Legato of Three sheet music unearthed


`ευρηκα. For several years I have not known where the original sheet music for Legato of Three was located. Tonight I found it. It had gotten buried under some other papers (including: interactive fiction design notes, a poem about Spam, and a note from Jason Horst about the merits of Butterfinger candy bars) when I was leaving the college dorm. Tonight I finally sorted the right stack of papers and there it was.

This means it will now be possible to reconstruct what the piece would have sounded like, if the limits of the monophonic PC speaker had not forced it into a serialized form.

Don't get me wrong: I like the serialized form, and the piece was written in full knowledge and with the intention that it would end up in that form, so I will always consider that the canonical form of the piece. Nonetheless, I would like to hear what it sounds like with the parts played in parallel. Now, once I transcribe and sequence it, I can.

I say transcribe, because the sheet music was written using a specialized system. If you look at the scanned excerpt, you can immediately see that not all of the notation is standard. For instance, octaves are represented in colors, so that all of the parts fit on one staff. (Brown notes are lowest, then blue, light green, dark green, red, and yellow notes are highest. Legato of Three does not contain any yellow notes, and the excerpt shown doesn't have any brown notes either.) Sharps and flats are represented positionally, e.g., C sharp is actually between C and D. (Legato of Three, being in C Major, has few if any sharps or flats, but you still have to get used to the staff having a position for them.)

Nonetheless, the notation is unabiguous, so I will be able to transcribe and sequence it. I'm looking forward to hearing the new parallel-parts version.

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