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Old 08-16-2019, 06:08 AM   #43
Goldreap
Human being with feelings
 
Join Date: Feb 2009
Location: UK
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Quote:
Originally Posted by superblonde.org View Post
what is the difference between an expertly hand written chart and an expertly written Sibelius chart? the scribbling or the pencil or the font used? Printed Jazz songbooks and jazz-themed notation apps frequently by default use a script-based font which is less readable than a normal print font. For handwritten charts, I have heard musicians say, "is that a B then A? oh, that's a bA." That means handwriting is less readable and more ambiguous in the ancient system. Music students today are advised to not even write charts by hand, and instead always use notation software. Some auditions don't even allow handwritten charts- at all- there's the door, see you next time, essentially.


more importantly there is a difference in purpose between notation during performance and transcription. transcription should be unambigious. it is documentation (reverse engineering) of a recorded performance. If the notation is ambiguous then the transcription is ambiguous and it is error-prone and inexact.

In performance from a chart, I don't see your confusion to prefer a chart which says "EbMajb5#11/B" over a chart which has another, shorter symbol, which means the same thing, employing more efficient use of typography. Essentially you are stating that you want a dense "set of mixed capital letters plus non-alphanumerics" containing multiple exceptions within its meaning, rather than a simpler, definitive token. The exceptions being, the correct chord is EbMaj7 plus with a modification to play b5 plus another modification to additionally play #11 plus another modification to play the inversion. That's like saying you enjoy written sentences with quadruple negatives because they 'look cool to work from'. (Not that you don't dislike non-true statements. That's four negatives in one phrase and is much more difficult to understand.)


And that is not even getting into the ridiculous behavior in the current notational system regarding the use of "Maj", or the triangle symbol, or "M", or "m". Even jazz musicians will complain about one or the other, depending on their own past training and preference, ex: "I hate it when charts use M !"
Hand written vs Sibelius
Hand written is artful, expressive, human, diverse, individual, soulful, truthful, revealing, careful, painstaking, sensual.....a bit like playing notes on a guitar rather than triggering a switch.

Chord symbols.
I'm all for keeping chord symbols as short as possible (to save space) but there's a limit to how far you can beneficially go with that. There's a heirachy in the way we spell out chord symbols , like folders\sub folders\ files, which can cover a lot of possibilities in an organized way.
E.G. Gm7 is Folder\subfolder\file.
So we have Gm7, Gm9, Gm11. Why call them x,y,z ?
I can't see that having a unique short symbol for each of thousands of chord symbols helps. That would be like having no folders just thousands of files to remember. And you'd soon run out of symbols to use.
But I'm probably missing your thrust, I know nothing about programming.

And just generally, I quite like the diversity of for example Triangle or Maj or Mj for the same reasons I like hand written charts. It's charming, human etc. What a boring world it would be if everyone spoke only the same language and every possible chord could be absolutely defined with a unique symbol in a mathematical way.

But yes, I'm probably one of those (old) guys who is perfectly happy with the way things are.
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