From @uga.cc.uga.edu:LOJBAN@CUVMB.BITNET Thu Oct 15 04:09:18 1992 Received: from uga.cc.uga.edu by MINERVA.CIS.YALE.EDU via SMTP; Thu, 15 Oct 1992 10:11:06 -0400 Received: from UGA.CC.UGA.EDU by uga.cc.uga.edu (IBM VM SMTP V2R2) with BSMTP id 1963; Thu, 15 Oct 92 10:09:27 EDT Received: by UGA (Mailer R2.08 PTF008) id 3040; Thu, 15 Oct 92 10:09:26 EDT Date: Thu, 15 Oct 1992 09:09:18 -0500 Reply-To: dmb@PALM.CRAY.COM Sender: Lojban list From: dmb@PALM.CRAY.COM Subject: Re: TECH zgike lerfu X-To: lojban@cuvmb.cc.columbia.edu To: Erik Rauch In-Reply-To: I.Alexander.bra0122@oasis.icl.co.uk Status: RO X-Status: Message-ID: My first response to Iain's proposal is "Why bother". As even he admits "...I suspect that full orchestral scores are best left to their traditional notation". But even if we agree that some form of musical notation in Lojban is desirable, I think that Iain's proposal carries too much Western cultural baggage for it to qualify as the standard for a culturally neutral language. I'd prefer to represent each note as a pitch followed by a duration. Pitch would be specified as octave and pitch class within the octave seperated by "pi", the decimal point. By default, there would be twelve pitch classes to the octave; but this could be changed via an indication in the header of the piece. Similarly duration would be indicated in beats and parts per beat, with 24 parts per beat the default. The piece header would indicate, at a minimum, the number of beats per bar. It could also include tempo in beats per minute, pitch classes per octave and possibly deviations from equal temperment for the gamelon ethusiasts or devotees of early music on authentic instruments. For convenience, either pitch or duration could be omitted if it was the same as the preceeding note. If there is interest, I could formalize these ideas into a formal proposal, but I'm still not convinced that Lojban needs a musical notation.