Re: Fwd: Re: Parallel Square Premusic

[David Wright]

On Wed 22 Mar 2017 at 10:57:27 (-0700), address@hidden wrote:
> What's hard to follow? Please, critique my format verbosely. When you see 
>  
> []rh  --dadada||daaaaaaa||--dadada||daaaaaaa
>  
> Are you unable to discern from the 'rh' or my instructions that this is the 
> rhythm line,

No, I think I can handle that.

> or do you not know how to read aloud "dadada daaaaaaa"? 

I can handle that too, but first I have to calculate how long da
should sound as it depends on what else is inside the measure.
So the same utterance is sometimes written da and sometimes daaaaaaaaaaaaaaa.

> Or, having read it aloud,

simultaneously while singing the lyrics? No, can't do that.

> are you not able to understand the inherent correlation between the length of 
> a printed word and the time delegated to its pronunciation? Having understood 
> it, are you not able to see the usefulness of a formalization of the length 
> of a "daaa" as corresponding to the length of its note?

Yes, in a piece where every other measure has a part subdivided into
semiquavers, then minims, then quavers, and so on, the correlation
coefficient will be very low.

Once the number of "a"s reaches about five, subitizing no longer
works, and it's necessary to count them up.

> When you see
>  
> []pi  E5E5F5G5||G5F5E5D5||C5C5D5E5||E5D5D5--
>  
> Are you unable to discern from the 'pi' that this is a pitch line, or are you 
> unable to recognize the use of scientific pitch notation, or do you refuse to 
> acknowledge its existence, or refuse to understand it?

I can read a line of text as quickly as the next person. I can read
upsidedown text with a facility that detracts from solving puzzles
with the answer printer upsidedown at the bottom of the page.

However, I cannot read three lines of alphabetic script at the
same time, when two of them are essentially random. (Only the
lyrics are going to be recognisable words.)

In scientific notation, each note has to be read and decoded
separately. There's no indication of any underlying pattern,
like scales, arpeggios etc, in a string of letters and digits.

> Are you not able to understand that a G5 and a da on top of each other 
> correspond to the same point of music?

Oh, yes, that's easy. But to perform anything, I have to decode the
rhythm of each measure (hoping that it isn't wider than my screen),
then I have to decode the pitches and apply them to the (memorised)
rhythm, now read the segment lyrics, sing them with the (memorised)
melodic fragment, then move onto the next measure.

While doing this, I'm meant to keep an eye on other parts (which
means decoding them at the same time) so that I can when we're
duetting, or leaning together on a suspension, etc.
BTW that answers your "Why don't I ask you to name a notation that
does something that Parallel Squares could NOT do?"

Contrast this with conventional notation, where the pitch and duration
of a note are encoded in one notehead, the patterns of pitches are
pictorial, the rhythms likewise, and only one line of text has to
be read at a time. Similarities in and differences between parts
can be instantly appreciated. Why? Because our visual system is built
around pattern recognition. It is even true that much of our ability
to read quickly is based on the recognition of the outlines of words,
not on reading the individual letters (US TV companies take note).

>  
> I thought this was funny, a while ago somebody said that my
>  
> []ly  
> ________Hap___birth___________Hap___birth___________Hap___birth___..._____Hap___birth_________
> []ly  
> _________-py___-day____________-py___-day____________-py___-day_______...__-py___-day_________
> []ly  
> __________________to__you!______________to__you!______________dear_________________to__you!___
>  
> wasn't readable. I'm curious as to whether they didn't know the lyrics of 
> this classic song, the name of which is in the lyrics themselves, or if they 
> simply failed to recognize them here, somehow?

I didn't understand this at all. If you can stretch measures according
to their note subdivisions, why don't you just stretch them to
accomodate the lengths of the lyrics, instead of slicing and dicing
the words into unreadable (see above) fragments?

> Has anyone given me any sheet music to rescore that I haven't been able to 
> score yet? Has anyone given me any part of music that cannot be accounted for 
> by parallel squares with little imagination?

Has anyone ever performed anything from this alphabet soup? Let's set
the bar very low. Peer into the soup, find the melody, then whistle it
under your breath; no more than that. Now be a bit more ambitious and
look for the countersubject of that melody. Can you spot it?

> Has any of you taken a simple piece of sheet music and a GUI text editor, and 
> TRIED to compose Premusic for it, to demonstrate to themselves and everyone 
> else how EASY it is?

I haven't. I think it's a sterile notation for any purpose I've come
across in music. Even if I could manage to transcribe (not compose)
into it, I think it would be an entirely write-only experience.
Reviewing it would involve this hypothetical program that renders it
in conventional notation. (Has anyone checked that 
http://pastebin.com/raw/APgfGgQz
correctly represents the piece it purports to?)

> If not, I'll continue to hold my throne as the creator of the perfect 
> plaintext premusic until a worthy challenger approaches. Sorry if I gave you 
> the impression I was leaving.

This is amusing for a while. I thought I was going to have to
resurrect my kill-file for mclaren but he fizzled out first.
I wonder how long this firework will burn.

> Also, I'm flattered Malta was so intimidated by my format and bold clams that 
> he felt the need to censor the name of my format in his subject line.

Censor? I missed that.

> As I've said before, I do not claim to have the most quickly readable format 
> for music - that would be sheet music - but I have invented a smarter way 
> than all that exists to encode into a computer the information that sheet 
> music contains. I look forward to the existence of programs to render 
> Parallel Square Premusic in real-time into sheet music. Truly, that will be 
> the pinnacle of scoring software.

It's remarkable that you think those lyrics above encode anything,
or that your score is at all readable by any human.

Cheers,
David.