From: jonb@Ingres.COM (Jon Berger)
Newsgroups: rec.music.makers
Subject: Re: Musical Notation Questions
Date: 24 Jan 93 19:56:03 GMT
Reply-To: jonb@ingres.com
Organization: Ingres, an ASK Company

In article <1993Jan23.145311.1@acad.drake.edu>, seh003@acad.drake.edu writes:
>In article <C1BJ2p.9GA@undergrad.math.waterloo.edu>, elee@cayley.uwaterloo.ca (Salty Freckles) writes:
>> In article <1993Jan22.222831.29921@zia.aoc.nrao.edu> awkerr@zia.aoc.nrao.edu (Alan Kerr) writes:
>>>NO, RIGHT!  an accidental on an 'A' affects *all* A's.  That's Music
>>>Theory Law (or whatever you want to call it).  If you want to be kind
>>>to the musician, you *should* mark all the other A's, but it is not
>>>needed.  personally, I've never liked this 'rule' and it *has* caused
>>>me to make errors while transcribing to a new key. :-(
>> 
>> It's been a while since I've done anything related to Music Theory but from
>> what I remember, the accidental on a note only affects that same note in the
>> *current* measure. In the next measure, the accidental doesn't affect that
>> note anymore, so it has to be written in again for every measure. If the
>> accidental affected *all* notes like you say, it might as well be in the key 
>> signature.

Misunderstanding here: the question is whether an accidental affects
another note in the same measure, but in a different octave.  Nobody's
claimed that the accidental persists across a bar line.

Incidentally, interesting sidelight on the notion that "if the
accidental affects all notes, it might as well be in the key signature."
That's always been my opinion too, but formal music notation doesn't
really agree.  Where this gets extremely visible is in modal music, i.e.
tunes that use an arrangement of notes that is neither major or minor.
(Ok, major and minor are modes too, but you know what I mean.)  Western
musical notation "law" doesn't recognize the existence of other modes as
far as key signatures are concerned, so if a tune is in, for example,
the Mixolydian mode -- the scale that begins on the fifth degree of a
major scale, just as the minor begins on the sixth degree -- it will
invariably be written in a key signature that suggests it's really in
major, and then every single instance of the seventh of the scale will be
flatted with an accidental.  For instance, a tune in G Mixolydian will
be written in the key signature of one sharp -- F#, to be exact -- and
then every last F in the tune will be preceded by an accidental natural.
This has always struck me as asinine, but rules are rules, I guess.

>> 
>>>Alan W. Kerr                               awkerr@aoc.nrao.edu
>>>National Radio Astronomy Observatory       awkerr@nrao.bitnet
>>>Socorro, NM, USA                           uunet!nrao.edu!awkerr
>> 
>> Gene Lee
>> elee@descartes.UWaterloo.ca
>
>I'm taking a theory course right now and Gene's opinion is correct.  The
>accidental affects only the note in that particular octave in that particular
>measure and nothing else.

Well, Gene didn't actually express an opinion on the "octave" issue, just
on the "particular measure" issue.  I distinctly remember being taught
that an accidental affects every instance of that note in the measure,
regardless of what octave it's in; if that isn't the rule any more, then
it's been changed sometime in the last 20 years or so.  Is it possible
that your theory professor was saying that, when writing music, it's
a VERY GOOD IDEA to add an accidental to a note if it hasn't occurred
in that octave previously in the measure?  That's certainly true --
it enhances readability considerably -- but I'm still fairly sure that,
in the absence of any other information, an accidental affects the note
in any octave.  I'll check with a real theory professor and make sure,
though.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------
   -__ __ /_   Jon Berger              "If you push something hard enough,
  //_// //_/   jonb@ingres.com          it will fall over."
_/ ---------                              - Fudd's First Law of Opposition