Talk:Mason Green's New Common Practice Notation: Difference between revisions

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 [[User:Bozu|Bozu]] ([[User talk:Bozu|talk]]) 20:55, 30 April 2019 (UTC)
+== 12-EDO Roman Numeral Notation ==
+This is the way I learned roman numeral chord notation.  If other people learned by another set of symbols (I understand that the notation most common in the USA is different from that of some other countries, as is most musical notation and naming conventions, but let's talk about that...):
+You choose a diatonic key, then you have to have an understanding of what that key is, otherwise, none of this has enough context to make sense.  I believe the idea when the notation was developed was to make everything universal, so that a musician could decide on a key, then proceed using the roman numeral notation as a framework around the decided key, and if another musician wanted to use the same framework in a different key, it'd be very easy to move that frame work to overlay any arbitrary key.
+Superscripts/post(arabic)numerals can be used to indicate dominant (I7), or a degree symbol for diminished (i°), or a plus sign for augmented (I+).  "Chord colourations," that is, expanded chords, are indicated with arabic numerals, with the understanding that dominant chords are default, so major chords have a post-text of "maj" before the arabic numeral.
+Then, there are exactly seven possible chords, based off the fact that western music has seven notes per scale by default.  They are indicated by roman numerals indicative of the scale degree:
+I, the tonic (tonic being the root key of the song, the precedent is that the "tonic" term is the same root word used in "diatonic," "pentatonic," etc.)
+ii, the supertonic (super meaning beyond or above)
+iii, the mediant ("mediant" meaning half way between the tonic and dominant chords)
+IV, the subdominant (sub meaning below)
+V (some theory books indicate V7 by default), the dominant (dominant, because this is the primary chord pushing into the tonic chord in the old way ("classical") of thinking about music theory)
+vi, the submediant (half way between the subdominant and tonic)
+viiø, the subtonic (sub being below, again - sometimes listed as vii°, but technically, the diminished seventh is out of key)
+If the key of the song is a natural minor key, the chords become:
+i, still called the tonic
+iiø, still called the supertonic
+bIII, still called the mediant
+iv, still called the subdominant
+v, still called the dominant
+bIV, still called the submediant
+bIIV7, still called the subtonic
+Whether the chord is III or bIII or bbIII or #III or bbiii°(no 3rd)b9, it is still called the "mediant," according to the conventions I learned in school.  As I said, I am open to the idea that there are most definitely other systems of terminology and notation.  With that on the table, though, I still don't understand the notation and terminology proposed in this article, because there are some things inconsistent with the underlying framework of why this sort of notation works in the first place.
+----
+So, what I propose for 19-EDO, to be consistent with the notation with which I am most familiar (and the notation many musicians in the US are familiar):
+Keep the same terminology listed above.  Any chord associated with the first scale degree is the tonic.  It could be "I" or "i" or whatever.
+If your scale is something somewhat xenharmonic, like kleismic symmetrical 1 #2 b3 #4 b5 6 bb7, your chords are:
+i° (tonic)
+#ii° (supertonic)
+biii°aug7 (mediant)
+#iv° (subdominant)
+bv(no 5) (dominant)
+vi° (submediant)
+NC (no subtonic)
+Spelling out the dominant chord would be (from the tonic): b5 bb7 #2, and transposing that to it's own tonal center, it would be 1 b3 x5, which is a nonsense chord in classical theory, but being xenharmonic folk, we like this sort of thing...  you could name it something if you like.  A minor triad is 1 b3 5, and a #5 is an augmented fifth, so an x5 could be a superaugmented fifth.  Maybe it's a minor superaugmented chord?  The subtonic would be even more interesting in this key, bb7 #2 #4, transposed to it's own tonal center: 1 x3 x5.  A triad with a superaugmented third and superaugmented fifth might be a saturated superaugmented chord or, maybe, something else.
+And if you want to start doing chords for scales with more than seven notes, then you have to, in my mind, establish some sort of general rules around how to spell chords out of those extra notes.  Maybe you stick to 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 for scale degrees and spell the tonic out of 1 3 5, but, since the 9th is now the octave, intervals are smaller, so there would ostensibly be more chances to spell diminished chords.  Or maybe you spell the scale 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 with an alternate scale degree (or two) and spell the chords with different optional variations.  For example 1 2 b3 3 4 5 6 7 could have both major and minor tonic chords.  But, I think that, if you want to be strict about developing a new fundamental paradigm in terminology, you have to be clear about how you wish to go about doing so.  And the terminology on this page isn't clear to me at what it's trying to accomplish, which is why I am so confused and proposing something else.  Either I don't understand it because it sets out to do something that wasn't clearly communicated to me (maybe it's me), or maybe I don't understand it because it doesn't know what it's trying to accomplish.  Either way, new terminology won't catch on unless it describes something useful for communicating to other people.
+And maybe there is a gap there in terms of the musical terminology already in use.  For example, in German, the lower case roman numerals are never (to my knowledge) used to indicate a minor chord, and the "mediant" is called the parallel.  In Russian, sometimes lower case roman numerals are used, and the mediant is called the mediant, but the subtonic is something like opening tone and the supertonic is something like higher leading tone.  In general, roman numeral notation is something that I've found doesn't translate well across cultures or languages, so maybe it's easier to simply scrap altogether.
+--[[User:Bozu|Bozu]] ([[User talk:Bozu|talk]]) 13:41, 1 May 2019 (UTC)