[CM] CMN key signature, bar lines, and accidentals

Larry Troxler lt@westnet.com
Fri, 20 Dec 2002 20:43:15 -0500


(CC'd to list)

Bill Schottstaedt wrote:
> 
> > Do accidentals/naturals on note names in CMN correspond to what is
> > notated, and not the frequency of the note?
> 
> "A4" says nothing about an accidental and is ambiguous. Look for
> "automatic naturals" in cmn.html.

Ok, so I assume that the effect of "automatic naturals" is to add a "n"
onto the specification of notes that don't specify any accidental?

Although that helped, unfortunately as it turns out, I still have either
a basic problem or basic misunderstanding. Consider this:

 (cmn (redundant-accidentals nil) staff treble g-major (meter 2 4)
       cs4 cs4 fs4 fn4 ds4 dn4 dn4 ds4)

Setting "redundant-accidentals" to nil helps in that the second cs4 is
not notated with a sharp sign. However, there are other problems:

The first fs4 (in measure 2) is notated with a redundant sharp sign even
though the key signature is g-major.

The second dn4 (in measure 4) is notated with a redundant natural sign
even though the key signature is g-major.

Could someone enlighten me on this?

This is _not_ a complaint about CMN, just a question about how it works.

And I know that this is not a great problem if one is writing a CMN
score directly, but it is a problem if we're using CMN to make a quick
draft notation of Common Music output (for example).
Not a fatal problem either, but just makes the output difficult to read.

Larry Troxler