF songs I found online, I noticed that the use of apostrophes and commas to indicate octave is essentially the same as in ABC. I'd guess that this isn't coincidence, and that Chris Walshaw is familiar with TSF. OTOH, it's a fairly obvious visual metaphor. Posted to Scots-L - The Traditional Scottish Music Culture List - To subscribe/unsubscribe, point your browser to: http://www.tullochgorm.com/lists.html
Re: [scots-l] Jack's ABCs (was: Few Notes)
To my knowledge, my abc tune finder will not return single files from his files that have X:0 for the tunes. I even fixed a bug (which I'd thought a feature ;-) in which the ABC link returned only the tunes and not the surrounding text. For X:0 it now returns the entire file, exactly as the Get link, but with text/vnd.abc as the MIME type. The problem is what zero-numbering everything does to other software. With BarFly, it makes relatively little difference, but it does lose you one way of navigating round the file. Other software I don't know about may have worse problems, which I why I was asking how it handles this. Compatibility with the commonly available ABC players is more important for this specific file than having it indexed anywhere. (The TuneFinder still pulls out individual tunes from the old version, ignoring the explicit request in the text of the file not to do that). The preferable option would be for an X:0 line preceding any tune to prevent downloading of individual tunes at any later point in the same file. Your own dance sets are structured that way, with X:0 attached to a pseudo-tune used as an identifier for the set, and I presume the intention of those sets was that people would get all the tunes for a single dance as a unit. Some other directive at the start of the file would be okay, but not something that has to be attached to each tune - with the tutorial that would add 200 lines of repeated boilerplate, which is acceptable when tunes are to be handled individually but not when the whole file is primarily aimed at human readers who have to scroll through it. === http://www.purr.demon.co.uk/jack/ === Posted to Scots-L - The Traditional Scottish Music Culture List - To subscribe/unsubscribe, point your browser to: http://www.tullochgorm.com/lists.html
[scots-l] Re: Tonic Sol-Fa
John Chambers wrote: ...I'd expect most instrumentalists would find abc somewhat more readable, since sol-fa requires the extra step of mapping from scale-relative notes to absolute notes... There is another system which can use a fixed doh (or is it do? Have I been making a fool of myself all this time calling it doh? Doh!), but then you need to use accidentals (e.g. fa becomes fe, a semitone sharper), and it wouldn't make it any easier. I think you're right that ABC is more friendly to instrumentalists. ...TSF is clearly aimed primarily at singers... That's possibly the key. It's perfect for singers, choirs, etc, because all you need is a starting reference note [1]. You don't need any further knowledge of keys, etc, because you'll song the song in whichever key suits you, or whichever key everyone else is singing in. Another dimension to TSF (as it will now forever be known thanks to John Chambers) is that there are a series of hand signals representing the notes, so it wasn't unusual for choir leaders to conduct using these symbols, and everyone should know which note they're singing. TSF has its merits, but since the vast majority of ABC notation is dance music in particular keys, I don't think there's a need for a wholesale migration. It won't happen. What's ABC like for aligning song lyrics to notes, by the way? [1] At a recent children's music festival end-of-week performance, my group played Skye Boat Song on whistle, then fellow tutor Karine Polwart ran across, borrowed my whistle to give her group of singers a note to start. Simon Thoumire had been running a studio workshop, resulting in the participants recording a track onto CD. When it cam to their performance, they put on the CD and all stood in a line, on one leg and saluting. They stayed like that for the whole track, then limped off to applause. -- Nigel Gatherer, Crieff, Scotland [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://www.argonet.co.uk/users/gatherer/ Posted to Scots-L - The Traditional Scottish Music Culture List - To subscribe/unsubscribe, point your browser to: http://www.tullochgorm.com/lists.html
Re: [scots-l] Unsubscribe
When you use the html form on the website, the request comes to me. I have to approve it. I am a very busy guy. I have all of the computers in the Physics Astronomy department at UCLA that I administrate. Plus trying to play music, plus I am a competitive bicycle racer. So I get to the list requests when I can, usually once a week. If you want to avoid the human connection. You can send your requests directly to Majordomo, I believe I left unsubscribing open on that list. Toby Steve Wyrick wrote: Janice Parton wrote: please unsubscribe me. Tnaks. and Erika wrote: Long time no talk to :-). I have been too ill to read the posts for some time now, and I've had no luck unsubscribing from the Tullochgorum website, so Toby, could you unsubscribe me manually please? Best, Erica Mackenzie P.S. I am posting this to the list at large intentionally, as I don't want to miss an opportunity to be roundly abused in Lallans by Mr Adkins :-). It seems to be easy to get a subscription to this list but almost impossible to get off! What's up with that, Toby? It should be the other way around :-) I also asked to unsubscribe my old Earthlink account a couple weeks ago since I switched ISPs but am still getting double posts of everything! BTW, where IS Colonel Adkins these days? Haven't heard from him in a while! -Steve -- Steve Wyrick [EMAIL PROTECTED] -- Concord, California Posted to Scots-L - The Traditional Scottish Music Culture List - To subscribe/unsubscribe, point your browser to: http://www.tullochgorm.com/lists.html Posted to Scots-L - The Traditional Scottish Music Culture List - To subscribe/unsubscribe, point your browser to: http://www.tullochgorm.com/lists.html
[scots-l] Charles the Twelfth King of Sweden
Ian Brockbank [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: I've just received this. Any ideas? Please reply to [EMAIL PROTECTED] . I have desperately been trying to get a copy of 'Charles the twelfth King of Sweden'. Any Ideas? Is this the dance The King of Sweden? I have it in a pamphlet Four Step Dances collected in Aberdeenshire for the Royal Scottish Country Dance Society, ed. Isobel Cramb, music arr. Nan Main Iain Robertson (Paterson's Publications, 1953). The dance comes from a manuscript of 1841, the tune (Charles the Twelfth King of Sweden's March) from the Gillespie MS of 1768, which I have ABC'ed some tunes from, but not this one. The booklet includes drawings of leg positions, something ABC is not very good at. The introduction says the dances are a sort of fusion of ballet and Highland dance. Apparently they contain something called double trebling which I always thought was part of a West Indian steel band. I would suggest asking the RSCDS if they can do you a copy, it'll be long out of print. The information in this e-mail is confidential and for use by the addressee(s) only. [ 20 lines of legally meaningless disclaimer bullshit deleted ] We don't need that crap. Stop it. Post from somewhere else if that's what it takes. - Jack Campin * 11 Third Street, Newtongrange, Midlothian EH22 4PU, Scotland tel 0131 660 4760 * fax 0870 055 4975 * http://www.purr.demon.co.uk/jack/ food intolerance data recipes, freeware Mac logic fonts, and Scottish music Posted to Scots-L - The Traditional Scottish Music Culture List - To subscribe/unsubscribe, point your browser to: http://www.tullochgorm.com/lists.html
