On Sun, 11 Aug 2002, Phil Taylor wrote: > Starling wrote: > > >Almost. I had one question. What is a "melody note"? I have always > >known melodies as defined by context, and subject to much > >interpretation, rather than being defined by a specific type of > >notation. Two different people can call a section of music melody or > >accompaniment, and both may have valid opinions. I'm curious, what in > >your implementation requires certain notes to be selected as "melody"? > >Or am I totally misinterpreting the use of the phrase "melody note"? > > It's an interesting question. The melody note is the note which you > (or your computer) would play if the piece were to be arranged for a > monophonic instrument, and indeed it is a matter of opinion which is > appropriate. Since the computer is not going to be able to make that > choice, Bryan's suggestion was that it should be written into the abc > using the note order within the chord. > > I wonder though if we aren't beginning to split some unnecessary hairs > here. Are there really any circumstances where the overall length > of the chord is different from the length of the melody note?
I think the idea of a "melody note" in a chord is more a question of musical info, rather than printable/layout info. I'm sure lots of people could come up with various contexts in which they'd want various sorts of printed indications of this, but it's nice to have even without that. I have been trying to make a point of putting melodynote first in double-stops for years, just because it seemed like an obvious thing to do. As a clarinet-player, I'm used to picking one note out of several without even really noticing I'm doing it, but it's Yet Another Possibly-Useful Piece of Info that an abc representation can easily hold, so why not ? And, when I was working on the tunes-comparison program, I was glad I had. -- Richard Robinson "The whole plan hinged upon the natural curiosity of potatoes" - S. Lem To subscribe/unsubscribe, point your browser to: http://www.tullochgorm.com/lists.html
