Yahoo Tuning Groups Ultimate Backup tuning My Mixed-Sagittal Score

Andrew, I liked the experience of listening while I followed everything on the score. Very nice work!

I also saw your comments here a while ago:
http://andrewmeronek.com/2012/09/07/microtonal-music-notation-advantages-and-difficulties/
Thanks for the nice writeup!

As you observed, Dave Keenan & I put a tremendous amount of effort into Sagittal, and we're happy to see that it's slowly catching on.

Thanks for sharing your music with us.

--George

--- In tuning@yahoogroups.com, "bigAndrewM" <bigandrewm@...> wrote:
>
> Seeing as how the brains behind Sagittal notation comes from this board, I figure it would be nice to show you a result.
>
> http://andrewmeronek.com/2013/03/19/sagittal-notation-score-and-computer-playback/
>
> I uploaded the score and a Sibelius-realized string quartet playback so you can see what it might sound kinda like in a live performance.
>

🔗bigAndrewM <bigandrewm@...>

George, you're welcome! I'd be an idiot not to use whatever excellent tools I find, and Sagittal ended up solving (among other things) some problems I had noticed with other notation systems, saving me from having to solve them on my own, which I had no chance to do as well as you guys did.

Andrew

--- In tuning@yahoogroups.com, "gdsecor" <gdsecor@...> wrote:
>
>
> Andrew, I liked the experience of listening while I followed everything on the score. Very nice work!
>
> I also saw your comments here a while ago:
> http://andrewmeronek.com/2012/09/07/microtonal-music-notation-advantages-and-difficulties/
> Thanks for the nice writeup!
>
> As you observed, Dave Keenan & I put a tremendous amount of effort into Sagittal, and we're happy to see that it's slowly catching on.
>
> Thanks for sharing your music with us.
>
> --George
>
> --- In tuning@yahoogroups.com, "bigAndrewM" <bigandrewm@> wrote:
> >
> > Seeing as how the brains behind Sagittal notation comes from this board, I figure it would be nice to show you a result.
> >
> > http://andrewmeronek.com/2013/03/19/sagittal-notation-score-and-computer-playback/
> >
> > I uploaded the score and a Sibelius-realized string quartet playback so you can see what it might sound kinda like in a live performance.
> >
>

🔗dkeenanuqnetau <d.keenan@...>

Wow! Thanks Andrew. Beautiful.

I know a lot of people get freaked out when they read the Sagittal paper because we had to put EVERY symbol in there, and they understandably think, "That's too many to learn". So it's great for people to see typical real-life uses of the notation, like this one, using only 3 simple and distinct symbols. A straight barb for the 5-comma /|, a convex arc for the 7-comma |), and a concave scroll for the difference between them, the 5:7-kleisma |(.

The thing is, we had to design the full set of 31 symbols and 2 accents, capable of notating a ridiculous 2460-EDO and "Olympian" JI (half cent resolution) before we could be sure we had the RIGHT 3 simple symbols for those common 7-limit commas.

Actually, we even pushed the notation out to 17078-EDO (2 x 8539-EDO) in collaboration with Tony Salinas, for use in his PhD thesis, adding another 3 accent types. These accent marks recapitulated the straight/convex/concave motif of the symbols in a very simple manner on a smaller scale. This has a resolution of 0.07c and since it was "beyond Olympian", and completely insane, we called it "Magrathean". :-)

BTW, one of the methods we used to ensure the symbols were as distinct from each other as possible, was to design them first as tiny black-and-white bitmapped versions shown on both line and space of a 6-pixel staff (3 pixels between positions). Ah, the number of times those bitmaps went back and forth between George and myself, tweaking a pixel here and a pixel there ... And the joy when we finally agreed we'd got it. Then the smooth arcs and lines of the scalable TrueType font outlines were drawn over the top of those bitmaps, blown up 64 times, while being faithful to the style and stroke-weights of the standard flat, sharp and natural symbols.

Regards,
-- Dave Keenan

🔗bigAndrewM <bigandrewm@...>

I'm not sure if I even want to know all the work that went into the font design. People get paid a lot of money to do that stuff well; I know it's a lot of work and to create a clear, pleasant, consistent-looking font set is a fine art.

I've considered moving the 3 primary syntonic comma accidentals to the key signature, but given Sibelius's static layout at the left side of the staves, I haven't really dug into that much yet. I suspect that would be easier to do in Finale, but I'm not a Finale user and can't say for sure. Like the original reason for moving sharps and flats to the left side of the stave, moving \| and /| to the left side will further clean up the page.

