Re: [Moderator Action] traditional Japanese music notation

Dear David,

Thank you for your interest in my proposal to integrate Japanese music notation in SMuFL. I am well aware of the lack of information about Japanese music in the Western world, although some references do exist in English as well. For instance the comprehensive "Composing for Japanese Instruments" by Minoru Miki, although this book takes the Western composer perspective, so it doesn't contain so much information about the traditional notation itself.

Let me quickly answer your questions now:

1. Are any of the symbols used in these traditional music notations
  already encoded as part of the Unicode standard?

For shakuhachi, most pitches (fingering) representations use one Japanese syllabary called Katakana, so they are part of Unicode, although non-standard representations are used for some of them. Specific interpretation techniques (vibrato, etc.) use specific representations that are not part of Unicode. Western music notation is also used for some aspects (staccato, tenuto, dynamics, etc.) so already part of SMuFL. The situation is very similar for koto/shamisen as well.

2. Roughly how many symbols are there that would need encoding?

For shakuhachi I would say there are roughly several tens of new symbols in total that need to be added to SMuFL. Similarly for koto/shamisen (but completely different symbols).

3. Are you able to produce a proposal outlining the characters that
  need to be included?

I shall try to do this first of all for shakuhachi by using the SMuFL resource that James pointed out as a reference (http://w3c.github.io/smufl/gitbook/specification/classes.html). Please note that it may take some weeks to get this done, since I am only doing it as a hobby.

By the way, to be honest, I am not so confident I can do this kind of classification thoroughly for koto/shamisen, so I would prefer to restrict myself to shakuhachi for the moment. Once I have put together a proposal I'll get back to you on the mailing list.

Best wishes,
Razvan


On 2016/11/10 10:11, Daniel Spreadbury wrote:
> Razvan BEURAN <beuranr@gmail.com> wrote on 31/10/2016 14:18:31:
> 
>> I am contacting you to see if there is interest in extending SMuFL to
>> cover traditional Japanese music notation. I am knowledgeable especially
>> about the Tozan shakuhachi notation, which could be a good start.
>> Moreover, the Tozan school publishes an official manual (in Japanese)
>> which could serve as reference.
> 
> Thanks for getting in touch, Razvan. In principle I have no objection to
> considering the encoding of the symbols needed for Japanese music
> notation as in scope for SMuFL.
> 
> I am a complete neophyte when it comes to the worlds of shamisen,
> shakuhachi, and koto notation, and I am also not able to read Japanese
> text myself. Looking at the examples of the grid-based shakuhachi
> notation you have produced with your own software, I'm sorry to say that
> my ignorance is such that I cannot determine which characters, if any,
> are musical ones, and which are standard Japanese characters.
> 
> Some initial questions:
> 
> 1. Are any of the symbols used in these traditional music notations
> already encoded as part of the Unicode standard?
> 2. Roughly how many symbols are there that would need encoding?
> 3. Are you able to produce a proposal outlining the characters that need
> to be included?
> 
> Daniel
> 
> 
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Received on Monday, 14 November 2016 12:07:44 UTC