[Smt-talk] A necessary clarification re "Picturing Keyboard Harmony"

[rjab]

A comment I just received from a member of this mailing list made me  
realize that a clarification is required.  Somehow, in the process of  
writing about these ideas, I forgot to state the problem I am solving   
up front in the referenced document.  The problem is finding a  
shorthand notation simple enough to annotate above the staff of  
written music,  that captures the essence of keyboard patterns to  
capture the harmonic flow of a written chord progression.  This seems  
a worthwhile problem to solve.

The notation I found solves the problem.   It is simple because it  
needs only 12 symbols for 12 piano keys plus two symbols for two kinds  
of fundamental intervals of the flow of harmony, tritones and fifths/ 
fourths.  3- and 4-note shapes on the keyboard generally require only  
2 symbols  (one interval and a note,  or two intervals).     The  
notation helps in picturing keyboard harmony because the simple  
notation is easy to visualize as keyboard patterns. The notation's  
ability to self-identify tonic scales from which chords originate  
qualifies it as a theory of a kind.  However, I see now that I  
probably overstated the theory  aspect.  There is nothing conceptually  
new from a specialist's perspective and the notation is limited to 3-  
and 4-part keyboard patterns from chord progressions containing   
triads, sixth chords and seventh chords. This covers a lot of ground  
but not all the ground possible. It provides a simple basis for  
enriching harmony "in the moment" based on context provided by the  
notation but this is informal.

I think it is fair to say that the contribution is an unconventional   
shorthand that expresses the essence of well known ideas in an  
unusually simple way.   I am going to rewrite the introduction to the  
document along these lines but I thought I should get this out to the  
mailing list right away because I noticed several recent downloads of  
the document from the website.  Thank you all for your patience in  
putting up with these announcements from an outsider.

R.J.A. Buhr
1150 Lombard St., #21
San Fransisco CA 94109
rjabuhr at gmail.com
www.pianotheoryman.com

-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://lists.societymusictheory.org/pipermail/smt-talk-societymusictheory.org/attachments/20100712/86d6dabc/attachment-0004.htm>