On Mon, 2012-07-02 at 17:34 -0700, Bob van der Poel wrote: BZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZT!

On Mon, 2012-07-02 at 20:41 -0400, Ricardus Vincente wrote: Well, another chord we name it different here ;), but don't worry, everybody should understand what app you wish to get.

On Tue, 2012-07-03 at 10:38 +0800, Oon-Ee Ng wrote: Serious, is there a command line tool or a GUI based tool that "calculates" cords? OT: At least I should fire up Qtractor now, but I'm still short in time. FWIW I don't care, I only know that the OP is mistaken, because I teach music and the pupils wished to know about theory. For "God's sake", in Germany we also have a "theory of harmony" regarding to it's functionality, e.g. c d# f# a is a symmetrical cord. Nobody cares about it's name, but we care a lot about the emotions people listening to this cord. Since I'm a guitarist most of the chords I prefer are named insane. Jimi Hendrix: Eb(no 3rd), Aadd9 and the sharp ninth, E7#9. Set to the situational context I simply name "E7#9" "E major", so a simple blues gets "Voodoo Chile"-quality. However, as long as we don't try to get a certificate from an academy, the names of cords are completely irrelevant. It's bullshit, nobody needs to know. For a gig we need to know what emotion should be transmitted, so we only need scripts that remind us to the basics, such as C or C-. If the cord is a 7, major or minor etc. shouldn't matter.

On 3 July 2012 19:05, Ralf Mardorf <ralf.mardorf@alice- thanks for speaking on behalf of all of us ralf. or perhaps on the other hand, we're grown up enough to decide for ourselves? -- robin http://fu.ac.nz - Auckland's Free University

Yeah, I think there are a lot of people who are simply musicians for whom it is important to name chords appropriately. If I want a certain emotion to be conveyed, it's often vital that I do play, say, a Cadd9 instead of a simple C major. And if need to communicate with someone about a chord progression, that's the language I have to use. (Unless I want to be all "put your fingers here and there." ;) ) On topic: I think such a tool would be quite helpful. Kind of surprised it doesn't exist yet, there are definitely many use cases for it. On Tue, Jul 3, 2012 at 10:39 AM, Raffaele Morelli < raffaele.morelli(a)gmail.com&gt; wrote:

On Tue, Jul 3, 2012 at 12:10 PM, Ralf Mardorf &lt;ralf.mardorf(a)alice-dsl.net&gt;wrote;wrote: Computers exist because of something called the 'Digital abstraction': How to make a complex messy 'real' thing like voltage into a neat-n-clean 'logical' 0-or-1. See http://6004.csail.mit.edu/Fall01/handouts/L02-1up.pdf Musical theory is likewise: Where to put your hands on a guitar or violin or piano is very different. Musical theory gives an abstract frame where something essential common to these differences is distilled out. The question is not so much whether that abstraction is useful so much as is it faithful. I recently got into an argument (on the python list so more OT there than here :-) ) about whether a B# is the same as C. If we allow that they may not always be the same then we have a case where the theory-of-musical-harmony (may be) breaking.

On Thu, Jul 12, 2012 at 10:13 PM, Funs Seelen &lt;funsseelen(a)gmail.com&gt; wrote: Yes That is what I was saying (on that list) http://mail.python.org/pipermail/python-list/2012-July/626135.html This was in response to the statement that there is no B# except when its C http://mail.python.org/pipermail/python-list/2012-July/626127.html and suggesting that a 12-tone (chromatic?) scale is the best foundation for music They happen to represent the same frequency in equal temperament but that's As I understand it the foundation of almost all (western) music is the tempered scale and tempering comes about by amortizing the pythagorean comma so that we dont 'notice' it. The pythagorean comma is (by definition??) the gap between B# and C where by B# means the 12th in a circle of perfect fifths starting at C. See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pythagorean_comma

On Fri, Jul 13, 2012 at 11:05 AM, Funs Seelen &lt;funsseelen(a)gmail.com&gt; wrote: Clearly that does not equal, but I meant the following: 128/125 != (3/2)^12 / 2^7

On 13/07/12 11:28, Fons Adriaensen wrote: This can be helpful to visualise it: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Major_scale#The_circle_of_fifths Lorenzo

PS (reply to myself ;): As perhaps among others A- does too?!

