Subj: Re: [abcusers] Announcement: ABC 2.0.0 draft online
Date: 21/07/2003 11:59:49 GMT Standard Time
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>1. In the accents I think it should be made clearer that multiple accents are
>allowed. !pp!!trill! etc.
And what do you expect to see in this case?
In this particular case I expect to see a trill mark over the note and a pp indication somewhere near it. That was only an example. The standard, as I read it, allows this already (I was using accent to refer to the general accents/annotations). It was just the wording in the 2.0 draft document I wanted making clearer; IIRC the only indication that more than one is allowed is the use of the plural <accents> in the Order Of Symbols section.
>
>2. While the accents list is now fuller than formerly, there are some others
>I think should be added:
>
> a) !diamond! to place a small diamond over the note
*where* above the note? What does it mean musically? Artificial
harmonics can be at different places to mean different harmonics.
Above the staff the same as other accent marks. (There are many other ways to notate harmonics, but usually involving 2 notes on the stem - the playing note (usually with a string indication) and an open diamond showing the sounding pitch for example. This would need writing as a chord with 2 different note-heads for example - see below).
> d) !tremolo1! !tremolo2! and !tremolo3" to draw a note with 1, 2 or 3
>diagonal lines over them to indicate tremolo
Isn't that what ~ is for? A roll?
Repeated note playing eg 4 1/8 notes can be indicated by a 1/2 note with a single diagonal line through the stem or 8 x 1/16 notes by a 1/2 note with 2 diagonal lines through the note stem and so on. Not usually what the roll symbol is for.
>
>3. The thing I find most desirable to include which is not here is varied
>note head types , for me most often the cross-head 'x' to indicate unpitched
>spoken words or noises (taps, bangs) , but diamond note heads are used to show
>harmonics in guitar music. These could be included as formatting options:
>
> %%notehead x or %%notehead cross
> %%notehead / or %%notehead slash
> %%notehead <> or %%notehead diamond
> %%notehead [] or %%notehead square
> %%notehead + or %%notehead plus
> %%nothead standard % to reset to normal
Triangles/inverted triangles/circles, x-in-circle, white heads, black
heads...
And different heads on the same stem - how?
If you wanted to go down this route, then written as chords with a change of note-head style for the different notes. My own need for notating songs has, not often admittedly, but sometimes needed a cross-head note for marking rhythmic but unpitched spoken words in a song. If you allow one different note-head type there's no need no to allow others. I gave example, but modern notation has used a whole variety of other.
imo these (and many others) are going further than abc ought to. It's
not a general-purpose music notation standard: for that MusicXML or NIFF
or another completely new one should be used.
Bernard Hill
Braeburn Software
I couldn't agree more. When I write classical guitar or other guitar music I don't use abc - I do use a notation program. I use abc to notate and distribute songs and tunes - single line melody with or without words. I thinks it's a good simple descriptive notation for that purpose but for anything more complex I abandon it for a notation program. However if the standard is being extended for other purposes, then I think my suggestions are not unreasonable in that context (Extra annotations/diacritics are not difficult to add, though I agree algorithms for placement of multiple ones may be troublesome for implementors). The suggestion recently that abc split up into a version for just notating songs and tunes and a version for notating and typesetting classical music is not without merit.
Mick
