Re: [abcusers] Changelog of ABC 2.0
On Wed, Jul 30, 2003 at 12:03:03AM +, John Chambers wrote: Richard Robinson writes: | What about the cases where notes in different octaves | have different accidentals ? I don't see why notes in the key | signature couldn't take the full normal ABC value, with uppercase | and lowercase and , and ' as necessary, so that somebody could | express a key signature with different accidentals for a note in each | octave right up and down the scale. Why do we have to forbid everything | we can't think of a use for ? Other people have already expressed a wish | for this, John has already said so for anybody that missed it. That's basically what I implemented. Except that I haven't gotten around to debugging leger lines in key signatures. ;-) I wonder if there are actually any musical styles where this would be useful? I don't know of any, but that's not much evidence. Likewise. We're missing Jack's input, aren't we ? ;) But actually, given that there have been expressions of a need for /interest in 2-octave scales ... you wouldn't have to go very far on those lines (hah ! sorry) before leger-lines started showing up. You've only got one B C without them, for instance. ... | Is K:D exp _b _e ^f different from K:D _b _e ^f ? | Where does this come from, has it been mentioned before ? That exp is a new one with me. But we did have a discussion some time back in which several people expressed the desire for a no mode symbol. The discussion then seems to have settled on '*' as the symbol, so you'd say K:D*_B_e^f for example. I didn't see any real need for this, but I actually spent a couple of minutes implementing it. I haven't used it myself, because it's not logically necessary. But it is easy enough to implement. I think that Irwin just made up the exp. It's probably as easy as *. Neither is really necessary. But then, key signatures aren't really necessary, are they? So, on the assumption that the mode has to be explicitly stated if there are following accidentals, the 2 are the same ? -- Richard Robinson The whole plan hinged upon the natural curiosity of potatoes - S. Lem To subscribe/unsubscribe, point your browser to: http://www.tullochgorm.com/lists.html
Re: [abcusers] Changelog of ABC 2.0
In message [EMAIL PROTECTED], Richard Robinson [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes Is K:D exp _b _e ^f different from K:D _b _e ^f ? Where does this come from, has it been mentioned before ? As I have always understood the standard, the accidentals following it *modify* the key sig. So K:D _b _e ^f actuall leaves also a c^. The point of the exp is to *override* the normal key sig of D. Bernard Hill Braeburn Software Author of Music Publisher system Music Software written by musicians for musicians http://www.braeburn.co.uk Selkirk, Scotland To subscribe/unsubscribe, point your browser to: http://www.tullochgorm.com/lists.html
Re: [abcusers] ABC Standard 2.0 revision III
Bernard Hill wrote on 29 Jul 2003 I did not say beginning of a piece I said beginning of a section. It has always been standard notation to assume the first repeat is from the beginning of the work. We are talking about | . | | :| | . | | :| which is ambiguous. And should maybe be | . | | :| |:.. | . | | :| In British traditional music as notated for at least the past half century, this form is not ambiguous but rather normal notation for 4 bars repeated followed by 4 bars repeated. I can see that this has limitations, but it presents a simple, elegant and traditional notation, and I am loathe to move away from this as it would make old manuscripts and publications less comprehensible. I know that other cultures have different conventions in this area, and I think that both forms should be admissable. Music notation is based on convention, and happily there is no absolute way of notating music, thus allowing development of interpretation. BarryBarry Say -- B J Say Smallpipes - http://www.nspipes.co.uk Making and Repairing Bagpipes in the Northumbrian Tradition. To subscribe/unsubscribe, point your browser to: http://www.tullochgorm.com/lists.html
Re: [abcusers] Changelog of ABC 2.0
In message [EMAIL PROTECTED], I. Oppenheim [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes What about the cases where notes in different octaves have different accidentals ? I personally think that the explicit key signature scheme as it is currently defined in the standard is already quite complex. Making distinction between the octave of the accidentals would be a bridge to far. Why do we have to forbid everything we can't think of a use for ? I could think of a use for it, just as I could think of a use for microtonal notation, gregorian notation, etc. But I think that this are all highly specialized extensions that will have to wait for a following standardization attempt. Hear, hear! Bernard Hill Braeburn Software Author of Music Publisher system Music Software written by musicians for musicians http://www.braeburn.co.uk Selkirk, Scotland To subscribe/unsubscribe, point your browser to: http://www.tullochgorm.com/lists.html
Re: [abcusers] ABC Standard 2.0 revision III
In message [EMAIL PROTECTED], John Walsh [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes Correction: in Irish music, a roll is a specific way of playing several repeated notes, not a general ornament on a given note. It's basic to the music, which is why it's part of abc. I'm not at all surprised rolls aren't in the standard notation texts. Matter of fact, I'd be surprised if they were. Then I suggest the term roll in the standard be changed to Irish Roll or otherwise commented on in a footnote. In normal music a roll means something quite different. I implemented a roll as a tremolo (and it sounded good!) by just working from the standard. You *have* to make your standards document intelligible by normal musicians if you want the abc standard to be taken up by a wider musical community than that represented here. Bernard Hill Braeburn Software Author of Music Publisher system Music Software written by musicians for musicians http://www.braeburn.co.uk Selkirk, Scotland To subscribe/unsubscribe, point your browser to: http://www.tullochgorm.com/lists.html
[abcusers] Higher notation anyone?
