On Tue, Jan 23, 2001 at 07:05:07PM +0000, Beatrice Bray wrote:

I couldn't help but gawp at the clumsiness of the ABC music file. It tries to invent a whole new system of music text notation when really there is no need. There is a perfectly good text-based system of music notation. That system is sol-fa. Maybe someone already has used sol-fa in a music application and I've missed it but the application ABC does not appear to do so.

There is an application called solfege (IIRC) which uses it for ear training.

For those of you who didn't do sol-fa training as a kid let me explain. A sol-fa name just refers to the notes position in the scale. It doesn't indicate the absolute value in terms of pitch (eg A= 440 Mhz). Neither does a sol-fa name give any indication of the length of the note. These limitations were designed for a purpose. They were designed to attune the student's ear to relative pitch values.

Perhaps that's why it is little used as a language to write music down in - to someone who doesn't alraedy know the tune, some representation of the rythm required if the piece is to be played or sung. Even so I guess it could be extended to include rythm and the piece could be preceded by an indication of the preferred key where this was appropriate. There are apparently names for the intervening semi-tones too so even chromatic pieces can use it.

doh re me fah so lah te doh

or for short

d r m f s l t d

Work out what nursery rhyme this is (answer at bottom of email):

d d s s l l s f f m m r r d s s f f m m r s s f f m m r d d s s l l s f f m m r r d

Twinkle Twinkle Little Star!

Its a great system for kids (and grown up beginners) who have yet to master music notation. Doh (or d for short) is always the first note in a major scale. However in a text-based notation system which uses the absolute names of notes the letter d might be the first note of the scale - or the second or the third or the fourth or the fifth or so on. Eventually a music student will have to come to grips with this, just as they'll have to come to terms with the complexities of rhythmic notation but sol-fa training will focus training on pitch and pitch sequences alone.

Aparrently there are two systems of ear training based around this, one called fixed doh, and the other one movable do. In one doh is absolute and represents the same pitch whatever the key, in the other doh is always the tonic as you describe. For someone without perfect pitch the movable doh system would seem to be easier.

By the by does this should make it easier for the application developer. I'm no programmer but I would have thought that musical notation is bound to entail complexity. However in this system all you need is text. Sometimes limitations are a plus. Forget graphics. Embrace text. Tiny little kids learn this system with ease. They learn sol-fa names to the songs they can already sing. Highly accomplished students in music conservatoires also use sol-fa to practice their sight-reading. Maybe I'm alone but I hope that one day I'll find a music application that mixes today's wizardry with yesterday's tried and tested teaching methods.

I guess you have to look at why you might want to put music into a computer, and compare computer capabilities with those of humans. The first reason to put music into a computer is as an aid to producing a printed copy of the music, in the same way as one might use a word processor to produce letters and reports. There, unfortunately, the accepted system is of absolute note pitches and all the complexities of key signatures etc. to adapt to different keys. There is also rythm to take into account as well as dynamics and a host of other various marks. The other reason is to have the computer play the music, either on it's own sound card or by driving another (electronic) instrument. Unlike humans the computer has no sense of keys, melody or rythm - it can sythesise various pitches on command and can do so for a specified period of time. What we end up is MIDI which assigns each (absolute) note a number and then by a series or specified time delays and note on/note off events which quote the note number and the volume it is to be played at, we can represent music in a computerised form. Human and computers are really very different and people will find sol-fa an easy system, just as people remember things easily if they can associate a picture with it, but find remembering numbers a problem. Computer on the other hand work easily with numbers and turn a picture into numbers to store it - so it is with music.

By the way the nursery rhyme is Ba Ba Black Sheep.

No, Ba Ba Blacks Sheep should be: d d s s l t d l s f f m m r r d etc. Steve