Laurie Griffiths has demonstrated that he has read the whole "suggestions for
[A4A2] notation" thread by quoting selectively from it. For some reason he
omitted -
Wil Macaulay
I agree with that ["first-listed note" ] - the notator presumably knows which
is the melody note, and
that's the only scheme which gives him/her the ability to specify that
without
extending the language.
Phil Taylor
I'm inclined to agree with Bryan here. I haven't paid much attention to
this previously (it's not common in abc tunes, and I've never wanted to
do it in any of my own transcriptions). Using the first-listed note is
certainly the most flexible rule, and leaves the decision up to the
transcriber.
He did quote -
>I saw suggestions for
>1. "highest note prevails"
That was my original idea which I gave up in the light of the following
discussion.
>4. None of these (Phil: "Using unequal notes in chords just leads to too
>many ambiguities").
>
>A reply from Bryan saying "Noteworthy Composer does it..."
Yes. Noteworthy Composer uses unequal notes in chords. (That was the
question.) On examination, it appears to use shortest note counts.
>Henrik voted for "shortest prevails" and gave an example of a fiddle tune
>(Målargubbens brudpolska) which requires "shortest prevails".
But when it was pointed out that "first-listed note" could handle this tune
said -
>Now that I understand what you mean I agree that "first-listed
>note" is the best alternative.
but has now changed his mind.
>Bryan said 'the default behaviour without a following number would need to
>be the "first-listed note" but did not explain his reasoning
At the time (oh so briefly) "first-listed note" was the concensus view.
>Bryan said "I think it needs to be recognised that the [...] construct isn't
>going to cover all possibilities. Anything more complex will need separate
>voices, possibly combined on one staff." but did not produce any counter
>example to demonstrate the point.
I'm sorry, but I would have thought that it was self evident that the [...]
construct cannot cope with the same level of complexity as separate voices.
>The printed piano music that I have seen seems to reply on "shortest
>prevails" (it often also uses beams and other layout clues to connect up
>notes into voices but when these fail it falls back on "shortest wins").
Would you care to produce an example to demonstrate the point?
>I'm still in favour of "shortest".
Fine. If that is the concensus view, I'll go along with it but a number of
intelligent, experienced abc users have gone for "first-listed note". Wake
me up when a decision has been made.
Bryan Creer
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