There has been quite a bit of discussion about features which are not part of standard notation and yet are acceptable in abc. Fine. But I propose that all such things are NOT implemented in version 2 but wait for version 3. This would include strange key signatures. N-times repeats ::| etc (and possibly more I can't think of just now) If you leave such constructs in version 2 you are actually inviting existing music software (such as Sibelius or Finale or any software which does not have these constructs implemented) never to implement abc as a format. But if you *did* persuade just one of the big software companies to implement abc then just imagine the explosion of abc files out there in public domain. I'm probably going to get shot down but I'd like to see what the reaction here is first. PS I don't actually *know* that Sib Fin can't do those constructs, but the principle stands. I note that Dave Webber of Mozart has been silent here for a good while and wonder if he has abandoned the projected implementation. I know that I have certainly been getting cold feet because of all the new features required. Bernard Hill Braeburn Software Author of Music Publisher system Music Software written by musicians for musicians http://www.braeburn.co.uk Selkirk, Scotland To subscribe/unsubscribe, point your browser to: http://www.tullochgorm.com/lists.html
Re: [abcusers] ABC Standard 2.0 revision III
In message [EMAIL PROTECTED], [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes Bernard Hill wrote on 29 Jul 2003 I did not say beginning of a piece I said beginning of a section. It has always been standard notation to assume the first repeat is from the beginning of the work. We are talking about | . | | :| | . | | :| which is ambiguous. And should maybe be | . | | :| |:.. | . | | :| In British traditional music as notated for at least the past half century, this form is not ambiguous but rather normal notation for 4 bars repeated followed by 4 bars repeated. I can see that this has limitations, but it presents a simple, elegant and traditional notation, and I am loathe to move away from this as it would make old manuscripts and publications less comprehensible. I know that other cultures have different conventions in this area, and I think that both forms should be admissable. Music notation is based on convention, and happily there is no absolute way of notating music, thus allowing development of interpretation. Very true. However your notation must be unambiguous or contain a footnote to say what is going on. Give the above to a pianist to vamp and he will stop at the end with a puzzled look. And all for want of a simple |: ? Is it worth adding to confusion? Bernard Hill Braeburn Software Author of Music Publisher system Music Software written by musicians for musicians http://www.braeburn.co.uk Selkirk, Scotland To subscribe/unsubscribe, point your browser to: http://www.tullochgorm.com/lists.html
Re: [abcusers] Changelog of ABC 2.0
On Wed, Jul 30, 2003 at 09:22:12AM +0100, Bernard Hill wrote: In message [EMAIL PROTECTED], Richard Robinson [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes Is K:D exp _b _e ^f different from K:D _b _e ^f ? Where does this come from, has it been mentioned before ? As I have always understood the standard, the accidentals following it *modify* the key sig. So K:D _b _e ^f actuall leaves also a c^. The point of the exp is to *override* the normal key sig of D. I thought that discussion had already happened. -- Richard Robinson The whole plan hinged upon the natural curiosity of potatoes - S. Lem To subscribe/unsubscribe, point your browser to: http://www.tullochgorm.com/lists.html
[abcusers] Let's move on
On Wed, 30 Jul 2003, Bernard Hill wrote: Is K:D exp _b _e ^f different from K:D _b _e ^f ? Where does this come from, has it been mentioned before ? As I have always understood the standard, the accidentals following it *modify* the key sig. So K:D _b _e ^f actuall leaves also a c^. The point of the exp is to *override* the normal key sig of D. You have fully understood it. I think that the problems of possible ambiguity in key signature notation are now solved. I suggest that we move on to discuss the other features that are proposed in the new standard: http://www.joods.nl/~chazzanut/abc/abc2-draft.html Groeten, Irwin Oppenheim [EMAIL PROTECTED] ~~~* Chazzanut Online: http://www.joods.nl/~chazzanut/ To subscribe/unsubscribe, point your browser to: http://www.tullochgorm.com/lists.html
Re: [abcusers] Higher notation anyone?
