Re: why Kieren is a \relative evangelist [was “Re: Nested transposition"]

[David Kastrup]

Kieren MacMillan <kieren_macmillan@sympatico.ca> writes:

> Hi all,
>
>>> imho the near universality of keyboard competence defines Western
>>> Music as "can be played on a piano" and has severely damaged our
>>> understanding of what music actually is. Musicians like me who
>>> can't play piano are very rare ...
>
> As a musical theatre director, college music faculty instructor,
> composer, and performer (on multiple instruments), I can say with high
> confidence that you are mistaken: musicians who can’t play piano
> include at least 50% of the players in my pit bands, 80% of the music
> theatre students I teach, most of my young (pre-college) composition
> students, and a good 1/3 of the singers I accompany. If we qualify
> further with “can plunk out a linear melody on the piano reasonably in
> time, but nothing more than that”, the percentage is even higher.
>
>>> And why would a copyist be able to play keyboard?
>> Or not.  There's no reason for them to be mutually exclusive.
>
> Agreed. That being said, of all the (multiple dozens of) professional
> copyists I know, I know of only one who doesn’t play keyboard at least
> “reasonably well” (perhaps coincidentally, he’s a fabulous guitarist).
>
>> \fixed should make extremely high or low parts much easier.
>
> It does… but it also suffers from the same cut-and-paste problem (that
> word “IMO”) as \relative.

Maybe we should offer an input alternative (or something one depends on
the editor/MIDI converter to supply) to make the equivalences

c¹ c'
c² c''
c³ c'''
c⁴ c''''
c⁵ c'''''
c⁶ c''''''
c₁ c,
c₂ c,,
c₃ c,,,

That would be sorta Helmholtz-ish and would make the octave markers less
disruptive for reading and manipulating the source.  Could be done just
as "syntax highlighting" or as actual entry option.

Of course as actual entry option it would cause some interference with
the "identifiers can contain any non-ASCII unicode characters anywhere"
mantra.  Up to now, only ASCII letters are syntactically special.

-- 
David Kastrup