Re: absolute mode was Relative mode

[Graham Percival]

On Thu, 23 Oct 2003 09:24:00 +0200
Aaron <address@hidden> wrote:
> I tried the \transpose c c' and feel that I am missing something.
> 
> a c major scale c d e f g a b c should not force any octave jumps if you
> think about it logically. As long as we know it is absolutly within a
> set octave there should be no jumps. Only greater than that octave would
> the notes need a different symbol.

You mean "only greater than a seventh", not "only greater than an octave".
What does your second "c" in the major scale mean?  Is that the low c or
the high c?  A human assumes that the second c is the high c, but a computer
needs some way to be told that.  Relative mode lets you input a scale as
c d e f g a b c
and absolute mode lets you input the same scale as
c d e f g a b c'

> The point for me is that if I know the range of a peice I should be able
> to hard code that into a peice so that I shouldn't need to indicate
> changes unless they exceed that range.

What if a song uses two octaves?  How are you going to indicate which
c you want?

Although the ' and , marks may be confusing at first, there isn't any method
of avoiding them.  The best we can do is to minimize their use, by picking
the appropiate input method (be it absolute, relative, or David's new
method).

Cheers,
- Graham