On Wed, Jul 30, 2003 at 09:38:29AM +0100, Bernard Hill wrote: There has been quite a bit of discussion about features which are not part of standard notation and yet are acceptable in abc. Fine. But I propose that all such things are NOT implemented in version 2 but wait for version 3. This would include strange key signatures. N-times repeats ::| etc (and possibly more I can't think of just now) If you leave such constructs in version 2 you are actually inviting existing music software (such as Sibelius or Finale or any software which does not have these constructs implemented) never to implement abc as a format. But if you *did* persuade just one of the big software companies to implement abc then just imagine the explosion of abc files out there in public domain. I'm probably going to get shot down but I'd like to see what the reaction here is first. PS I don't actually *know* that Sib Fin can't do those constructs, but the principle stands. I note that Dave Webber of Mozart has been silent here for a good while and wonder if he has abandoned the projected implementation. I know that I have certainly been getting cold feet because of all the new features required. One possible counter-argument would be, that if ABC was able to express things that no other software can, just imagine the explosion of usefulness. Tunes might start turning up containing information that people previously didn't have any way of expressing. Some people believe this has already happened, to borrow from Douglas Adams. -- Richard Robinson The whole plan hinged upon the natural curiosity of potatoes - S. Lem To subscribe/unsubscribe, point your browser to: http://www.tullochgorm.com/lists.html
[abcusers] Stick to established notation conventions
From: I. Oppenheim [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Tuesday, July 29, 2003 10:22 PM Subject: Re: [abcusers] ABC Standard 2.0 revision III On Tue, 29 Jul 2003, Arent Storm wrote: For the church-modes part I agree, the explicit accidental signature will confuse anyone trying to play the music from paper (except for the authors band perhaps) Klezmer musicians all use explicit key sigs I' think that observation is 'wishfull' thinking. Some do, some(most?) don't (including me) and even more don't bother as they don't play from paper... and so do musicologists. The fact that you *can* bend music-notation-conventions at will (you can very easily when notating by hand) doesn't mean that you *should*, just to accommodate each need as it arises. You will do the intended audience more of a favor when you stick to established conventions with respect to notation. Compare musicology with fonology. While fonologists can read eachothers notations, mere human beings mostly won't. The same will hold for musicologists. I think of abc as a languge for musicians, not a language made for musicologists leaving most of the musicians in the dark when using obscure features. Musicians are lucky because the written language they use is legible all over the world (because of the notation conventions) In fact, it are only clasically trained musicians that excludes me for sure that get confused from this notation, I'm getting confused every time... because they do not understand how non-western scales are structured. I know, but still get confused and make unneccesary mistakes on encounting explicit key sigs But don't get me wrong, the arising abc-standard is a nice thing (it should of course refrain from weird things like exlicit key-sigs) ;-) Arent To subscribe/unsubscribe, point your browser to: http://www.tullochgorm.com/lists.html
Re: [abcusers] Let's move on
On Wed, Jul 30, 2003 at 11:19:44AM +0200, I. Oppenheim wrote: On Wed, 30 Jul 2003, Bernard Hill wrote: Is K:D exp _b _e ^f different from K:D _b _e ^f ? Where does this come from, has it been mentioned before ? As I have always understood the standard, the accidentals following it *modify* the key sig. So K:D _b _e ^f actuall leaves also a c^. The point of the exp is to *override* the normal key sig of D. You have fully understood it. I think that the problems of possible ambiguity in key signature notation are now solved. To me, the existing jcabc2ps understanding of it [1] seems much more elegant and I can't see any reason to require this change, but I suppose that's between you and the people who write the code. [1] The given example actually produces 1 sharp and 2 flats, ie is equivalent to D exp. If you want the D to mean the normal key sig of D you can get it by saying, explicitly, K:Dmaj _b_e^f, which will get the c# -- Richard Robinson The whole plan hinged upon the natural curiosity of potatoes - S. Lem To subscribe/unsubscribe, point your browser to: http://www.tullochgorm.com/lists.html
Re: [abcusers] N-times repeats
