Bernard Hill writes:
>> Surely a performer wants to know what the writer meant? And lack of
>> repeat starts means there is no information as to how the tune was
>> to be played, eg whether the whole tune repeated or just to the
>> previous double or repeat bar.
>>
>> imo notation which is incorrect should be flagged by software and a
>> clarification requested from a human being.
>>
Jack Campin replies:
>
>How do you propose to interrogate Captain O'Neill?
>
>I never use repeat-start signs unless they'll appear in mid-staff-line
>(the convention used by O'Neill and mostly by Kerr). This is pretty
>normal in the folk world, and probably 99.9% of all the ABC ever typed
>in would fit the assumption that the previous repeat or double bar, if
>it's located at the end of a line, marks the start of the repeat.
>
>There are undoubtedly cases where you want to do it differently, but
>it would be nuts to make such an alternative the default interpretation
>an ABC player made, even if it is the "official" one in the textbooks.
Bernard Hill responds:
>
>But if the software is the sort which splits the ends at a new position
>you then a user of different software has a different repeat structure
>to the one you wrote...
>
My two cents:
Irish dance music has a very simple structure---which is shared by
the rest of the British Isles dance music, I think, but let me stick to
what I know---in which tunes are composed of parts. Each part may or may
not be repeated, but the repeat always goes back to the start of the part.
There may be exceptions, but I can't think of any at the minute. (Well,
there are tunes which have the first part repeated as the third part; I
suppose you could be fancy and write the second part and fourth parts as
first and second endings, but you'd end up with music even more confusing
than this sentence, so the first part is simply written out again, rather
than with repeat signs.)
Tunes are usually written with each part ended by a double
bar---repeat signs count as a double bars, of course---so there is no
ambiguity if you start each repeat from the most recent double bar. It
won't confuse musicians who know the music, for the performer does know
where the repeat starts. (The playback may sound a bit funny if this
messes up the pick-up notes, but it doesn't bother traditional musicians,
who are used to figuring out pick-up notes for themselves.) Lots of people
write it this way, including O'Neill. (Well...most of the time, but for
some reason he uses begin-repeats for hornpipes, but seldom uses them for
jigs and reels.)
I'm not so sure about the distinction between mid-bar and end-bar
repeats that Jack makes. I didn't notice it in O'Neill's, but then I only
checked a couple of tunes. I did check a few of the tune books on my
shelves for begin-repeats. Most books use them carefully, but a sizeable
minority, including those I like the most, often omit them.
Since O'Neill's omitted begin-repeats, one might expect that those
who learned from his books, or from people who learned from his books,
will do the same. That's a lot of people.
So for Irish dance music, at least, omission of the begin-repeat
is not bad abc, for the begin-repeat is simply superfluous. Underline:
*for this type of music.* It's just a style of writing. I don't know
about Jack's figure of 99%, but the vast majority of abc on the net
consists of dance tunes, much of it written without begin-repeats, and I'd
expect an abc application to handle it gracefully.
Of course, if the application has to handle classical, jazz and
pop as well, where the begin-repeats are necessary, there is a problem:
how does it know what kind of music it's handling? I suppose that it
could look at the R: field. If it says jig, reel or hornpipe, no problem.
If the C: field says Beethoven or Bach, there's no problem either.
Hmmm....some people might think that doesn't cover all the interesting
cases...
Cheers,
John Walsh
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