Talk:Musical notation

Dead Link

So the Pentadecaphonic System has a dead link, and I'm not sure where the original source was. Does anyone know where I can find anything on it so that I can fix the link? --CritDeathX (talk) 02:07, 8 March 2020 (UTC)

Musical notation or disambiguation page

I have a problem that I was hoping this page would address but it doesn't. This page is primarily (entirely?) about musical notation. There are many different "notations" used in xenharmonic music discussion and when I encounter them I frequently don't have any idea what they mean and I'm not sure where to find out. So I go to this page Notation and expect a disambiguation page with examples so that I can say "Yes, that's the notation I'm trying to understand!" then click through and learn. That is not what this page is. Examples of notations that I've encountered at the Xen Wiki so far, that someone new to xenharmonic notation won't understand, and for which an disambiguation page would be useful:

• Mavila[7] (vs Mavila)
• yaza nowa (Color notation)
• 6:7:9 (Frequency ratios of a chord given in simplified notation? Set of natural harmonic partials?)
• [-1 1 0⟩ (Monzo and val and and Extended bra-ket notation)
• LLsLLLs (Some will already understand this others will not. At the time I write this, Step pattern redirects to Scale which doesn't present any step pattern notation -- not good.)
• [-1, 0, -1] (What do you call this notation? E.g. Dwarf22marv and Linemarv12.)
• [0 5 10 15 20 25 30] (I don't know what this notation means, e.g. Otonal 17).)
• 2.3.5 Just intonation subgroup
• (aL bs) (Scale signature)
• Whatever is going on with the page "List of MOS scales in 12edo"
• Whatever is going on with the page "Supermajor node"
• More that I haven't encountered yet?

I acknowledge that some of the problem is probably just weakly written articles that should have provided some indication of meaning for the notation being used. But experienced xen musicians and musicologists have difficulty recognizing when this is a problem, and that will be ongoing. I believe that a disambiguation page with examples would help a lot.

I suggest that the content of this page be moved to a new page "Musical notation" (to match the title of the Wikipedia page) to focus on xenharmonic musical notation, and that this page become a disambiguation page to provide examples, names and article links for various sorts of notations that are unique to xenharmonic music or rare elsewhere, of which xen musical notation is only one. Mousemambo (talk) 19:44, 1 October 2023 (UTC)

I moved "Notation" to "Musical notation" and turned "Notation" into a disambiguation page. There will be some more cleanup to do afterwards, but in the meantime I can explain the notations I haven't yet included in the new "Notation" page:

• Color notation is already listed in "Musical notation".
• [-1, 0, -1] is standard mathematical notation for vectors (with either round or square brackets). Nested vectors are matrices. Both vectors and matrices are used a lot in RTT.
• [0 5 10 15 20 25 30] is a notation for scale degrees (e.g. the major scale in 12edo would be [0 2 4 5 7 9 11]). I'm not sure if the brackets are standard, but using degrees is relatively normal.
• List of MOS scales in 12edo uses a notation for scale steps (e.g. the major scale in 12edo would be 2 2 1 2 2 2 1. I'm not sure if the lack of brackets is standard, but using steps is relatively normal. This notation and the previous one look very similar, but context is usually sufficient to distinguish them, although a proper standard certainly wouldn't hurt.
• Node pages are deprecated, I wouldn't pay them too much attention.

Fredg999 (talk) 00:29, 2 October 2023 (UTC)

Thank you Fredg999!

• I believe the most common usage of the [-1, 0, -1] vector notation that I've encountered is as exponents of primes in JI, which I just now found named as "prime factor notation" here. Perhaps a one-paragraph section called "Prime factor notation" in the Prime number article would be appropriate to document this and add a link to it on the disambiguation page? Mousemambo (talk) 08:10, 2 October 2023 (UTC)

Looking deeper, I now believe that a description of prime factor notation would best belong in the article Harmonic limit rather than Prime number as I suggested first. But see FloraC's comment below -- I need to study further. Mousemambo (talk) 19:51, 2 October 2023 (UTC)

• I will stay alert for any usages of notation for a list of scale degrees, in square brackets or otherwise. The proper musicological notation for "scale degree" would put a caret (aka circumflex accent) over each number, but that's an unusual character to type and is without a standard for HTML display or a useful Unicode coding (there's no way to put a caret over an eleven). Wikipedia:Degree music#Major and minor scales uses SVG graphics for them. Specialized music fonts (e.g. Free music fonts) work in some conditions are not a good solution for a wiki. If there doesn't seem to be a "set of scale degrees" standard, we could lead by example, by including it in the list of notations, but I agree it should be omitted for now. Mousemambo (talk) 08:10, 2 October 2023 (UTC)

I think the form like "[-1, 0, -1]" is still monzo notation. It just doesn't go with the stylistic choice of bra-kets, but the contents are exactly the same, tho it should be [-1, 0, -1]^T, with the transpose symbol. Sintel's temp finder uses exactly this form. FloraC (talk) 18:53, 2 October 2023 (UTC)