K
Keith Thompson
[...]Mark McIntyre said:
Mark, since Usenet is asynchronous, you might not be aware that
apologies have already been offered and accepted, and this whole
subthread can be safely dropped.
Mark, since Usenet is asynchronous, you might not be aware that
apologies have already been offered and accepted, and this whole
subthread can be safely dropped.
C
Charlton Wilbur
Tak-Shing Chan said:
I am a music theorist and performer, and I *really* *wish* you'd stop
beating a dead horse. My appropriately credentialled opinion on the
topic is that "generic slurs" can be interpreted either way even in a
musical context, and you are choosing to interpret a pun made by Mr
Heathfield -- a play on words, a joke -- in the worst possible light.
If you don't have something to say about standard C, please post in a
different group.
Charlton
T
Tak-Shing Chan
[Thread marked OT.]
I have already apologised for inappropriately prolonging
this thread; but there is one thing above that is unclear to me
and I would be grateful if you could kindly provide one citation,
just one, in any peer-reviewed academic periodicals, in theory or
in performance, that mentions ``generic slurs'' in a musical
context. As I have found out on Music Index Online, there exist
no matching titles or subjects containing ``generic slurs'' or
``generic slur'' from their 775+ periodicals (1976--2006)
database. I must have missed something here.
Then there is this Google evidence. I searched for
+"generic slurs" +music, with 9 results in all, none of them have
musical meanings; +"generic slur" +music, 15 hits, not a single
one is in a musical sense; and finally, Google Scholar,
+"generic slur" +music, 2 hits, nothing musical; and
+"generic slurs" +music, not even a single hit. I must have
missed something here.
Tak-Shing
R
Richard Tobin
Tak-Shing Chan said:
You probably won't find any, because "generic slur" is not any kind of
standard term, it's just two words put together - a slur that is
generic. A slur is a sequence of notes run together, so you can have
a fast slur, a joyful slur, a ridiculous slur, a unique slur,
any-adjective-you-like slur. The fact that no-one happens to have
used that pair of words together just means that people don't often
consider whether musical slurs are generic or not. Not to mention the
fact that the word "generic" is probably far more familiar to computer
programmers than the general public - I doubt you'd find many
musicians who'd use the phrase "generic slur" with the other sense of
slur.
-- Richard
C
Chris Dollin
Tak-Shing Chan said:
I don't think so: I think it's coincidence that his emphasis-
marker was on the false-to-fact word. It's over-statement that
I saw as the signal. (And my response /is/ over-statement,
compared to my typical text in this newsgroup.)
T
Tak-Shing Chan
Well, Dan Pop routinely overstates (w.r.t. people's
intellect). Does that mean he was very humourous?
Tak-Shing
C
Chris Dollin
Tak-Shing Chan said:
No, of course not, and I think you know perfectly well why.
If you wish to continue this off-topic discussion, then
I suggest brief email, with the caveat that I'm on holiday
from late this afternoon.
K
Keith Thompson
Tak-Shing Chan said:
Humor lessons are next door. This is being-hit-on-the-head lessons.
T
Tak-Shing Chan
The adjective ``generic'' would only be meaningful if there
exists a group or class of specialised, non-generic slurs. Do
they exist in a musical context?
[No, I consider slurs, ties and phrase marks as separate
entities because they have different semantics.]
Tak-Shing
E
EKB
Hi,
I like to use Walter Bright's "MEM" package, available from the
Snippets archive:
http://c.snippets.org/browser.php
Search for "Bright" on the page.
"MEM is a set of functions used for debugging C pointers and memory
allocation
problems. Quoting Walter, "Symptoms of pointer bugs include: hung
machines,
scrambled disks, failures that occur once-in-10,000 iterations,
irreprodu-
cible results, and male pattern baldness." After writing MEM for use in
developing his own compiler and tools, he reported that its use reduced
pointer bugs by as much as 75%. MEM is simple to add to existing
programs
and adds little or no overhead."
I've found that to be true: it's easy to add, and I quickly tracked
down a memory leak that had been plaguing me.
Eric
R
Richard Tobin
Tak-Shing Chan said:
No idea. But humour doesn't have to be factually accurate. Music
*could* have generic slurs, even if it doesn't.