Hi Ralf, On Tue, Jul 17, 2012 at 9:56 AM, Ralf Mardorf &lt;ralf.mardorf(a)alice-dsl.net&gt; wrote: Yes, the circle of 12 fifths starting from C would then be: C-G G-D D-A A-E E-H H-F# F#-C# C#-G# G#-D# D#-A# A#-E# E#-H# As far as I understood: In ancient notation a B (or better: the note between "la" and "ut" or "do") can be flattened without accidental to avoid the tritone (F-B (german: F-H)). To readers/singers it was clear when the B should be sung flattened or not. So there happened to be a soft (mollum) and a hard (durum) B. In Germany (and probably other German speaking countries) both still exist, in the rest of the world the B is "hard" unless it is flattened. I understand what you mean, but when people would start using Bb and H both together in one notation it might even get more confusing. Using A# instead is even worse when you meant to write a B-flat. The chord "C7" consists of C-E-(G)-Bb. So in German notation this would be written as C-E-(G)-B, which could be interpreted as a C^7 (Cmaj7) by a foreigner and that's confusing. C-A# however isn't a 7th but an augmented 6th. The harmonic function is totally different, just like B# (German: H#) and C (Belgian: TI# and DO) as we discussed before. The names of the notes are squishy, nobody can Yes, that sounds like good practice, although usually it gets clear pretty quick when you're looking at German notation, because of more differences than just H and B, like "a" instead of "Am" as you mentioned, and of course the language of any (non-Italian) words written next to it.

On Tue, 2012-07-17 at 13:15 +0200, Funs Seelen wrote: Well, draw a circle with a pair of compasses and than take a look how circular it is, watching it by a SEM. While I'm aware that my statements against theory are stupid, there's a funny side that ships with theory. I bet we easily could jam without playing bad notes and without sharing any information about notes and harmony before doing this, just because of our experiences. But if we would talk about harmonies, we might understand what the tonic is, but in the end we would sound like idiots treated by Orff music therapy, or we will metamorphose to http://www.seknews.de/wp-content/uploads/2010/05/lehrer-lions.jpg Just a warning :p!

On Tue, 2012-07-17 at 14:10 +0200, Funs Seelen wrote: Hehe, I'm a guitarist. How many guitars do you know that are completely clean to the octave, 0 and 12 fret, while the temperament is as wanted for anything between fret 0 and 12? Apologize! Aaaargh! I had a Déjà-vu and I don't like to get this feeling :S. It could be a help, I agree, while I don't have much knowledge myself. Sorry, here in the madhouse we only have limited access to the Internet, we're only allowed to face people with similar handicaps :p as we've got.

On Tue, 2012-07-17 at 13:15 +0200, Funs Seelen wrote: Is there something like a Planck scale for the math of music ;)?

On Thu, Jul 12, 2012 at 7:40 PM, Rustom Mody &lt;rustompmody(a)gmail.com&gt; wrote: I think that's always a good decision ;).

On Mon, 2012-07-02 at 17:34 -0700, Bob van der Poel wrote: I understand, but can't help. I don't have any interest to know what chords I'm playing. IIRC Cubase did auto detect chordnames ... I'm a Qtractor user, didn't care about such an option, however, a Sequencer like Qtractor or Rosegarden might provide this feature. So my recommendation, test one Linux sequencer after the other. I suspect that Rosegarden or Qtractor might provide this, there are still tons of Linux sequencers, I suspect that at least one will detect chords. I never heard about a command line tool "translating" notes to chords. Isn't http://lilypond.org/ capable to do this?