Re: Concert Pitch (a second try)

[Graham Percival]

On Mon, Apr 06, 2009 at 06:11:32PM -0600, Carl D. Sorensen wrote:
> I'm going to step in here, perhaps where wise men fear to tread.
> 
> The LilyPond  music glossary isn't intended to be a definitive music
> dictionary, is it?

Nope, not at all.

> So do we care what reference concert pitch uses?  Does it matter if it's
> A=440, or A=445, or A=450?

Absolutely not.  Frankly, the MG is aimed at people who wouldn't
recognize the difference between 440 Hz and 450 Hz anyway.

> 1) Concert pitch is established relative to some frequency standard.
> 2) Transposing instruments use notation relative to some other frequency
> standard, such that a C in the transposing instrument notation is the same
> frequency as the transposing instrument's note in concert pitch.

Yikes, that's a confusing way of explaining it.  I'd just say "The
pitch produced by playing a note on a transposing instrument is
not the same the pitch produced by playing that note on a piano.
If the transposing instrument plays a C, then the resulting pitch
is the same as a piano's Bb, Eb, or some other note.  The
resulting note (instrument C = piano NOTE) is called the
``transposing instrument's note''".

Why bring frequencies into it at all?  They'll only confuse
non-technical people -- the very people that the MG is aimed at.


> It seems to me that all the rest of the information is more than is needed
> for the LilyPond glossary; it's available in some other music dictionary.

Anyway, the music glossary is currently the domain of Kurt; let's
see what he has to say about it.

Cheers,
- Graham