From: John Chambers [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Wednesday, July 30, 2003 12:38 AM Subject: [abcusers] N-times repeats I. Oppenheim writes: | I've now also updated the ties and slurs section of | http://www.joods.nl/~chazzanut/abc/abc2-draft.html | to give PNG examples of nested slurs. | Please have a look to see if you can agree. It's getting to look better and better. One thing I noticed missing: The repeat section doesn't mention the N-times-through notation like |:: ... ::| % Play this three times. |::: ... :::| % Play this four times. I've implemented this in jcabc2ps, and used it in a few tunes. I've found that, although musicians will say that they've never seen this the first time I saw it was in abc... they invariably know exactly what it means. after some explaining I guess ;-) Of course, when a phrase is played three or more times, you usually do have different endings. This is why many people haven't seen this notation. But it can be very handy when you're just writing a basic version of a tune, and you note that one phrase really is played four times. The upcoming standard is not yet explicit in allowing/disallowing variant ending out of a P-part notation (which is missing begin repeats) Arent To subscribe/unsubscribe, point your browser to: http://www.tullochgorm.com/lists.html
Re: [abcusers] Let's move on
On Wed, 30 Jul 2003, Richard Robinson wrote: K:D _b _e ^f actuall leaves also a c^. The point of the exp is to *override* the normal key sig of D. [1] The given example actually produces 1 sharp and 2 flats, ie is equivalent to D exp. Nope. As I have explained earlier, K:D _b _e ^f is equivalent to K:D maj _b _e ^f. If you want a key sig with only _b _e ^f you *must* specify K:D exp _b _e ^f If there are still questions about the key signatures syntax, please send them to me off-list. Groeten, Irwin Oppenheim [EMAIL PROTECTED] ~~~* Chazzanut Online: http://www.joods.nl/~chazzanut/ To subscribe/unsubscribe, point your browser to: http://www.tullochgorm.com/lists.html
Re: [abcusers] ABC Standard 2.0 revision III
From: Bernard Hill [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Wednesday, July 30, 2003 10:43 AM Subject: Re: [abcusers] ABC Standard 2.0 revision III In message [EMAIL PROTECTED], John Walsh [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes Correction: in Irish music, a roll is a specific way of playing several repeated notes, not a general ornament on a given note. It's basic to the music, which is why it's part of abc. I'm not at all surprised rolls aren't in the standard notation texts. Matter of fact, I'd be surprised if they were. Then I suggest the term roll in the standard be changed to Irish Roll or otherwise commented on in a footnote. In normal music a roll means something quite different. hear hear! BTW, what's normal music ? ;-) I implemented a roll as a tremolo (and it sounded good!) by just working from the standard. You *have* to make your standards document intelligible by normal musicians if you want the abc standard to be taken up by a wider musical community than that represented here. I second that! Arent To subscribe/unsubscribe, point your browser to: http://www.tullochgorm.com/lists.html
Re: [abcusers] Let's move on
On Wed, Jul 30, 2003 at 12:36:17PM +0200, I. Oppenheim wrote: On Wed, 30 Jul 2003, Richard Robinson wrote: K:D _b _e ^f actuall leaves also a c^. The point of the exp is to *override* the normal key sig of D. [1] The given example actually produces 1 sharp and 2 flats, ie is equivalent to D exp. Nope. As I have explained earlier, K:D _b _e ^f is equivalent to K:D maj _b _e ^f. If you want a key sig with only _b _e ^f you *must* specify K:D exp _b _e ^f Please. This is getting daft. My statement, I hope, made it clear, as it isn't in the quote here, that it described the actual behaviour of an actual program. If you disagree with it, as that, I suggest you test it for yourself and see. I *know* that behaviour is not as you say it should be. If there are still questions about the key signatures syntax, please send them to me off-list. It's not a question, but I've left it here in case anybody else is getting confused. hollow laughter -- Richard Robinson The whole plan hinged upon the natural curiosity of potatoes - S. Lem To subscribe/unsubscribe, point your browser to: http://www.tullochgorm.com/lists.html
[abcusers] Handout, boot in
AAARRRGGGHHH! Should I track down every copy and have it destroyed? That's actually Bloke sitting beside me which explains why I'm not kicking him in the head. He was being a bloody nuisance. The rest of us were still trying to do things to do with the Rob Harbron/John Dipper workshop when he muscled in. Oh dear, he's probably going to be there this year. I'd settle for bashing out The Roads again if that's all right by you. I need to get them right and you can do your Bob Hope joke. I've found the Adrian Schofield website and he is certainly unusual as much by design as accident. His name seems to crop up with all the establishment figures of the Nortghumbrian Piping scene. Bryan The fiddler on the front of the HoM handout looks rather like Marina.
