A recent discussion of mediaeval harmony on rec.music.early involved
Margo Schulter posting a few examples in a roll-your-own ASCII notation,
which led to some confused responses about proportional fonts. So, it
seemed to me that ABC ought to fix that; fixed-width fonts are useful
for ABC but not essential if you have software to turn it into something
else.
This is one of Margo's examples as she posted it:
> Readings of the rhythmic fine points in this rondeau, _He, Diex! quant
> verrai_, can vary, so that this version is only one possible solution,
> with each of the indicated semibreves dividing a breve taken as having
> equal duration (e.g. triplets at the end of the second unit):
>
> Musical Form: AB AAAB AB
>
> A | B
>
> 1 2 3 + | 1 + 2 3 + + | 1 2 3 + | 1 + 2 + 3 | 123 ||
> C4 F4 G4 A4 G4 F4 E4 D4 E4 F4 G4 F4 E4 D4 B3 C4
> F4 F4 E4 D4 E4 E4 D4 C4 B3 C4 D4 C4 D4 E4 F4
> F3 F3 A3 G3 A3 G3 G3 F3
My guess of what she meant, but with the part playing order commented
out because of BarFly's bugs in interpreting it:
X:1
T:He, Diex! quant verrai
C:Adam de la Halle
M:3/1
L:1/1
Q:1/1=80
% P:AB AAAB AB
K:F Lydian
% P:A
[V:1] C2 F/ G/ |A2 (3G/F/E/|D2 ||
[V:2] F2 F/ F/ |E/D/ E (3E/D/C/|B,2||
[V:3] F,2 F,/ F,/|A,3 |G,2||
% P:B
[V:1] E/ F/| G/F/ E/D/ B,|C3 ||
[V:2] C | D/C/ D E |F3 ||
[V:3] A, | G,2 G,|F,3||
Margo replied as follows:
--- begin quote ---
Hello, there, and I'm using abc2ps, which gave curious results with the
above file, but does part of what I'm going after with
%%scale .92
%%maxshrink .8
X:2
T: He Diex! quant verrai
T: Adam de la Halle
M:3/4
L:1/8
P:ABAAABAB
K:F Lydian -8va
V:1 name=Tr
P:A
c4 fg | a4 (3gfe | d4 \
V:2 name=Du
f4 f2 | ed e2 (3edc | B4 \
V:3 name=Te
F4 F2 | A4 A2 | G4 \
V:1 name=Tr
P:B
ef | gf ed B2 | c6|]
V:2 name=Du
c2 | dc d2 e2 | f6|]
V:3 name=Te
A2 | G4 G2 | F6|]
The problem is that I really don't want a line break between the two parts
or sections of the piece, and it still happens, despite my using the \
characters at the end of the coded line. Maybe I should look for some
other way to put an indication of the "A" and "B" sections into the score;
if necessary, I could code it myself in PostScript by modifying the output
from abc2ps. Of course, that isn't exactly portable abc code for exactly
what I want.
--- end quote ---
But BarFly can neither play nor display her version. It doesn't even
try to give an error report.
If we're going to use ABC as an alternative to notations like Margo's
original one on Usenet music forums, we need to do better than this.
Can anybody come up with a version of the above piece which
(a) displays and plays on BarFly (perhaps for now without doing the part
order correctly, that can always be faked by a lot of copy and paste)
(b) displays with abcm2ps
(c) retains the source-readability of the above - this is essential as
the notation would be posted to forums where most users have no
previous experience of ABC and will object violently to gibberish
in %% lines.
And if there's another application which can process that piece in some
recognizable way, let's see what modifications you need to make for it
too.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------
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<http://www.purr.demon.co.uk/jack> * food intolerance data & recipes,
Mac logic fonts, Scots traditional music files, and my CD-ROM "Embro, Embro".
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