Re: Notational conventions

[Thomas Morley]

2016-11-09 0:07 GMT+01:00 Hans Åberg <address@hidden>:
>
>> On 8 Nov 2016, at 23:41, Thomas Morley <address@hidden> wrote:
>>
>> 2016-11-08 22:20 GMT+01:00 Hans Åberg <address@hidden>:
>>
>>> And a reason of writing a complex time signature might be to make it 
>>> impossible for the performer to follow it: In Balkan music, one plays by 
>>> ear, and the variation is greater than the irrational time signature 
>>> examples I gave. A Western musician when seeing 12/8, 12 = 3+2+2+3+2 with 
>>> quadruplets on them, might try to play it as exactly as possible, but that 
>>> is not how it should be performed.
>>
>> Let me step in here.
>>
>> This sounds (partly) like obfuscating the music to force the reader of
>> the score to do some thorough studies before trying to perform.
>
> Western composers have done it for a long time. Somebody wrote time 
> signatures with e and pi decades ago, and modern complexity takes it to an 
> another level. Cf.
>   https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=46w99bZ3W_M
>
> As for myself, I just happened to discover a way to typeset it.
>
>> Isn't it a good idea to do _always_ such studies?
>> You can't even perform baroque-music adequat without them.
>> Another example, I recall several printed editions of
>> Flamenco-Alegrias in 3/4, but following exactly the 3/4 would come out
>> completely wrong. It's often easier to get an raw glance, though.
>>
>> Reading a score is not (and never was) enough to get an impression how
>> the music _should_ sound or to perform it.
>>
>> So I ask myself, why make it even more difficult for the reader with
>> impossible things?
>
> But for whom do you notate? Flamenco music does not notate the correct time 
> signature. If you would toss skilled Western musicians a score, how would you 
> notate it? Getting them to study Flamenco music and its notational traditions 
> would be very costly.
>

Isn't _every_ written notation an approximation? Baroque often notates
only a skeleton and the musician performing it has to fill in,
ofcourse needing the knowledge howto. (Only one example, a plethora of
others existing....)

And I _am_ a western musician, who learned Flamenco.
I looked for and found a good teacher and yes, this costs money.

Cheers,
  Harm