Klezmer Komments - Updated

Here are some comments on our Klezmer Notation Question.

Alan Watsky writes:

I think most people like the standard sig. with the accidentals as they occur. Ethnomusicologists have their own problems and use those "compound" sigs. for their own reasons. If you need guys to sight read , just use the standard sig. and accidentals as needed. In fact there is one book that never gets used cause its author used the compound sigs. Nobody on the scene uses that book, even one of the people who helped edit it. Really no one should be chained to a Klezmer chart. Its sorta antithetical to the style. Heterophony rules. IMO

Aryeh Steiner writes:

Technically, the Freygish scale is really the harmonic minor scale. Is there any way to indicate harmonic minor in the key signature?

The Freygish scale is the equivalent of a harmonic minor scale beginning on the fifth. (IOW, D Freygish = G harmonic minor.) There's no key sig for the harmonic minor scale either, though. Plus, you'd have the same disadvantage of the key signature not indicating the mode (although it would accurately indicate the notes used.)

Update: Jordan Hirsch writes:

I advocate using the Standard Key Signatures, but also noting in the
upper left hand corner that the tune is in Freygish, so that the reader will be ready for the accidentals where they occur. But I also agree with Dr. Watsky that really, it's about the aural, and oral tradition.

Adding the "Freygish" instruction is a good idea.