harmonic vs. melodic notation
Posted: Fri Feb 19, 2021 8:49 am
I'm working on a tutorial video for Sagittal right now, and to illustrate a particular point I needed an example of two alternative tunings that diverge from standard tuning but with deeply different agendas. So for one alternative tuning I chose JI, and for the other alternative tuning I sought an (the?) EDO which could least be said to be an effective tool for approximating JI and similarly could most be said to be an aesthetic unto itself. I'll always remember when my friend Kit called 23-EDO a "meme tuning", and indeed I think it fits the bill here: according to Wikipedia, it is "the largest EDO that has an error of at least 20 cents for the 3rd (3:2), 5th (5:4), 7th (7:4), and 11th (11:8) harmonics".
If you look on its Wikipedia page, it proposes an interesting dichotomy: between a "harmonic notation" and a "melodic notation". The latter is dumber, treating sharps and flats more as instructions to move up or down by one scale step, respectively. The former is more in line with how Sagittal approaches notation, at least in that it recognizes that based on their definition with respect to a chain of fifths, apotomes (sharps/flats, or chromatic semitones) are negative in 23. Sagittal, of course, reasonably figures you shouldn't use the symbol at all, if its meaning is so distorted, and instead bases steps on fractions of a limma (diatonic semitone, or distance from E to F).
Anyway, I just wanted to bring the dichotomy up here, because I couldn't find any information elsewhere online about the distinction, nor could I find any info about "conversion notation" which is given as another term for the "harmonic notation" because you can translate from other EDOs into it. I was wondering if perhaps anyone is aware of melodic pitch notations having much cache in the alternative tuning world. Or if maybe they would or should only be entertained for extreme outlier EDOs and the like. And harmonic notations are and should be the standard.
If you look on its Wikipedia page, it proposes an interesting dichotomy: between a "harmonic notation" and a "melodic notation". The latter is dumber, treating sharps and flats more as instructions to move up or down by one scale step, respectively. The former is more in line with how Sagittal approaches notation, at least in that it recognizes that based on their definition with respect to a chain of fifths, apotomes (sharps/flats, or chromatic semitones) are negative in 23. Sagittal, of course, reasonably figures you shouldn't use the symbol at all, if its meaning is so distorted, and instead bases steps on fractions of a limma (diatonic semitone, or distance from E to F).
Anyway, I just wanted to bring the dichotomy up here, because I couldn't find any information elsewhere online about the distinction, nor could I find any info about "conversion notation" which is given as another term for the "harmonic notation" because you can translate from other EDOs into it. I was wondering if perhaps anyone is aware of melodic pitch notations having much cache in the alternative tuning world. Or if maybe they would or should only be entertained for extreme outlier EDOs and the like. And harmonic notations are and should be the standard.