Frank Nordberg wrote:
I know the problems of ABCing renaissance music has been discussed a
couple of times at abcusers. Perhaps this could be a good iluustration.
Some of the problems mentioned here are generic ABC, others are BarFly
related (other programs have other poblems, of course - it doesn't seem
to be any ABC program that is overall mor suitable for renaissance music
than the others).
1. Barlines and time signature
As is common in renaissance music, the "time signature" here is C, but
there are hardly any barlines at all. This is not a major problem. Just
turn off the error check function when playing back and it's OK.
A more serious problem are the "time signatures" that are not used in
modern music, such as:
M:O
M:O.
M:C.
M:C|.
These are quite common in early renaissance music, but had all but
disappeared at Pratetorius' time.
I'm not familiar with these. Apologies if this has been discussed
before, but what do they mean. and how should they be drawn in the
music?
1b. Barlines at the end of the line
BarFly still insists on having barlines at the end of each line, even in
unmeasured music
Yes, that's a long-standing problem resulting from a decision made
a long time ago. Fixing it would mean a major upheaval, so it's
not likely to get done until I get fed up with BarFly and decide
to start again from scratch with a new program. I could suppress
the drawing of bar lines at the end of lines (as I do for Gregorian
Chant), but that's only a partial solution, as they would still have
to be present in the abc.
2. Double bars and repeats.
This is not strictly a renaissance music problem, actually it's far more
common in classical and romantic music.
BarFly interprets a double barline as a "reversed repeat sign", that is
with something like this:
CDEF||GABc:|
only the last bar will be repeated.
THe double barline is frequently used in conjunction with key changes
(such as in this example) or to separate the different parts of a larger
composition. Repeats across double barlines are very common both in
"classical" music and in jazz.
Unfortunately there is no easy solution to this problem, since the
double barline *is* used in place of the reversed repeat sign in other
music styles...
Yes, the current behaviour is correct for the bulk of traditional
tunes which make up the majority of abcs. These usually have two
parts, both of which are repeated and end in a double bar line. It
would be quite easy to add a global option to repeat only from |:
:: or the beginning of the tune though.
3. Repeats across key changes
I don't know if this is a common problem for ABC player programs, but
when BarFly won't change the mode back to mixolydian on the repeat -
that is, the way it's set up V:1-4 plays in mixolydian and V:1 in dorian
on the repeat. Sounds really horrible! ;)
That's a bug and it's on the list of things to be fixed. The same
problem occurs with metre changes in mid-repeat too.
4. Clefs
The number of clefs available in ABC is still too limited for this.
Also, since some prefer the notation to be as "authentic" as possible
while others prefer "modern" notation, it'd be nice to have an quick and
easy way to switch between clefs without having to alter the music.
The tenor part (V:3) here is a good example of that. Since Terpsichore
was originally sritten for a string ensemble, I used "sting quartet
notation" with an alto clef for that part. Depending on the
instrumentation you might want to use treble, alto, tenor bass or
treble-8va clef for this part. BarFly won't let you use the -8va keys in
a multivoice piece and would require you to transpose the entire voice
in any cas efor that (abc2ps would require transposition of the voice
for any clef change)
The next version will support the extended K: notation like MUSE does
which should fix this problem.
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