Re: Pitch notation

[David Raleigh Arnold]

Carl Sorensen wrote:

> Hans Aberg wrote:
>> 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.
> 
> It would be a very simple task for a programmer to write a preprocessor
> that would take notation in the syntax you describe and convert it to
> Lilypond in absolute notation.

I am no programmer, but I wrote a short script to convert lilypond to midge,
only for the entering note stage, which is when you want to hear it in a
real hurry.  Midge uses /4 for octaves, but no matter how you do it, c' c
c, spans three octaves.  You have to have a lot of octaves to justify
having to add all those numbers, and you can transpose if the clef doesn't
suit.

Here are the sed commands:

address@hidden Feb 26](20:41:20)~/data/wb/seddev/midge$ cat lymid.sed
# a non-executable sed command script
# to convert simple lilypond notes to
# midge notes, for super quick hearing.

# notes are assumed to be the only things in
# the file.
# chords are (midge).  Length is 1st note in it.

# put spaces at begin and end of lines

s/^ */ /g
s/ *$/ /g

# convert chords
# do not allow space before 1st note or after last in chord.
s/< */</g
s/ *>/>/g
   #wd1      spc #wds2             ##
s/<\([^ ]\+\) \+\([^>]\+\)>\([^ ]\+\)/< \1\3 \2 >/g
s/</(/g
s/>/)/g

# flat or sharp

s:\([a-g]\)s:\1+:g
s:\([a-g]\)[fb]:\1-:g

# l length = time value eg: /l4/

s:\([^0-9 ]\+\)\([0-9]\+\):/l\2/\1:g

# octave is already at end of word

s:':/5:g
s:,:/3:g
s/\([^35)(]\) /\1\/4 /g

------------
You can see it's pretty trivial  ;-)  daveA

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