| Phil Taylor wrote - | | >Using unequal notes in chords just leads to too many ambiguities.
I don't believe there's much of an ambiguity here. So the notes have different lengths. Any keyboard player knows how to do that. There is a problem in that abc can represent note length combinations that standard staff notation can't handle. But this shouldn't be any more of a problem than the fact that abc can express things like A5 or B13/7. You just need to be aware that such things can be played or converted to midi, but they can't be drawn on the page. In some cases, they can be. Thus, with L:1/8, [A2F3D4] shouldn't be a problem. Staff notation can handle it easily: The stem has a filled note head on the A, a dotted filled note head on the F, and an open note head on the D. This is common in keyboard and guitar music. So what's the problem? Of course, [A1F2D4] can't be represented in staff noation. But this isn't any more of a problem than the fact that A5 or A9 can't be represented in staff notation. If the former makes abc unusable, then so does the latter. I don't think anyone would argue that the possibility of notes like A5 makes abc unusable. It just means that abc is more general than staff notation (which has only power-of-2 lengths), so you have to be careful to avoid abc's full generality if you want your music to be printable. Most abc programs react to things like A5 with an error message. A few have the smarts to translate it to two notes (though they might not be able to guess whether A4-A or A3-A2 is best). I'd think the same sort of approach would work with [A1F2D4]. Or maybe just give a warning that the chord can't be drawn correctly and unusable lengths have been ignored. I'd also think that [A2F3D4] should be handled without any problem. Are there are any abc formatters that do this right? (I've found that abc2ps doesn't; it ignores all lengths but the first even when the chord should be drawable.) Another observation: There are a number of monophonic abc players that just play the first note in a chord. This is a useful thing to know, because there are situations where you want a chord note above the melody note. People typing abc chords should perhaps be aware of this, so that they can remember to put the melody note first in chords (when there actually is a melody present). This should probably be the answer to the one unanswered question about chord lengths: Which length should be taken for the chord's length, i.e., the delay until the next note (or chord) starts. The best answer is probably to use the length of the "melody" note, the first note in the chord. If there's a melody, this answer is almost always going to be right. And if not, this is a simple rule that users could remember and use to get the spacing right. THis could even be used to get your simple bass-chord accompaniment drawn right. You could write a guitar part like: [x2D4][f2d2A2] [x2E4][e2c2A2] ... This should give bass notes of the correct duration, and the chords should be played and drawn to match the x2 invisible rests. This would give correct positions and lengths for the four musical objects. Hmmm ... I wonder if I can hack abc2ps to do these right? In my copious spare time. ;-/ To subscribe/unsubscribe, point your browser to: http://www.tullochgorm.com/lists.html
