Re: Accidentals: Unwanted naturals

[David Rogers]

On Fri, Aug 28, 2009 at 08:03, Kieren
MacMillan<address@hidden> wrote:


> I can't remember who in this thread first suggested that when you play an
> instrument you "follow the key signature", but this notion is silly — and
> ultimately harmful (to music education).

That would be me.

> When you play a piano, if you want to hear a d flat, you play a d flat — you
> don't play a d and let the piano change the pitch for you "according to the
> key signature". This is true of every instrument, with the only exceptions
> being technologically-altered performances (e.g., pressing the "transpose"
> button on a keyboard, or scordatura on a string instrument).

This is a complete misunderstanding of what I intended, and after a
little reflection I think I know why:

It's necessary to consider the sound of the music, *and not the
conventional rules of printed scores*, when doing Lilypond pitch
input. Seen from a certain very reasonable point of view, this is
illogical behaviour from Lilypond.

I believe Lilypond's behaviour is correct and should not be changed,
but said behaviour is *not* self-evident, as you seem to think.
Whether we like it or not, there are going to be intelligent people
who misinterpret Lilypond's requirements in this case, and will
perhaps not want to believe that such sophisticated software could be
so naive/stupid/buggy/whatever as to not take into account its own
\key declaration. It might be said that these are people who are
thinking only about marks on paper and not about the sound itself -
but Lilypond's whole purpose is to make marks on paper, so wouldn't it
be expected that at least some people would think that way?

> The state of music education in the world — and especially North America —
> is already dire enough; let's not accelerate the slide by dumbing down
> notation entry under some misplaced desire to make computer engraving
> "easier".
>
>> It would save typing
>
> Yes... that's what we, as musicians, should be worried about...  =\
>
>> it would make the notes blocks easier to read, for /musicians/ that is.
>
> I could not disagree with you more.

(I have to side with Kieren on this little argument about Lilypond
syntax, but I think the documentation would benefit from being
modified so that it also makes sense *from David's point of view* -
this is not some stupid misunderstanding, but a genuinely different
perception of the process.)


-- 
(another David)
David Rogers