Re: (attn doc team) Re: Diatonic notation system

[Hans Aberg]

On 11 Dec 2008, at 04:47, Graham Breed wrote:

> > Now, everyone agrees that in Arab music, the intermediate pitch  
> > isn't that -
> > in fact the guy who write it said he was taught to lower it, which  
> > agree
> > with the values Farhat uses in Persian music (using koron and  
> > sori; see
> > below).
>
> Yes, but nobody agrees on what that intermediate pitch *is* do they?

Right. That is also true about Persian music. Farhat just gave some  
approximate values; E53 and Pythagorean interpretations are just that.

> And Arab pop music really does use equally tempered synthesizers
> however much the purists may object.

Yes, and at Maqamworld, they seem wholly unaware of that it may be  
played in Pythagorean tuning, only comparing against E12 (0r so was  
my impression). I measured some of their sound files: the maqam Ajam  
(major scale) buzuq by Tareq Abboushi, F down is close to E12, and Bb  
close to E53.

> > There are two problems: does the E24 setting in transposing (or  
> > choosing a
> > key) risk say E- (half-flat) be confused with D#+ (sharp and half- 
> > flat). -
> > This I do not know, because it depends on how LilyPond computes it.
>
> Let's assume it works fine because otherwise standard notation would
> break as well.
>
> Now, my question is, why is that clever workaround for the Arabic
> half-flat symbol in there when it could be replaced globally?  The
> documentation doesn't give any case where you'd want to use the
> Tartini half-flat.  In my impetuosity I've created a new init file
> with code modeled on makam.ly, and attached it to this message.

I am not sure what you mean here - is this a question of symbols? -  
Then I have a vague memory that in LilyPond some symbols are (or  
were) hard-wired to the transposable key signatures.

  Hans