Re: Help? Asciification of musical language

----- Original Message -----
From: "James Worlton" <jworlton@...>

> 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.
James:
> 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.
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.

As for John,  uarlo krespr:
>>
There actually is a historic standard for this, and it's just the reverse:
capitals for the lower octave, small letters for the higher one.  To
add more octaves, add apostrophes (really "prime" marks), so A'' is below
A' is below A is below a is below a' is below a''.
<<

I'll reverse my system, then.  Weirdly, I also used accents to indicate the
upper or lowermost registers.  I've never heard of this system.  Is it that
it's just so obvious?  I always started with middle C, though.  Hold over
from my piano lessons of yesteryear, but also because key was important to
me as a singer:  I needed to pitch the song in a key that I could best
manage.

Rachel ely krespr:
> > 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
>
James elo krespr:
> Again, this is too precisely related to actual pitch/intervals for me.
> Then again, I imagine that non-musicians would probably find either the
> letters or solfege easier than numbers.
Is "do" related to a specific pitch?  I thought it was relativistic.  My
objection is that there can be no accidentals, but then again, Rachel may
not need them.

Sally Caves
scaves@frontiernet.net
http://www.frontiernet.net/~scaves/teoreal.html

Replies