You’re probably right that some people who participate in music that has high status in society (that you might call “serious musicians”) would sometimes look down on Sacred Harp and shapenote notation. Also agree that snobbery isn’t good.
I’ve sung a lot of Sacred Harp and people with a background in this high status music just blend in with everyone else really.
I've sung a lot of Sacred Harp and Christian Harmony that use four-shape and seven-shape shapenote notation respectively. I've never sung roundnote notation so a bit hard for me to compare but I know lots of people who've done a lot of both.
A couple of things you gain with shapenote notation…
You don't have to learn key signatures to sing from shapenote notation. So it's less work to pick it up.
Sightsinging is easier with shapenote notation. After a while, you internalise the intervals between the shapes – you just know what a fa up to a sol feels and sounds like.
> You don't have to learn key signatures to sing from shapenote notation. So it's less work to pick it up.
You don't really need to learn them in roundnotes either? Like yeah, I know that C major is all natural, G major is one sharp, etc but I don't really need to know that, the key signature is on the left side of the staff. I guess you need to learn to apply those sharps and flats though, of course.
> Sightsinging is easier with shapenote notation. After a while, you internalise the intervals between the shapes – you just know what a fa up to a sol feels and sounds like.
This makes a lot of sense. I never really internalized intervals with scored music (although maybe a bit with playing from chord charts); I internalized the position on the staff to the fingering for the note. If I learned to sing this way, I'd internalize position on the staff to pitch; like B flat sounds like [hmmm] or something. I guess you're saying singing by intervals is easier than singing by named notes? But you can really do both with shaped notes, so all the better. :)
> I guess you need to learn to apply those sharps and flats though, of course.
Yeah, there's a big difference between fingered instruments and singing. When you're playing on a fingered instrument, it's quite easy to apply incidentals – you get a feeling for the shape of the scale (and you practice scales to help with that). But unless you have perfect pitch, you're only _ever_ singing intervals. And good luck when the key changes from F# Major to Eb Minor halfway through the piece!
Another factor is that these singers likely do not play any other instruments, so they don't have any visual or tactile reference for sharps or flats – all keys are sung exactly the same way. When you're singing "by ear", you place the note in the scale you're singing.
There aren't any accompanying instruments but singers do play other instruments in the rest of their life.
In Sacred Harp, before a song is sung, somebody sings out the notes of the opening chord of the song using a combination of ear/feel/memory/practice/experience. The same song can be keyed a bit higher or lower depending on things like: energy of the singers, time of day, whether the last song was quite high or low, how easy the highest or lowest written notes are for the singers in the room. It is a skill! But most keyers will usually pitch songs written in F major at roughly the same pitch and will pitch songs written in D major differently to F major.
> "Sightsinging is easier with shapenote notation. After a while, you internalise the intervals between the shapes – you just know what a fa up to a sol feels and sounds like."
I can't speak to which is easier to get to a competent level, but that doesn't sound any different to traditional notation - after a while you internalise the intervals between notes (but you're just looking at where the note is in the score's lines, along with any flats/sharps in the key or on the note - rather than shapes). But you still get to the point where you see two notes and "just know what [x to y] feels and sounds like".
FaSoLaMix is a paid iOS app that lets you listen to a small selection of well-recorded songs where you can listen to the individual parts but sung by real people. Might be interesting to people on here.
From the FaSoLaMix site [1]:
> "FaSoLaMix" is an iOS app designed to teach Sacred Harp singing to newer singers. When someone wants to learn to sing, our instinct is usually to recommend that the inquirer go to a good singing and sit next to a strong singer. But not everyone lives near many all-day singings. Our intent is to give the listener the virtual experience of sitting next to a couple of strong singers in whichever section suits their voice. The app features high-quality recordings of many Sacred Harp songs where the mix of the four parts can be controlled manually. For example, a singer wanting to learn the treble line of a particular song could leave the treble track at full volume, mute the other three parts, and sing along with the solo treble part for practice. While the most obvious benefit will be to new singers, longtime singers will also find it useful and fun. For example, experienced singers may wish to mute one part and fill in that missing part with their own voice.
The Build and Distribute parts of the docs are the things I clicked on first. How can I get Tauri mobile apps in Apple and Google app stores? But they're both 'stubs' with no content yet.
I've been playing around with making a version of tic-tac-toe that's interesting to grown-ups. Experimenting with rules a lot as you'll see. (I think 1357 is probably the best but not sure.)
That's really cool! Need to find someone to play this with now :)
Though the counting seems a bit weird. Two overlapping lines of 5 seems to count as "1 two, 2 five". I also managed to get two overlapping fours to count as "2 two, 2 four". Maybe I just don't understand how it's supposed to work?
Thanks! It’s kind of hard to understand what you mean without screenshots. Also there are so many variations that I’m not sure which rules you’re playing with. My dad is the only person who’s played it apart from me and so far if he finds something he thinks is a counting error it’s actually been counting right and it was a UX thing about the rule-writing
Right now it will likely work well. It is trained on a largely US based data set and so accents within that data set will do better, but the way the model works I wouldn't expect many challenges with Australian.
Interestingly, as we dive deeper into phonics and phonemes it will become more challenging as what may be correct for one accent, would be incorrect for another. We will need the ability to select - by child - what is 'allowed'. This applies to dialects as well.
that's awesome. I made a somewhat similar toy[0] a while ago in vanilla js (checkmark `color2nearestname` at the top). I've been meaning to try my hand at this again, but while allowing the user to choose the palette. Namely I was thinking of these definitions:
1. CSS named colors
2. Open Props' colors[1]
3. Tailwind colors
4. XKCD's color survey results[2]
A different project sent me on a deep dive into the concept of color distances and how that can work across different spaces though so I'm afraid any other color-related projects would paralyze me with feature creep at this point though haha
I’ve sung a lot of Sacred Harp and people with a background in this high status music just blend in with everyone else really.