Yes it makes sense Don but it's not my problem. Lets say I was transcribing a hornpipe and was using dotted notation, as I know a horpipe goes longer dotted note - short note... I would be OK but if I didn't know, I could even end up writing short note then dotted note before getting something that starts to sound about right.

Once I have got that far, I can then end up trying to fine tune the piece to get it to sound how I want it to and that can take me ages. Here is a hornpipe I messed about with - first in dotted notes and how I wanted it to sound.

A problem with trying to transcribe a song so it sounds how you think it should go is that the printed music can end up looking a bit wierd - I don't think you'd see a hornpipe represented the way my second version here prints out for example but the use of dotted notes is pretty well understood and is interpreted by the player. I would think for the dt, it is best to produce the "written notation" rather than to try to get exact timings.

Jon