[abcusers] Sorry
Wrong address. Please ignore anything libellous. Bryan Creer
Re: [abcusers] Changing !..! to *..* or $..$ or ?..? or...
Guido writes good. Since breaking backwards compatibility with thousands of tunes is apparently no longer a problem, I vote to change 'A' 'B' 'C'... to 'LA' 'SI' 'DO' ... :-) You seem to be saying that there are thousands of tunes written in abc with !---! decorations. Are they on the web? If so where please? Ray To subscribe/unsubscribe, point your browser to: http://www.tullochgorm.com/lists.html
[abcusers] ABC20-draft review
Irwin, * I think it would be wise to explicitely reserve the use of nonmentioned letters E, Y lowercase letters. for future extension and urge implementors who need more to use %%packagename-fieldname instead Move ''exended information fields'' paragraph to front, just after the normal ones * irregular compound meter: two ways of display 1) 3+2+2/8 displayed as is 2) (3+2+2)/8 displayed as 7/8 *G: group; clarify (I still don't get its definition) or explicit allow any useage... *H:is (the only?) field that can contimue on the next line without repeat of the H: ? *K: field move all the mode stuff, pipers stuff etc. to an appendix. allow mode= signature= and depricate previous use of keysigs mode fields etc. *w: to appendix * Tune-fields: rename to use of fields within body, explicit note which fields may be used in-tune. * ~ I always thought that ~ is used for a prall-trill by default. Hardly anybody will know what an Irish-roll is (is it eatable?) *chordsymbols (rather than accompaniment chords). Note that programs will regard anything written between double quotes, notn starting with one of the special characters as a chord. (there quite a few chord notations out there... being not compatible at all; so leave it to the interpreteing program to do whatever it sees fit best.) That done, just discard any not agreed on examples of chords ( C C# G7 Bbm Ebm7) would do IMO, but as this will reraise previous discussions make a statement like 'programs should treat chord symbols quite liberately' * clefs: Is K: Am transpose=-2 illegal where K: Am treble transpose=-2 is not ''clef'' starts the specication (I'd rather like to see clef=clefname than clef alone there are not many abc tunes in the wild using other clefs than treble yet) The K: syntax is complicated enough already) Allow for more than ''the 7'' keys (clef=clefname will do so) *voices state that all voices to be mentioned in the abc-body have to be declared in the header when using the [V:ID] syntax, where each ID will be referenced over and over. *special characters Reserve some unicode encoding scheme for future enhancements (forward compatibility) So characters like copyright signs, trademark or whatever may be used in the (near) future: proposal: \$UnicodeSymbolName; Current (ABC2) implementations should just ignore it, replace with some other sign or simply ignore it (but should parse the syntax) for the time being and implement it in version 3 or so. (please deprecate the archaic and insufficient octal seqences!!!) *reserved characters Try to make clear where/why which characters is reserved. Even better: reserve characters in a specialized context. - global - within body - within header - within textstrings - within w: and/or W: lines reserved syntax would be a nice thing to have. Knowing which generic syntax might be used in the future will render software useable for a longer time. *stylesheets The draft suggests that %%staves is likely to be moved to a stylesheet. So a stylesheet gets firmly boud to a specific abc-tune. I think that's a bad idea. The way CSS-sheets are usually used is that multiple HTML files reference the CSS for layout purposes. The %%staves example do not fit in at all. Fonts, papersizes, spacing do also %text, %%vskip, %%newpage etc certainly do not. Programs should provide a list of stylesheet defaults (so the need arises for a complete current list of ABC2-directives) *special characters: why use = for a macron and/or stroke through - or _ is more logical The oe ligature is missing (fine to me as there is a readable workaround for it). It would violate the rules to allow \oe but on the other hand e-ring is not used anywhere (is it?) z-circumflex is not available in latin-extended-A (especially not as it typesetted here ;-) My 2 (or 3) cents Arent To subscribe/unsubscribe, point your browser to: http://www.tullochgorm.com/lists.html
Re: [abcusers] ABC Standard 2.0 revision III
