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Thursday, November 26, 2009

Sagittal notation

The word "sagittal" (pronounced "SAJ-i-tl") means "arrow-like". Think of Sagittarius the archer; the centaur with bow and arrow that the ancients saw in the night sky.

The Sagittal notation system is a comprehensive system for notating musical pitch in all possible scales and tunings - a universal set of microtonal accidentals, equally suited to extended just intonation, equal divisions of the octave (or of any other interval), or any of the non-just non-equal "middle path" tunings or temperaments. It is called Sagittal because, you guessed it, it uses various arrow-like symbols, pointing up or down to indicate raising or lowering of pitch.

Sagittal was developed by George Secor and Dave Keenan, with a major early contribution from Gene Ward Smith.

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