Re: Help? Asciification of musical language

----- Original Message -----
From: "Rachel Klippenstein" <estel_telcontar@...>
To: <CONLANG@...>
Sent: Thursday, June 10, 2004 4:53 PM
Subject: Help? Asciification of musical language


> Hello everyone
> It's been a while since I've posted, but I haven't been away.
> I was wondering if anyone had any suggestions for how to represent a
> musical language online... I have such a project on a back burner, and
> I think I would have more incentive to work on it if I could post to
> the list.  I've sort of figured out an own writing system for it, but I
> haven't managed to figure out a successful ascii representation for it.
>
> A fairly full description of the phonology I'm trying to represent can
> be found in the archives here:
>
http://listserv.brown.edu/archives/cgi-bin/wa?A2=ind0309C&L=conlang&P=R20245&D=0&H=0&O=T&T=1
>
> Or, here's a briefer description:
> -It's based on relative pitch, not absolute pitch
> -There are 7 different notes (the equivalent of segments)
> -Beats (the equivalent of syllables) contain 1 to 4 notes
> -The relative lengths of the notes within the beat is not phonemic
>
> So the system needs to be able to represent the 7 notes and their
> grouping into beats; I think that's all.
>
> I could just represent the notes with note-names, with |a| (or possibly
> |c|) representing the first note of the scale, and putting a symbol
> like a hyphen between the notes, so that you would end up with
> something like
>
> a adg abde-dg deg-fc a
>
> (Not representing real words, since I don't have any yet; just trying
> to convey a visual impression)  My issue with this is that using
> letters looks like they're intended to be pronounced as consonants and
> vowels; also, it gives the false impression that it represents the
> actual intervals between the notes - that |ac| represents an interval
> of a minor 3rd, like going from A natural to C natural.  This isn't the
> case, since it merely indicates the first and third notes of the scale,
> which could be either a major or minor scale, or neither.
>
> 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.
>
> 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
>
> -Estel
>
>
>
>
>
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