Yahoo Tuning Groups Ultimate Backup tuning Lilypond now supports Microtonal Helmholtz-Ellis notation

Dear all,

Attached please find "Extended Helmholtz-Ellis JI Pitch Notation" support added to Lilypond, together with 2 small examples, and a readme file (all wrapped in a zip file).

"Extended Helmholtz-Ellis JI Pitch Notation" (HE for short) is a JI notation designed by Marc Sabat and Wolfgang von Schweinitz that has many similarities with Sagittal notation. The required font and further information about this notation is available at

http://music.calarts.edu/~msabat/ms/pdfs/HE-font-2009.zip.

Please feel free to forward this message to other tuning-related lists.

Best,
Torsten

--
Torsten Anders
Interdisciplinary Centre for Computer Music Research
University of Plymouth
Office: +44-1752-586219
Private: +44-1752-558917
http://strasheela.sourceforge.net
http://www.torsten-anders.de

🔗Torsten Anders <torsten.anders@...>

🔗Mike Battaglia <battaglia01@...>

Awesome! Was this difficult to do? Any chance we'll see HEWM coming up
soon as well?

-Mike

On Sat, Sep 26, 2009 at 1:33 PM, Torsten Anders
<torsten.anders@...> wrote:
>
>
> [Attachment(s) from Torsten Anders included below]
>
> Dear all,
>
> Attached please find "Extended Helmholtz-Ellis JI Pitch Notation"
> support added to Lilypond, together with 2 small examples, and a
> readme file (all wrapped in a zip file).
>
> "Extended Helmholtz-Ellis JI Pitch Notation" (HE for short) is a JI
> notation designed by Marc Sabat and Wolfgang von Schweinitz that has
> many similarities with Sagittal notation. The required font and
> further information about this notation is available at
>
> http://music.calarts.edu/~msabat/ms/pdfs/HE-font-2009.zip.
>
> Please feel free to forward this message to other tuning-related lists.
>
> Best,
> Torsten
>
> --
> Torsten Anders
> Interdisciplinary Centre for Computer Music Research
> University of Plymouth
> Office: +44-1752-586219
> Private: +44-1752-558917
> http://strasheela.sourceforge.net
> http://www.torsten-anders.de
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>

🔗Torsten Anders <torsten.anders@...>

Attached find a legend of (a subset of) "Extended Helmholtz-Ellis JI Pitch Notation". You can compare that with HEWM described at

http://tonalsoft.com/enc/h/hewm.aspx

Best
Torsten

On 26.09.2009, at 22:18, Mike Battaglia wrote:
> Awesome! Was this difficult to do? Any chance we'll see HEWM coming up
> soon as well?
>
> -Mike
>
> On Sat, Sep 26, 2009 at 1:33 PM, Torsten Anders
> <torsten.anders@plymouth.ac.uk> wrote:
> >
> >
> > [Attachment(s) from Torsten Anders included below]
> >
> > Dear all,
> >
> > Attached please find "Extended Helmholtz-Ellis JI Pitch Notation"
> > support added to Lilypond, together with 2 small examples, and a
> > readme file (all wrapped in a zip file).
> >
> > "Extended Helmholtz-Ellis JI Pitch Notation" (HE for short) is a JI
> > notation designed by Marc Sabat and Wolfgang von Schweinitz that has
> > many similarities with Sagittal notation. The required font and
> > further information about this notation is available at
> >
> > http://music.calarts.edu/~msabat/ms/pdfs/HE-font-2009.zip.
> >
> > Please feel free to forward this message to other tuning-related
> lists.
> >
> > Best,
> > Torsten
> >
> > --
> > Torsten Anders
> > Interdisciplinary Centre for Computer Music Research
> > University of Plymouth
> > Office: +44-1752-586219
> > Private: +44-1752-558917
> > http://strasheela.sourceforge.net
> > http://www.torsten-anders.de
> >
> >
> >
> >
> >
> >
> >
> >
> >
>
>

🔗Torsten Anders <torsten.anders@...>

On 26.09.2009, at 22:18, Mike Battaglia wrote:
> Awesome! Was this difficult to do? Any chance we'll see HEWM coming up
> soon as well?
>
It is essentially the same as HEWM notation. In other words, "Extended
Helmholtz-Ellis JI Pitch Notation" is a superset of HEWM notation, but
with different graphical shapes for the accidentals.