I notice that the clefs section uses only a small number of arbitrary names, and doesn't allow for specifying shapes on lines. I think you should also allow: G1, G2,...G5 F1, F2,...F5 C1, C2,...C5 Or at least, make C, G, and F names as well as treble, alto, etc. For the C clefs in particular, all 5 lines are in fact used in Renaissance music, and limiting the notation to 7 named clefs is a problem. I understand that you can in fact say alto 5, or alto middle=F (or is it middle=F,?) to indicate a C clef on the fifth line, but this is really counterintuitive. It's much clearer to say, I'm transcribing this from a part with a C clef on the fifth line, than to say Here is a funny alto clef that's on the fifth line instead of the third, which makes it not an alto clef at all. Besides, those of us who typically read from only treble and bass clefs, can't ever remember which line an alto C clef is on. -- Laura (mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] , http://www.laymusic.org/ ) (617) 661-8097 fax: (801) 365-6574 233 Broadway, Cambridge, MA 02139 To subscribe/unsubscribe, point your browser to: http://www.tullochgorm.com/lists.html
Re: [abcusers] ABC Standard 2.0 revision III
I don't see any discussion of the relationship between accidentals and barlines. This is important, because in order to translate ABC, which records the appearance of a note in staff notation, into, e.g., MIDI or lilypond, which records the absolute pitch of the note, you need to know how long an accidental persists. The _de facto_ standard, as introduced by me into both abc2midi and abc2ly, is that the directive: %%MIDI nobarlines indicates that there are no barlines dividing the measures, so an accidental applies only to the note it's on, and not to all the notes until the end of the piece. It's really necessary to be able to specify this. -- Laura (mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] , http://www.laymusic.org/ ) (617) 661-8097 fax: (801) 365-6574 233 Broadway, Cambridge, MA 02139 To subscribe/unsubscribe, point your browser to: http://www.tullochgorm.com/lists.html
Re: [abcusers] ABC20-draft review
From: Arent Storm [EMAIL PROTECTED] Hardly anybody will know what an Irish-roll is (is it eatable?) Is there even such thing? In Krassen's version of O'Neils, I find mention of a long roll and a short roll in Irish fiddle playing. He also comments that his notation is only appropriate for fiddle and that players of other instruments may have to modify it. It seems to me that the situation is a lot more complicated than just one universal Irish roll. To subscribe/unsubscribe, point your browser to: http://www.tullochgorm.com/lists.html
[abcusers] ABC Standard 2.0 revision III - review
* I think it would be wise to explicitely reserve the use of nonmentioned letters E, Y lowercase letters. Move ''exended information fields'' paragraph to front, just after the normal ones * irregular compound meter: two ways of display 1) 3+2+2/8 displayed as is 2) (3+2+2)/8 displayed as 7/8 *G: group; clarify (I still don't get its definition) or explicit allow any useage... *H:is (the only?) field that can contimue on the next line without repeat of the H: ? *K: field move all the mode stuff, pipers stuff etc. to an appendix. allow mode= signature= and depricate previous use of keysigs mode fields etc. *w: to appendix * Tune-fields: rename to Use of fields within body, explicit note which fields may be used in-tune. * ~ I always thought that ~ is used for a prall-trill by default. Hardly anybody will know what an Irish-roll is (is it eatable?) *chordsymbols (rather than accompaniment chords). Note that programs will regard anything written between double quotes, notn starting with one of the special characters as a chord. (there quite a few chord notations out there... being not compatible at all; so leave it to the interpreteing program to do whatever it sees fit best.) That done, just discard any not agreed on examples of chords ( C C# G7 Bbm Ebm7) would do IMO, But as this will reraise previous discussions make a statement like 'programs should treat chord symbols quite liberately' * clefs: Is K: Am transpose=-2 illegal where K: Am treble transpose=-2 is not? since clefname starts the specication (I'd rather like to see clef=clefname than clef alone there are not many abc tunes in the wild using other clefs than treble yet so... The K: syntax is complicated enough already) Allow for more than ''the 7'' keys (clef=clefname will do so) will ensure forward compatibility easy parsing *voices state that all voices to be mentioned in the abc-body have to be declared in the header when using the [V:ID] syntax, where each ID will be referenced over and over. *special characters Reserve some unicode encoding scheme for future enhancements (forward compatibility) So characters like copyright signs, trademark or whatever may be used in the (near) future: proposal: \$UnicodeSymbolName; Current (ABC2) implementations should just ignore it, replace with some other sign or