To wade in again, as I am still writing my objects...
I think we need to think of opening up possibilities that encompass others, rather than restricting any new objects to "traditional" tonal/rhythmic music(s).
The reason why I chose GEM as the platform for my notation experiments was that it can be augmented (a la Busoni) with standard GEM objects (i.e. non-standard notation) so that if a composer (me) wishes for the lines of the stave to go haywire, it is a possibility. But this sort of graphical manipulation of the objects falls outside of what I would deem "standardised" music notation - Busoni/Busotti is for poetic interpretation by someone like David Tudor, rather than proscriptive execution of symbols with definite meanings.
However, any new object specifically designed for standardised music notation must at least have the capability to represent possibilities that can be well-defined e.g. 1/4 tones, glissandi, different stops, noteheads, beam styles, proportional notation, non-standard key signatures (armature? See Messeian's Mode 2 for an 8-note scale) etc. Non-standard (i.e. deliberately ambiguous) elements of notation should be left out of such a system I think.
...But this is also why I've chosen to represent the notation elements using truetype fonts, which can be easily edited and augmented. Meanwhile, just organising rhythmic groupings within a bar is enough of a perplexing problem, especially when one is using dynamic patching to achieve this!
There is my 2 crotchets worth for today :) Ed
Metastudio 4 for Pure Data - coming soon! Metastudio 3 still available at http://sharktracks.co.uk/puredata
----- Original Message ---- From: João Pais jmmmpais@googlemail.com To: patko colet.patrice@free.fr Cc: pd-list pd-list@iem.at Sent: Wed, 10 November, 2010 11:55:17 Subject: Re: [PD] Musical notation object on Pd
we can have a few examples in here:
http://james-ingram-act-two.de/stockhausen/stockhausenScores.html
ah, didn't know he had these examples, weren't there last time I visited this site.
particulary Xi for flûte, http://james-ingram-act-two.de/stockhausen/Xi/sxia1l.html
he use exactly the same notation shown in your preview picture, thank you for showing it.
Those are samples of papers written by the master, but the pieces I played at school contained also explanations about symbols used all along the scores, maybe be that's why I confused the issue by saying he used his own standard.
master indeed, but not about microtonal music or notation. these pieces I don't know (am not very interested in the Licht period), and if you look at the Licht formula (http://www.analogartsensemble.net/blog/licht_superformula.jpg), it's basically chromatic. The Klang cycle I also don't know, it can be that there are more microtonal works there. In current day notation there are also huge amounts of symbols for all kinds of actions (and as with pitch notation, some composers share symbols, other decide to make new ones), but that's not important for this discussion.
Also, how a composer would do when he need to build his own scale, from empiric harmonic rules? Let me try to explain, music composition has evolved a certain way technically that one composer could build up a scale for each different piece he makes. How could he write scores that could be read by any genuine musician any time?
[warning for anyone else, the rest of the paragraph has nothing to do with Pd]
I'm going backwards on the sentences:
Absolutely, he can't (and that can be a good thing). How do you know how a staccato in a Beethoven piano sonata really sounds? Even if you get the right instrument (not a piano, but a pianoforte, and a specific model at that), you would have to go to the propper room where it should be performed (not a concert hall, but some ballroom at some aristocrat's castle), where the people with huge dresses [that probably absorb more frequencies than nowadays jeans and t-shirts] sit or stand around, some of them talking (planning a war or a love escapade) or eating, or even pissing in a corner or behind a door (if it would be played at Versailles).
For a 20th century composer (with Cds and other technologies around), he can notate his score as clear as possible - if the music is notateable, which isn't the case with e.g. Bussoti (http://transcriptions.english.ucsb.edu/archive/courses/liu/materials/D&G...)
and many others -, but the rest is related to performance practice, and theoretical documentation. Speaking of Stockhausen, he's done a good job at that, because he always worked with specific performers who specialized in his music (and were even prohibited from playing anything else than Stockhausen), who now teach in his music courses. He also recorded all his works himself (tradition started by Stravinsky), so there is a concrete reference that is accessible, and many theoretical articles about his works and his views on music etc.
The composer can choose any system he wants to, as long as there is enough (fixed and aural / written and recorded) documentation, and everything is explained somewhere quite clearly. Going back to the notation examples, the symbols I sent are "mainstream", but in some pieces they don't make sense musically, so they won't fit 100% of music around. But they fit lots of it, and many composers think on those "scales" when working. Nowadays, mostly, a "scale" is just a pitch reservoir without hierarchies (which in a traditional scales are important), what most composers do is to choose the highest definition they want/can hear (usually being 1/4 tone, but also going up to 16th or 32th tone) and/or makes sense musically for the piece in question.
There are always exceptions. One example, a friend of mine did a piece where at some point the amplified instruments should generate beatings between each other. So one instrument stays put, and the other has an accidental with an arrow (like in the picture) and a number with the beating frequency he should try to get at (very difficult to play). This moment in the piece needs another system than the normal tempered notation, because it hasn't much to do with tempered music. He explained it clearly in the notes, so it should be clear what the piece should sound like.
João
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