Best
Torsten

>
> -Mike
>
> On Sat, Sep 26, 2009 at 1:33 PM, Torsten Anders
> <torsten.anders@...> wrote:
> >
> >
> > [Attachment(s) from Torsten Anders included below]
> >
> > Dear all,
> >
> > Attached please find "Extended Helmholtz-Ellis JI Pitch Notation"
> > support added to Lilypond, together with 2 small examples, and a
> > readme file (all wrapped in a zip file).
> >
> > "Extended Helmholtz-Ellis JI Pitch Notation" (HE for short) is a JI
> > notation designed by Marc Sabat and Wolfgang von Schweinitz that has
> > many similarities with Sagittal notation. The required font and
> > further information about this notation is available at
> >
> > http://music.calarts.edu/~msabat/ms/pdfs/HE-font-2009.zip.
> >
> > Please feel free to forward this message to other tuning-related
> lists.
> >
> > Best,
> > Torsten
> >
> > --
> > Torsten Anders
> > Interdisciplinary Centre for Computer Music Research
> > University of Plymouth
> > Office: +44-1752-586219
> > Private: +44-1752-558917
> > http://strasheela.sourceforge.net
> > http://www.torsten-anders.de
> >
> >
> >
> >
> >
> >
> >
> >
> >
>
>

🔗Graham Breed <gbreed@...>

🔗Torsten Anders <torsten.anders@...>

🔗Kraig Grady <kraiggrady@...>

Pretty funny in the sense this notation works better for strings doing non scale based music and not keyboard based microtonality. In that case it is quite cumbersome. Even with a generalized keyboard the music used by this notation pursues direction that covers what a keyboard cannot. for instance pitches that would lie on the same digital. On the other hand the a full 1-3-5-7-9-11 combination product set, a structure quite capable of movement to remote areas, can be notated with # b + and -. Saggital has it advantages also in this regard.
--

/^_,',',',_ //^ /Kraig Grady_ ^_,',',',_
Mesotonal Music from:
_'''''''_ ^North/Western Hemisphere: North American Embassy of Anaphoria Island <http://anaphoria.com/>

_'''''''_ ^South/Eastern Hemisphere:
Austronesian Outpost of Anaphoria <http://anaphoriasouth.blogspot.com/>

',',',',',',',',',',',',',',',',',',',',',',',',',',',',',

a momentary antenna as i turn to water
this evaporates - an island once again

🔗Torsten Anders <torsten.anders@...>

Dear Kraig,

Thanks for your feedback.

On 28.09.2009, at 01:29, Kraig Grady wrote:
> Pretty funny in the sense this notation works better for strings doing
> non scale based music and not keyboard based microtonality.
>
Please explain how you come up with that conclusion. Would you say the same for HEWM and Sagittal notation?

Structurally, the "Extended Helmholtz-Ellis JI Pitch Notation" (lets call it HEJI), HEWM notation, and Sagittal notation start with the same idea. The all start with Helmholtz's idea of using the common accidentals only for prime limit 3, and to introduces further signs for higher prime limits. While Helmholtz used only 5-limit, these three notations all go up much further.

The main difference between these notations is that they use different signs for "higher-limit accidentals". Further, they support different prime limits. HEWM goes up to 11-limit (while there also exist versions that go beyond). HEJI has been used at least up to 31 limit, and Sagittal even goes beyond that. Also, Sagittal supports using only 1 (pure) or 2 (mixed Sagittal) accidentals, even for complex combinations of commas etc. For example, Sagittal has a special sign for the 5:7 kleisma, while with HEWM and HEJI this kleisma would be expressed by combining accidentals for the syntonic and the septimal comma. I understand that Sagittal's combination-accidentals reduce the clutter of the notation, but for my purposes I actually prefer using multiple accidentals, because (a) it makes the position of pitches on the pitch lattice more evident, and (b) it greatly reduces the total number of accidentals required. Also, I prefer the accidental shapes of HEJI because they are more distinct -- I must admit that with Sagittal I have difficulties simply because its accidentals are more similar. On the other hand, Sagittal is more elaborated and allows even to notate fractions of commas etc., e.g. for adaptive JI. Also, Sagittal has an ASCII counterpart.