Oh, and I used 4 accidentals. You missed the couple of /|\ during the dramatic climax of the piece. I saved the most 'interesting' harmony for the most dramatic part of the piece. At least, I hope it turned out that way. The resonance of that 11th overtone really gets lost in the excessive synth-vibrato.

Andrew

--- In tuning@yahoogroups.com, "dkeenanuqnetau" <d.keenan@...> wrote:
>
> Wow! Thanks Andrew. Beautiful.
>
> I know a lot of people get freaked out when they read the Sagittal paper because we had to put EVERY symbol in there, and they understandably think, "That's too many to learn". So it's great for people to see typical real-life uses of the notation, like this one, using only 3 simple and distinct symbols. A straight barb for the 5-comma /|, a convex arc for the 7-comma |), and a concave scroll for the difference between them, the 5:7-kleisma |(.
>
> The thing is, we had to design the full set of 31 symbols and 2 accents, capable of notating a ridiculous 2460-EDO and "Olympian" JI (half cent resolution) before we could be sure we had the RIGHT 3 simple symbols for those common 7-limit commas.
>
> Actually, we even pushed the notation out to 17078-EDO (2 x 8539-EDO) in collaboration with Tony Salinas, for use in his PhD thesis, adding another 3 accent types. These accent marks recapitulated the straight/convex/concave motif of the symbols in a very simple manner on a smaller scale. This has a resolution of 0.07c and since it was "beyond Olympian", and completely insane, we called it "Magrathean". :-)
>
> BTW, one of the methods we used to ensure the symbols were as distinct from each other as possible, was to design them first as tiny black-and-white bitmapped versions shown on both line and space of a 6-pixel staff (3 pixels between positions). Ah, the number of times those bitmaps went back and forth between George and myself, tweaking a pixel here and a pixel there ... And the joy when we finally agreed we'd got it. Then the smooth arcs and lines of the scalable TrueType font outlines were drawn over the top of those bitmaps, blown up 64 times, while being faithful to the style and stroke-weights of the standard flat, sharp and natural symbols.
>
> Regards,
> -- Dave Keenan
>
>
> --- In tuning@yahoogroups.com, "bigAndrewM" <bigandrewm@> wrote:
> >
> > Seeing as how the brains behind Sagittal notation comes from this board, I figure it would be nice to show you a result.
> >
> > http://andrewmeronek.com/2013/03/19/sagittal-notation-score-and-computer-playback/
> >
> > I uploaded the score and a Sibelius-realized string quartet playback so you can see what it might sound kinda like in a live performance.
> >
>

🔗bigAndrewM <bigandrewm@...>

Dammit, I lied, and it's my own piece.

I also used one \\| accidental.

Andrew

--- In tuning@yahoogroups.com, "bigAndrewM" <bigandrewm@...> wrote:
>
> I'm not sure if I even want to know all the work that went into the font design. People get paid a lot of money to do that stuff well; I know it's a lot of work and to create a clear, pleasant, consistent-looking font set is a fine art.
>
> I've considered moving the 3 primary syntonic comma accidentals to the key signature, but given Sibelius's static layout at the left side of the staves, I haven't really dug into that much yet. I suspect that would be easier to do in Finale, but I'm not a Finale user and can't say for sure. Like the original reason for moving sharps and flats to the left side of the stave, moving \| and /| to the left side will further clean up the page.
>
> Oh, and I used 4 accidentals. You missed the couple of /|\ during the dramatic climax of the piece. I saved the most 'interesting' harmony for the most dramatic part of the piece. At least, I hope it turned out that way. The resonance of that 11th overtone really gets lost in the excessive synth-vibrato.
>
> Andrew
>

🔗Carl Lumma <carl@...>

🔗dkeenanuqnetau <d.keenan@...>

🔗bigAndrewM <bigandrewm@...>

Yes, I did figure out that \\! is 2 of \! eventually.

:-)

It's a very elegant system.

My approach is to focus on my musical concepts first, get those worked out at least to a reasonable enough degree that I'm happy with the dramatic presentation of the piece, then go back and research the Sagittal symbols I hadn't worked out yet. That //| was the last one I did the math on to be sure I had got it right, after I had written everything else. (Sorry if I get the ASCII representations wrong; I've been more focused on just using the font correctly.)

