Re: Help? Asciification of musical language

James Worlton ha tera a:
> > Rachel Klippenstein wrote:
[...]

> > Or I could use the numbers to represent the notes,
> > with 1 being the first note of the scale, and 7 being the 7th.
> > Then the above sequence of notes would be written
>
> > 1 147 1245-47 457-63 1
>
> >That looks terribly illegible to me.
> Actually, from my musician viewpoint, this is more
> intelligible than using letters. To me, the letters would
> 'require' a non-relativistic interpretation (some people
> say that I have 'perfect pitch'; I don't think it's 'perfect'
> but rather PDG.) Anyway, the number system lets the scale/pitch
> element reside in the background more easily for me.
Yes, the main advantage of numbers is that they're less closely tied to
specific intervals or pitches.  Do you prefer starting at 1 and going
to 7, or starting at 0 and going to 6?

> > What do youguys think?  Letters, numbers or something else?
> > I guess you could write it in solfege...  That might be better.
> > Hmm, that would give something like
>
> > do dofati dorefaso-fati fasoti-lami do
> Again, this is too precisely related to actual pitch/intervals for
me.

Yes, that's what I feared.

> Then again, I imagine that non-musicians would probably find either
> the letters or solfege easier than numbers.
Perhaps I could invent a separate system of syllables to represent the
7 notes, to avoid the particular interval issues with solfege, but to
have a more legible system with numbers.  I could even double the
representations, and use both numbers and my own solfege substitute.

> On a topic related to your earlier post:
> you said:
> > beat: a beat is the equivalent of a syllable.
> > A beat can have anywhere from 1 to 4 notes in it.
> > The number of notes per beat is highly relevant,
> > the length of the individual notes is not so important.
> I think you could get a lot of syntactic mileage out of
> specifying the actual durations of each of the notes within
> a beat. Musically, 3 notes of equal duration in a beat
> ('triplets') sounds distinctly different from
> 'long-short-short', 'short-long-short', and 'short-short-long'.
> It appears that you are already planning this rhythmic distinction,
> as stated in the following:
> > Rhythm (within the beat): Rhythm within the beat is
> > somewhat variable.  As long as each beat contains the
> > correct number of notes, the relative lengths of the notes
> > can vary, and this variation can also be used to express
> > non-lexical information. So a three-note beat could
> > have 3 notes of even length, two short notes then a long note,
> > or a long note then two short notes.
I'm not quite sure what you mean here.  I know that by specifying the
relative durations of the notes within a beat, you could increase the
number of possible beats and thus the amount that could be expressed
with a single beat.  I also know, of course, that the different rhythms
sound quite different.  I prefer to leave the exact divisions
unspecified so people could, for instance, switch between 2/4 and 6/8
time.  I figure I can get quite plenty enough different beats without
specifying durations, and this way it's left open for speakers to use
it for more expressive purposes, rather than carrying lexical and
grammatical information.

> With 4 notes per beat, unless they are all the same length
> (16th notes), you will end up effectively creating a lot of
> 'odd' subdivisions. While that is not a problem, it could make
> the time length of your beats get a bit large for efficient
> communication. Is this language meant to be sung, played on
> an instrument, programmed into greeting cards? ;) If played on
> an instrument, then the time issue probably won't be such a
> big deal, but if it is vocal then it seems to me (as one who
> likes to sing but is not trained as a singer) that slowing down
> a bit would be required for accuracy.
It's meant to be sung or played.  I think that if a speaker were using
a time signature such as 2/4, where the beats are naturally divided
into 2 or 4 notes, speakers would almost always use 4 16th notes in a
4-note beat, but if a speaker were using a time signature such as 6/8
where a beat (a dotted quarter) is naturally subdivided into 3,
speakers would use a combination with 2 eighth notes and 2 16th notes
(not necessarily in that order), since that would be a more natural way
to subdivide such a beat into 4 notes.  I'm also thinking that 4-note
beats, as the most phonologically complex kind of beats, may not be
that common, and may tend to appear only in less commonly used words.

> Anyway, my 2 cents.
Very much appreciated, thanks.

Sally Caves ha tera a
[in response to James Worlton argument for the number transcription
system]
> Okay, I'm convinced.  In order to express all twelve tones
> of the octave, though, what about 1, 1+, 2, 2+, etc.
> Let us know, Rachel, what you've decided on, and whether
> scale or modality will be a defining feature of your
> semantics.  I'm really very curious.
Okay, when I decide on a transcription, I'll inform the list.  For now,
I don't need to express all 12 tones, since accidentals don't
contribute to lexical and morphological information, and that's all I'm
worrying about right now.




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