On Thu 22 Nov 2001 at 04:52PM +0000, Jack Campin wrote: > > No it isn't. A typical dance tune book will use "reel time" or "waltz > tempo" the same way all through. In the Kurdish song book I quoted, > the same Italian tempo terms are used over and over again and are NEVER > defined at the beginning of a tune. There wouldn't be any point in > tempo terms unless they had an understood meaning in a context wider > than an individual tune. Today, everybody who has a metronome uses the > commonest 8 or so Italian terms in the same way to about 1% precision > because they're engraved on the scale, and I would guess the world > contains a few million more metronome users than ABC users.
As someone who doesn't own a metronome, this is new information to me. If everyone who has a metronome posts these numbers, then maybe we will find that they all agree and we will have the basis for a useful standard. Likewise, perhaps you could post a list of military march tempos. Where pre-existing standards exist, then providing support for them in abc does seem like a good idea. James Allwright To subscribe/unsubscribe, point your browser to: http://www.tullochgorm.com/lists.html
