Re: Microtonal accidentals

[Hans Aberg]

On 8 Nov 2013, at 19:10, Keith OHara <address@hidden> wrote:

> On Fri, 08 Nov 2013 01:30:02 -0800, Hans Aberg <address@hidden> wrote:
> 
>> On 8 Nov 2013, at 01:47, Keith OHara <address@hidden> wrote:
>> 
>>> On Thu, 07 Nov 2013 13:26:04 -0800, Hans Aberg <address@hidden> wrote:
>>>> 
>>>> On 7 Nov 2013, at 21:47, Keith OHara <address@hidden> wrote:
>>>>> 
>>>>> Hans, I am late, but can I persuade you to try this with sharp and flat
>>>>> representing 4 tone-steps rather than 5 ?
>>>> 
>> It is not possible to do that with current LilyPond;
>> Graham Breed retuned the fifth in his regular.ly, so ....
> 
> Well, neither LilyPond nor Graham will object if we adjust the naming 
> convention
> (as attached and at http://k-ohara.oco.net/Lilypond/).
> 
> With 53 steps, there is an interval very close to how a violinist would play 
> D F# in traditional notation.  If you choose the sharp to represent 4/53 of 
> an octave, then 53-step notation also shows this interval as D F#.
> 
> Then the glyph to show the fifth B F#' would get an arrow indicating that it 
> is larger by a comma; the M-m=5 alteration would use the symbol 
> sharp.uparrow.  I find this convention uses fewer arrows to represent real 
> music.

Graham retunes the LilyPond scale degrees 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 so that they now refer 
to E53. Then all values refer to these, also when you transpose. So you can 
choose a different naming if you so like, and then check what happens.

Indeed, this is the case with the Turkish Arel-Ezgi-Uzdilek makam notation 
system, which sets a sharp to 4 E53 commas. When you write the other key 
signatures, then instead of a sharp, you get a microtonal sharps. It does not 
matter if you do not transpose.