> Even with a generalized keyboard the music used
> by this notation pursues direction that covers what a keyboard cannot.
>

Please explain. I would claim that like Sagittal you can use HEJI for equal temperaments (though its designers likely did not think of that, and are certainly little interested in this feature).

The list of equal temperaments in the paper "Sagittal. A Microtonal Notation System" can be reproduced, because you can reproduce the Spartan symbol set in HEJI. You only need more than 1/2 accidentals at times, as I explained above.

Best
Torsten

> In that case it is quite cumbersome. Even with a generalized > keyboard the music used
> by this notation pursues direction that covers what a keyboard cannot.
> for instance pitches that would lie on the same digital. On the other
> hand the a full 1-3-5-7-9-11 combination product set, a structure > quite
> capable of movement to remote areas, can be notated with # b + and -.
> Saggital has it advantages also in this regard.
> -->

🔗Torsten Anders <torsten.anders@...>

Dear Dave,

On 14.10.2009, at 04:15, dkeenanuqnetau wrote:
> Can you tell me about the difficulty in acessing characters from The > Sagittal font? I'd like to fix it if I can.

Thank you for contacting me in this matter.

With the microtonal HE font I simply access accidental signs by alphanumeric characters (ASCII or Unicode). For example, with some word processor I can select the font and I get a bunch of accidentals for a string of characters.

With the Sagittal font I was so far unable to do this. I just double-checked this with TextEdit on a Mac. Say, if I write the two characters "$ and then select the Sagittal font for these, then I would expect to see a flat and a sharp accidental, according to the Sagittal Symbol Map. Yet, that does not work for me. (However, I am using somewhat old Sagittal font files, your page http://dkeenan.com/sagittal/ seems to be unreachable).

Am I missing anything?

Thank you!

Best,
Torsten

PS: Anyway, as I mentioned Graham managed to get your font working with Lilypond anyway. He explained to me privately how did it. If memory serves me right, it involved using some Python functions besides Lilypond and Scheme to perform the mapping to the Sagittal accidentals -- an approach I called "less easy".

>
> Regards,
> -- Dave Keenan
>
> --- In tuning@yahoogroups.com, Torsten Anders <torsten.anders@...> > wrote:
>>
>> On 27.09.2009, at 04:30, Graham Breed wrote:
>>> Mike Battaglia wrote:
>>>> Awesome! Was this difficult to do? Any chance we'll see HEWM
>>> coming up
>>>> soon as well?
>>>
>>> If you have a font, it should be easy. If you don't have a
>>> font ... you need one.
>>>
>> Right, you can simply replace the font in my code, for example.
>> However, it seems accessing characters in the Sagittal font available
>> it is a bit less easy than with the HE font. Graham can tell you how
>> he did that.
>>
>> Best
>> Torsten
>>>
>>> Graham
>>>
>>>
>>
>
>

🔗Torsten Anders <torsten.anders@...>

On 15.10.2009, at 15:08, Torsten Anders wrote:
> Dear Dave,
>
> Thanks for your quick reaction.
>
> On 15.10.2009, at 12:37, Dave Keenan wrote:
>> Sagittal has just moved to: http://www.sagittal.org
>
>
> Ah! Nevertheless, you would do yourself a service if the old link
> would still work and somehow forward to this new page. There are lots
> of links pointing to the old page already, and google also shows this
> page.
>
>> There is definitely a problem with the character mapping of the font
>> when used on Mac or Unix operating systems. I have been talking to
>> Graham about this and think I understand the problem now. I just
>> need to figure out how to fix it, and find the time. I will let you
>> know when I have a new version of the font.
>
> Thank you very much for letting me know. I assume that if this matter
> is fixed, then Sagittal support with Lilypond will be a piece of cake
> (at least for the mere notation, things like MIDI export would be a
> different matter).