-- Richard
C
Charlton Wilbur
The argument is that the concept of "generic slur" is so meaningless
in music that that phrase will be *inherently* interpreted in the same
sense as "ethnic slur." This is a little bit beyond "factually
accurate," well into the realms of the unprovable, and Mr Chan should
be admonished (preferably *before* he begins his full-text searching)
that absence of evidence is not the same as evidence of absence.
In short: the fact that "generic slur" is not a commonly-used term of
art does not mean that the concept of a generic slur has no relevance
to music theory or performance.
Charlton
T
Tak-Shing Chan
It is true that my argument relies on an absence of evidence
and therefore is philosophically unsound, but as you said it is
``into the realms of the unprovable'', so our best bet is to
prove it beyond a reasonable doubt. Google and Music Index
Online together have provided me with enough grounds to believe
that the probability is practically zero (considering the size
and coverage of the archives, zero hits do mean something).
Your phrase, ``/the/ concept of a generic slur'' [emphasis
mine], implies that there exists one unambiguous definition of
the said concept. Can you provide such a definition, in a way
that is acceptable to all your fellow theorists?
Secondly, the adjective ``generic'' before ``slur'' implies
that there exists a group or class of specialised slurs from
which you can blend their main characteristics together and call
it a ``generic slur''. I am not aware of the existence of such.
A possible counterargument is to cite Grove, which says that
there exists tie slurs, phrasing slurs, glissando slurs, vertical
slurs, etc. But this glosses over the fact that such slurs do
not belong to the same ``group or class'', as you cannot put a
tie in the place of a chord slur and hope that it would still
work, for example. If generic slur indeed exists, I would expect
it to be ``write once use everywhere''. So, I am not convinced
that generic slurs are possible in a musical context.
Tak-Shing
F
Frederick Gotham
Tak-Shing Chan posted:
You're making the presumption that the function of adjectives is to
distinguish one thing from another. They can also be used to simply describe
something! I can say, "That's a generic slur.", without implying that there
are non-generic slurs in existance. Even if there are no non-generic slurs in
existance, my use of "generic" is not redudant as I'm using it to express my
view.
Also, remember the term, "bull-headed Irishman"; it was argued that the use
of "bull-headed" implied that there was a such thing as a "non-bullheaded"
Irishman -- and it was argued that therefore, if the person were implying
that _all_ Irishmen were bull-headed, that the descriptive term, "bull-
headed", would be redundant in that context. One could easily argue against
this though, in saying that the speaker was expressing a stereotypical view
of Irishmen via use of the descriptive term, "bull-headed".
Alas, one can use a descriptive term (be it an adjective, noun, whatever)
for a wide variety of reasons -- more reasons than a grammar book can tell
you.
You're making the presumption that the function of adjectives is to
distinguish one thing from another. They can also be used to simply describe
something! I can say, "That's a generic slur.", without implying that there
are non-generic slurs in existance. Even if there are no non-generic slurs in
existance, my use of "generic" is not redudant as I'm using it to express my
view.
Also, remember the term, "bull-headed Irishman"; it was argued that the use
of "bull-headed" implied that there was a such thing as a "non-bullheaded"
Irishman -- and it was argued that therefore, if the person were implying
that _all_ Irishmen were bull-headed, that the descriptive term, "bull-
headed", would be redundant in that context. One could easily argue against
this though, in saying that the speaker was expressing a stereotypical view
of Irishmen via use of the descriptive term, "bull-headed".
Alas, one can use a descriptive term (be it an adjective, noun, whatever)
for a wide variety of reasons -- more reasons than a grammar book can tell
you.
M
Mark McIntyre
*whew*
--
Mark McIntyre
"Debugging is twice as hard as writing the code in the first place.
Therefore, if you write the code as cleverly as possible, you are,
by definition, not smart enough to debug it."
--Brian Kernighan
T
Tak-Shing Chan
No. I was not talking about the function of ``adjectives'',
but rather the meaning of ``generic''.
Tak-Shing
A
Al Balmer
To this non-musician, it seems that Richard just named four members of
that group
A
Al Balmer
They (obviously) all belong to the group of slurs. Not to mention the
group of specific slurs.
D
Dave Thompson
Concur.
<ObVaguelyNearTopic> But as long as you, and (quite a few) others,
keep replying to him, he's NOT unreferenced and hence not collectable.
- David.Thompson1 at worldnet.att.net