Re: Pitch notation

[Hans Aberg]

On 24 Feb 2007, at 17:30, Carrick Patterson wrote:

> Can't you just turn "relative" off and notate with apostrophes and  
> commas to
> accomplish exactly what you want?

No (or I don't think so).

There is really a mixture of ideas. The relative notation should be  
there in order to simplify input. There, I tend to think about the  
melody line in a local region, rather than just related to the note  
before. In tonal music, this note may often be the tonic then, but if  
the melody crosses below it, one may need to shift region without  
indices, simply because it is tiresome to writ them. So that is the  
thinking about relative pitches.

The other is just to use a numbering 0-9 to label the octaves (with 4  
being the middle one), used for indicating absolute pitches. This is  
just a more modern system of the older that LilyPond. It is not new,  
though: I have a book from 1975 using it, Robert Dick, "The other  
flute". But thinking on it over some time, I start to think it is  
quite convenient: just one symbol to indicate the octave. Then, if  
such numbering should be used, it should not conflict with writing  
chords and the like, therefore the prefix notation. I have extracted  
this latter idea from some ideas I have on notating more general  
scales and chords, where such notational conflicts also must be avoided.

  Hans Aberg