Is there any standard notation for extensions to MIDI (e.g. QTMI or General
MIDI) to allow for non-Western tone divisions? Are any available for use
with Logic Pro 7? I tried a fun experiment with Logic 7's audio-to-score
option and Japanese language samples and got some nice insight into tonal
pronounciation of Japanese, but obviously this won't work with something
like 7-tone Chinese.

Anyone know of any notation for microtones that works with things like Logic
Pro or some other standard music application?

Thanks in advance.

LawsonE wrote:
Is there any standard notation for extensions to MIDI (e.g. QTMI or General
MIDI) to allow for non-Western tone divisions? Are any available for use
with Logic Pro 7? I tried a fun experiment with Logic 7's audio-to-score
option and Japanese language samples and got some nice insight into tonal
pronounciation of Japanese, but obviously this won't work with something
like 7-tone Chinese.

Anyone know of any notation for microtones that works with things like Logic
Pro or some other standard music application?

Thanks in advance.


I don't see the relationship between tonal lanugage and music notation.
The lyric writer of tonal languages do need to have a tad more talent so
the words don't have meaning being changed and even more so for music
writer if they reverse the order of normally _filling in_ words to music
notes in special cases and to make sure the music still sounds pleasant.

BTW, Japanese isn't tonal, is it? And Chinese tone is relative; a word
is not keyed to a particular pitch. Of course, if the note is rising, it
would not work by putting a word that has a lowering tone. Still, I see
no point of putting that type of information in the music notation. A
seasoned lyric writer should be able to read the music and simply put
the words there.

I do know that the old eastern music has different _scale_. Is this what
you mean?

chris wrote:
LawsonE wrote:

Is there any standard notation for extensions to MIDI (e.g. QTMI or
General MIDI) to allow for non-Western tone divisions? Are any
available for use with Logic Pro 7? I tried a fun experiment with
Logic 7's audio-to-score option and Japanese language samples and got
some nice insight into tonal pronounciation of Japanese, but obviously
this won't work with something like 7-tone Chinese.

Anyone know of any notation for microtones that works with things like
Logic Pro or some other standard music application?

Thanks in advance.



I don't see the relationship between tonal lanugage and music notation.
The lyric writer of tonal languages do need to have a tad more talent so
the words don't have meaning being changed and even more so for music
writer if they reverse the order of normally _filling in_ words to music
notes in special cases and to make sure the music still sounds pleasant.

BTW, Japanese isn't tonal, is it? And Chinese tone is relative; a word
is not keyed to a particular pitch. Of course, if the note is rising, it
would not work by putting a word that has a lowering tone. Still, I see
no point of putting that type of information in the music notation. A
seasoned lyric writer should be able to read the music and simply put
the words there.

I do know that the old eastern music has different _scale_. Is this what
you mean?


And if the lyric writer doesn't read music, just send him/her the
recording and they should be able to complete the job.

"chris" wrote in message
ink.net...
LawsonE wrote:
Is there any standard notation for extensions to MIDI (e.g. QTMI or
General MIDI) to allow for non-Western tone divisions? Are any available
for use with Logic Pro 7? I tried a fun experiment with Logic 7's
audio-to-score option and Japanese language samples and got some nice
insight into tonal pronounciation of Japanese, but obviously this won't
work with something like 7-tone Chinese.

Anyone know of any notation for microtones that works with things like
Logic Pro or some other standard music application?

Thanks in advance.


I don't see the relationship between tonal lanugage and music notation.

When you learn a language with tonal qualities, you have to have some way of
notating those qualities. The linguists have such ways, but I don't believe
that they are computerized and I haven't run into any free software to do
this.

The lyric writer of tonal languages do need to have a tad more talent so
the words don't have meaning being changed and even more so for music
writer if they reverse the order of normally _filling in_ words to music
notes in special cases and to make sure the music still sounds pleasant.


I honestly don't know how singing is composed in a tonal language.

BTW, Japanese isn't tonal, is it?

It's what they call a "tonal-accent" language. Rather than using loudness to
emphasize part of the word, a higher pitch is used. HAna and haNA are two
different words in Japanese, for instance (using capitals to show the
pitches).

And Chinese tone is relative; a word
is not keyed to a particular pitch. Of course, if the note is rising, it
would not work by putting a word that has a lowering tone. Still, I see no
point of putting that type of information in the music notation. A
seasoned lyric writer should be able to read the music and simply put the
words there.

Again, I was wondering about computerized processing of language. If you can
differentiate between micro-tones in computerized music notation, it should
be possible to write a program to convert the notation to linguistic
notation if needed (the standard linguistic notation isn't exactly easy to
use, IMHO, so music notation might well be easier for learning).

BTW, again, I don't know about Chinese, but Japanese speakers tend to be
di-tonic in their conversations unless they're deliberately adding emphasis
for effect. A single monosyllable word is considered to have a low-tone or
high tone, though generally we Westerners don't notice it or use it. Listen
to a large Japanese language sample by the same speaker long enough and you
realize that everything is being said in only two pitches, at least in
normal conversation.

I'm guessing that within a given sentence or phrase, the pitches in Chinese
are absolute even if there's no absolute pitch defined for any given word.



I do know that the old eastern music has different _scale_. Is this what
you mean?

No. Just wondering if there was any standard for computerized notation of
microtones. I checked online. General MIDI 2.0 and QuickTime Musical
Instruments define 128 or 256 microtones between regular halfsteps in MIDI,
but apparently nobody uses them or has any standardized notation for them.
Would be nice for me if they did: I'm currently trying to learn Japanese and
trying to figure out how to make language training animations at the same
time --having a bouncing ball that follows the music notation of a word
would be a nice touch. I can do it for Japanese since the two tones are
normally at least a half step apart (at least in the samples I have), but
I'm pretty sure that is NOT the case with Chinese.