Jack Campin wrote: | > something else that's common in piano and | > guitar music: a "hanging" tie to the right of a note that means "Let | > this note sound" for an unspecified time. There's no way that I know | > to say this in abc at present. It's yet another way that keyboard and | > guitar music is the worst case for music notation. | | Using BarFly's invisible rests you can do this: | | X:1 | T:test | M:none | K:C | (A2x) (B2y) (c2x) (d2y)||
This works with abc2ps. A bit of testing shows that there is a minor bug that should be squashed. One thing I tried was: | (Cx)(Ex)(Gx)(cx)(ex)(gx) | This starts off looking good, but for the c, e and g the slur has a weird downward slant. The reason was shown by using z instead of x, which showed that the last three rests are positioned at the same place, in the middle of the staff, and the slur is drawn from the note head to the bottom of that rest. The solution to this is probably to move the rests so they're at the same height as the adjacent note(s), at least to the notes in the same group. This will also fix a similar bug that would affect multi-voice music. Funny thing is, this works perfectly: | (Cx)(Ex)(Gx) (cx)(ex)(gx) | What we're after here, for those who don't follow the topic, is a "tie" after the note that doesn't connect to another note. This is common notation in some kinds of music. You wouldn't have to explain it to a guitarist, for example. It really means "Let that note ring", i.e., hold the note for however long sound right to your ear. This concept probably induces dispair in the minds of implementers of abc players. But the fact is that it's standard notation in a lot of musical crowds. The x and y invisible rests are an elegant solution to this. We should try it out on other abc tools, and send in bug reports for those that don't handle it. Of course, invisible rests are a post-1.6 feature. I wonder what abc tools understand them? What they mean: x is a rest that isn't drawn, but is played. It's useful mostly in multi-voice music, to avoid clutter on the page. y is a rest that isn't drawn or played. It is mostly a kludge to tell formatters to insert some horizontal space at that point. It's also used as an attachment point for things that are normally attached to a "note", but you don't want a note or rest at that point. Thus, the H (hold, or fermata) symbol is understood by some abc programs, but they require that it be before a note or rest. Hy draws a fermata symbol between notes. To subscribe/unsubscribe, point your browser to: http://www.tullochgorm.com/lists.html