I just check: the OpenType file of the Sagittal font does actually work as expected both with something like TextEdit and also with Lilypond!

What is missing now are only fine-tuning things like slightly correcting the horizontal positioning and increasing the font size. (Do you deliberately set the font size so that accidentals appear smaller than corresponding letters in other fonts?). I will do this fine-tuning at a later time...

Best,
Torsten

>
> Best
> Torsten
>
>> At 09:16 PM 15/10/2009, you wrote:
>>> Dear Dave,
>>>
>>> On 14.10.2009, at 04:15, dkeenanuqnetau wrote:
>>>> Can you tell me about the difficulty in acessing characters from >>>> The
>>>> Sagittal font? I'd like to fix it if I can.
>>>
>>> Thank you for contacting me in this matter.
>>>
>>> With the microtonal HE font I simply access accidental signs by
>>> alphanumeric characters (ASCII or Unicode). For example, with some
>>> word processor I can select the font and I get a bunch of >>> accidentals
>>> for a string of characters.
>>>
>>> With the Sagittal font I was so far unable to do this. I just
>>> double- checked this with TextEdit on a Mac. Say, if I write the two
>>> characters "$ and then select the Sagittal font for these, then I
>>> would expect to see a flat and a sharp accidental, according to the
>>> Sagittal Symbol Map. Yet, that does not work for me. (However, I am
>>> using somewhat old Sagittal font files, your page http://dkeenan.com/sagittal/
>>> seems to be unreachable).
>>>
>>> Am I missing anything?
>>>
>>> Thank you!
>>>
>>> Best,
>>> Torsten
>>>
>>> PS: Anyway, as I mentioned Graham managed to get your font working
>>> with Lilypond anyway. He explained to me privately how did it. If
>>> memory serves me right, it involved using some Python functions
>>> besides Lilypond and Scheme to perform the mapping to the Sagittal
>>> accidentals -- an approach I called "less easy".
>>>
>>>
>>> --
>>> Torsten Anders
>>> Interdisciplinary Centre for Computer Music Research
>>> University of Plymouth
>>> Office: +44-1752-586219
>>> Private: +44-1752-558917
>>> http://strasheela.sourceforge.net
>>> http://www.torsten-anders.de
>>>
>>>
>>>>
>>>> Regards,
>>>> -- Dave Keenan
>>>>
>>>> --- In tuning@yahoogroups.com, Torsten Anders <torsten.anders@...>
>>>> wrote:
>>>>>
>>>>> On 27.09.2009, at 04:30, Graham Breed wrote:
>>>>>> Mike Battaglia wrote:
>>>>>>> Awesome! Was this difficult to do? Any chance we'll see HEWM
>>>>>> coming up
>>>>>>> soon as well?
>>>>>>
>>>>>> If you have a font, it should be easy. If you don't have a
>>>>>> font ... you need one.
>>>>> Right, you can simply replace the font in my code, for example.
>>>>> However, it seems accessing characters in the Sagittal font
>>>>> available
>>>>> it is a bit less easy than with the HE font. Graham can tell you
>>>>> how
>>>>> he did that.
>>>>>
>>>>> Best
>>>>> Torsten
>>>>>>
>>>>>> Graham
>>>>>>
>>>>
>>
>

🔗Graham Breed <gbreed@...>

Torsten Anders wrote:

> I just check: the OpenType file of the Sagittal font does actually > work as expected both with something like TextEdit and also with > Lilypond!

Are the character codes correct?

> What is missing now are only fine-tuning things like slightly > correcting the horizontal positioning and increasing the font size. > (Do you deliberately set the font size so that accidentals appear > smaller than corresponding letters in other fonts?). I will do this > fine-tuning at a later time...

Why this "slightly correcting"? You must have some other way that almost works.

The arrowheads should span adjacent lines. I slip one of these in with Sagittal:

\override Accidental #'font-size = #4

Graham