User:Dave Keenan/sandbox

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Flavors of Sagittal notation

Sagittal notation comes in two compatible flavors.

Evo

The Evo flavor (short for "evolutionary", previously called "mixed") uses only single-shaft Sagittal symbols, e.g.    , alone or in combination with conventional sharps and flats and their doubles. Only the large variant of the double sharp  (U+E47D) is considered to be stylistically-compatible with Sagittal symbols. Evo is much easier to learn, but it results in a greater number of symbols on the sheet, which can give it a more cluttered appearance, particularly with chords, and it may be confusing when two symbols alter the same note in opposite directions.

A sub-flavor of Evo is Evo-SZ (Evo with Stein-Zimmermann). This is where the arrow-like 11M up and down symbols   are replaced by the Stein-Zimmermann semisharp  and narrow reversed flat . This should only be done when the 11M symbols notate exactly half the alteration of a sharp or flat. Similarly,   and   are replaced by  and . The narrow variants of the fractional flats  (U+E284) and  (U+E285) are preferred because they preserve the Sagittal principle that the visual size of a symbol should indicate the relative size of its alteration.

Revo

The Revo flavor (short for "revolutionary", previously called "pure") only requires one accidental per note. Revo therefore takes up less space on the sheet and presents a cleaner appearance, and it clearly indicates the direction of the overall alteration. It discards the conventional sharps and flats and their doubles and replaces them with these multi-shaft arrow-like symbols:    . Adding a sharp or flat to a Sagittal is achieved by adding two more shafts, e.g.   becomes  and   becomes . When the Sagittal part alters in the opposite direction to the sharp or flat part, the rules are not so simple, e.g.   becomes  and   becomes  ; one must simply learn these apotome complements.