You guys did enough work on refining the system that I can trust that this after-the-writing approach will work.

Andrew

--- In tuning@yahoogroups.com, "dkeenanuqnetau" <d.keenan@...> wrote:
>
> Woops! Not very observant was I? But then the meaning of \\! is pretty obvious as two of \! . They are just Bosanquet's 5-comma slashes with an arrow shaft to make the direction clear. And the full arrow /|\ has been around as a quartertone symbol since long before Sagittal. There are a few mnemonics for that, as the 11-medium-diesis symbol. There's the combination of two icons from popular culture: Apollo's arrow and Apollo 11. And there's the fact that the two barbs are straight like the two numerals "1" in "11" while the 13-M-diesis symbol is /|) like the straight and curved numerals "1" and "3".
>

🔗bigAndrewM <bigandrewm@...>

Thanks! I hope to someday hear it performed by an actual string quartet.

Andrew

--- In tuning@yahoogroups.com, "Carl Lumma" <carl@...> wrote:
>
> Finally got a chance to listen. Very nice piece! -Carl
>
> --- In tuning@yahoogroups.com, "bigAndrewM" <bigandrewm@> wrote:
> >
> > Seeing as how the brains behind Sagittal notation comes from this
> > board, I figure it would be nice to show you a result.
> >
> > http://andrewmeronek.com/2013/03/19/sagittal-notation-score-
> > and-computer-playback/
> >
> > I uploaded the score and a Sibelius-realized string quartet playback
> > so you can see what it might sound kinda like in a live performance.
>

🔗bigAndrewM <bigandrewm@...>

Well, meaning that I knew what the pitches I wanted were, but not always how to write it at first. So, I made other notes in the music and then went back after finishing up the music to work out the correct notations. It really wasn't that much work, and now that my vocabulary of symbol usage is larger, I won't do that as much on the next one, at least until I throw in other kinds of harmonies.

Andrew

--- In tuning@yahoogroups.com, "bigAndrewM" <bigandrewm@...> wrote:
>
> Yes, I did figure out that \\! is 2 of \! eventually.
>
> :-)
>
> It's a very elegant system.
>
> My approach is to focus on my musical concepts first, get those worked out at least to a reasonable enough degree that I'm happy with the dramatic presentation of the piece, then go back and research the Sagittal symbols I hadn't worked out yet. That //| was the last one I did the math on to be sure I had got it right, after I had written everything else. (Sorry if I get the ASCII representations wrong; I've been more focused on just using the font correctly.)
>
> You guys did enough work on refining the system that I can trust that this after-the-writing approach will work.
>
> Andrew
>
>

🔗dkeenanuqnetau <d.keenan@...>

🔗bigAndrewM <bigandrewm@...>

Yes, I looked at it.

At the time, I wasn't satisfied with the way the notation looked - I thought that the numbers and the stacked accidentals make things too cluttered, the same criticism I had of the Johnston notation upon which they were based. I also did not have as much of an incentive to use a base Pythagorean major scale rather than the Ptolemaic 5-limit scale; in fact, I had concluded that the music would be easier to read in Johnston notation, because it was a bit less cluttered with accidentals, particularly with 'basic' harmony. And I always thought of the music using the 5-limit scale, not the Pythagorean scale, so it seemed like an extra step in the writing process to use it.

Andrew

--- In tuning@yahoogroups.com, "dkeenanuqnetau" <d.keenan@...> wrote:
>
> Hi Andrew,
>
> Did you by any chance compare Sagittal with the "Extended Helmholtz-Ellis JI Pitch Notation" before settling on Sagittal?
> See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Just_intonation#Staff_notation
>
> -- Dave Keenan
>

My Mixed-Sagittal Score

🔗bigAndrewM <bigandrewm@...>

🔗gdsecor <gdsecor@...>

🔗bigAndrewM <bigandrewm@...>

🔗dkeenanuqnetau <d.keenan@...>

🔗bigAndrewM <bigandrewm@...>

🔗bigAndrewM <bigandrewm@...>

🔗Carl Lumma <carl@...>

🔗dkeenanuqnetau <d.keenan@...>

🔗bigAndrewM <bigandrewm@...>

🔗bigAndrewM <bigandrewm@...>

🔗bigAndrewM <bigandrewm@...>

🔗dkeenanuqnetau <d.keenan@...>

🔗bigAndrewM <bigandrewm@...>