On Wed, Feb 27, 2008 at 2:31 PM, Kieren MacMillan <
[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> Hi Damian (et al):
>
> > semantically i completely disagree... ;--)
>
> Excellent! I like a good discussion... =)
>
> > in the case of a 'transposing at the octave' instrument such as
> > piccolo or double bass,
> > the clef change or 8va/b sign is implied and simply omitted as a
> > convenience.
>
> Aside: we (all) should immediately stop doing that -- we should start
> writing ALL instruments with "transposed clefs", to be clear. ;-)
>
> Regardless, the question (for me) still comes down to the way we are
> presenting "transposition" in the documentation. Does "transposition"
> mean taking a set of pitches and changing the pitches that we want to
> hear (e.g., \transpose c g { a b c d }) or leaving the pitches we
> want to hear as is (explicitly, \transpose c c { a b c d}) and
> *notating* them in a non-trivial/non-obvious way?
>
> One process (transposition) alters the original pitches, the other
> (clef *or* octavation) is simply a notational convention -- two very
> different results, IMO.
>
> Most importantly to the current issue, when looking in the Lilypond
> documentation for information on ottava brackets:
> 1. I would never search for "transposition";
> 2. The heading "octave transposition" is less accurately
> descriptive of the intended content than "ottava brackets".
>
> Our goal in all of this should be to IMPROVE the documentation, not
> make it less clear.
Ah, I agree with Kieren here. FWIW, to me the act of transposing something
means taking some pitches and moving them all either up or down by some
interval; there're at least chromatic and diatonic flavors of this and what
they both have in common is the act moving some source material up or down
by some amount. When do we transpose? We transpose when we write out parts
for transposing instruments (into another key). We transpose when we
sequence stuff in Baroque (or quasi-Baroque) passages within a piece (not
necessary into another key or even tonic region, we just transpose a couple
of times to get somewhere else harmonically). And we transpose when we
compose, possibly moving sets or collections of pitches around using the
abstract transposition operator T_n beloved of American pitchclass theory.
None of which has anything to do with ottava spanners. Or with "octavated"
(caveat: not an English word) clefs. So while both an ottava spanners and an
octavated clefs most certainly do effect "octave transposition" (which is
absolutely the right phrase here), I would never check the docs for
"transposition" of any sort when looking up ottava spanners and octavated
clefs. I would check for "ottava (spanners)" and "clefs".
I think I've lost the point of this thread. To me it seems completely
reasonable to talk about "transposition" when referring to \transpose, to
talk about "ottava spanners" when talking about ottava spanners, and to lump
octavated clefs into the "clefs" section since "octavated clefs" isn't a
phrase that's available in English.
The confusion here must be between the graphic *symbols* for things (like
ottava spanners and clefs) and the musical *effects* of those things (ie,
octave transposition). In general the names of the symbols are probably much
more widely agreed upon than the names of the abstract processes those
symbols effect.
--
Trevor Bača
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
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