simply ignore it (but should parse the syntax) for the time being and implement it in version 3 or so. (please deprecate the archaic and insufficient octal seqences!!!) *reserved characters Try to make clear where/why which characters is reserved. Even better: reserve characters in a specialized context. - global - within body - within header - within textstrings - within w: and/or W: lines reserved syntax would be a nice thing to have. Knowing which generic syntax might be used in the future will render software useable for a longer time. *stylesheets The draft suggests that %%staves is likely to be moved to a stylesheet. So a stylesheet gets firmly boud to a specific abc-tune. I think that's a *bad* idea. The way CSS-sheets are usually used is that multiple HTML files reference the CSS for layout purposes. The %%staves example does not fit in that way at all. Fonts, papersizes, spacing do. %%text, %%vskip, %%newpage etc certainly do not. Programs should provide a list of stylesheet defaults (so the need arises for a complete current list of ABC2-directives) *special characters: why use = for a macron and/or stroke through - or _ is more logical The oe ligature is missing (fine to me as there is a readable workaround for it). It would violate the rules to allow \oe but on the other hand e-ring is not used anywhere (is it?) z-circumflex is not available in latin-extended-A (especially not as it typesetted here ;-) My 2 (or 3) cents Arent To subscribe/unsubscribe, point your browser to: http://www.tullochgorm.com/lists.html
Re: [abcusers] Let's move on
I agree with Richard wil Richard Robinson wrote: On Wed, Jul 30, 2003 at 11:19:44AM +0200, I. Oppenheim wrote: On Wed, 30 Jul 2003, Bernard Hill wrote: Is "K:D exp _b _e ^f" different from "K:D _b _e ^f" ? Where does this come from, has it been mentioned before ? As I have always understood the standard, the accidentals following it *modify* the key sig. So K:D _b _e ^f actuall leaves also a c^. The point of the exp is to *override* the normal key sig of D. You have fully understood it. I think that the problems of possible ambiguity in key signature notation are now solved. To me, the existing jcabc2ps understanding of it [1] seems much more elegant and I can't see any reason to require this change, but I suppose that's between you and the people who write the code. [1] The given example actually produces 1 sharp and 2 flats, ie is equivalent to "D exp". If you want the "D" to mean "the normal key sig of D" you can get it by saying, explicitly, "K:Dmaj _b_e^f", which will get the c#
Re: [abcusers] ABC20-draft review
Arent Storm wrote: * ~ I always thought that ~ is used for a prall-trill by default. Hardly anybody will know what an Irish-roll is (is it eatable?) I'll bet there are at least a hundred times as many abc users who know what an Irish Roll is as there are those who recognise what a prall-trill is. Actually, I think the English word for it is Pralltriller, but most people would call it an upper mordent, and in abc it's normally represented by the letter P. The meaning of ~ is context-dependent. In classical music it will mean a turn (that's what the symbol looks like), and in most places a turn symbol in the staff notation will be correct. What kind of twiddle gets played depends on the tradition that the music comes from. * clefs: Is K: Am transpose=-2 illegal where K: Am treble transpose=-2 is not No. transpose (or t=) is a directive which affects only playing and has nothing to do with clefs, so both are legal. ''clef'' starts the specication (I'd rather like to see clef=clefname than clef alone Why? The clef names treble, alto, tenor and bass are all unique identifiers which can't mean anything but a clef, so clef= is redundant. More complicated clef specifications should use the clef= syntax though. *voices state that all voices to be mentioned in the abc-body have to be declared in the header when using the [V:ID] syntax, where each ID will be referenced over and over. It's good practice, but I don't see why it should be mandatory. Phil Taylor To subscribe/unsubscribe, point your browser to: http://www.tullochgorm.com/lists.html
[abcusers] %%staves
I still have some problems understanding the %%staves directive,
and it still strikes me as being extremely cryptic compared with
putting the same information into V: fields in the header.
The draft standard says that:
when enclosed by curly braces `{}', the voices go on a single couple of
staves (keyboard score). There cannot be more than 4 voices between the
braces.
So what's the difference between
%%staves {1 2 3 4}
and
%%staves (1 2)(3 4)
and if I write:
%%staves {1 2 3}
which hand is voice 2 on?
It seems to me that the use of {} here is both redundant and
ambiguous.
Phil Taylor
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[abcusers] Arent's 2 cents
On Wed, 30 Jul 2003, Arent Storm wrote:
* irregular compound meter: two ways of display
1) 3+2+2/8 displayed as is
2) (3+2+2)/8 displayed as 7/8
I think both should be displayed as:
3 + 2 + 2
8
If you want the semantics of 2), simply type:
M:7/8 % (3+2+2)/8
*G: group; clarify (I still don't get its definition) or explicit allow any
useage...
*H:is (the only?) field that can contimue on the next line without
repeat of the H: ?
I also don't know the details of these fields.
Can anyone comment?
*w: to appendix
Good idea.
* explicitly note which fields may be used in-tune.
There is a table which documents that.
* ~ I always thought that ~ is used for a prall-trill by default.
Hardly anybody will know what an Irish-roll is (is it eatable?)
I also do not know what a Irish roll is. But apparently, they are
the people that invented the ~ symbol.
But as this will reraise previous discussions make a statement
like 'programs should treat chord symbols quite liberately'
Good idea.
* clefs:
Is K: Am transpose=-2 illegal where
K: Am treble transpose=-2 is not?
Both are legal. will try to make it clearer.
state that all voices to be mentioned in the abc-body have to be declared in
the header when using the [V:ID] syntax, where each ID will be referenced over
and over.
Do others think this would be necessary?
Reserve some unicode encoding scheme for future enhancements
(forward compatibility) So characters like copyright signs, trademark
or whatever may be used in the (near) future:
There is support for utf-8 encoding of strings
*reserved characters
Try to make clear where/why which characters is reserved.
Even better: reserve characters in a specialized context.
- global
- within body
- within header
- within textstrings
- within w: and/or W: lines
reserved syntax would be a nice thing to have.
Knowing which generic syntax might be used in the future will render software
useable for a longer time.
If I'll have some time, I'll look into this suggestion.
The draft suggests that %%staves is likely to be moved to a stylesheet.
What would be wrong with a piano tunebook starting
with the definition:
%%staves {LH RH}
V:LH bass m=d
tunes
Makes perfect sense to me.
*special characters:
why use = for a macron and/or stroke through
- or _ is more logical
\- has already got a special meaning in lyrics lines!
The oe ligature is missing (fine to me as there
is a readable workaround for it).
I asked a couple of Frenchmen and they said they
could live without it.
z-circumflex is not available in latin-extended-A
(especially not as it typesetted here ;-)
Correct. It should be removed.
Groeten,
Irwin Oppenheim
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
~~~*
Chazzanut Online:
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[abcusers] nobarlines
On Wed, 30 Jul 2003, Laura Conrad wrote: %%MIDI nobarlines indicates that there are no barlines dividing the measures, so an accidental applies only to the note it's on, and not to all the notes until the end of the piece. It's really necessary to be able to specify this. OK. I will add that. Groeten, Irwin Oppenheim [EMAIL PROTECTED] ~~~* Chazzanut Online: http://www.joods.nl/~chazzanut/ To subscribe/unsubscribe, point your browser to: http://www.tullochgorm.com/lists.html
Re: [abcusers] ABC Standard 2.0 revision III
BarryBarry Say says: | Bernard Hill wrote on 29 Jul 2003 | | ... We are talking about | | | . | | :| | | . | | :| | | which is ambiguous. And should maybe be | | | . | | :| | |:.. | . | | :| | | | In British traditional music as notated for at least the past half century, this form is not | ambiguous but rather normal notation for 4 bars repeated followed by 4 bars | repeated. I can see that this has limitations, but it presents a simple, elegant and | traditional notation, and I am loathe to move away from this as it would make old | manuscripts and publications less comprehensible. I know that other cultures have | different conventions in this area, and I think that both forms should be admissable. | | Music notation is based on convention, and happily there is no absolute way of | notating music, thus allowing development of interpretation. Yup. And we might notice that, for a music formatter, one possible approach is to just display something that matches the input. Interpreting it is Someone Else's Problem. But an abc player program does have a problem, because it needs to decide how to interpret such things. The obvious thing is a heuristic that infers the missing repeat. In the above case, this is fairly simple, but it's easy to construct cases that would probably fool a program. Also, I wonder about the claim that the above first form is common in British music. I've seen it often enough. But I've seen a lot that do is something slightly subtler, using a bare ':' without the usual fat bar line at the left end of the second section. This can be a bit difficult to spot, needless to say. Checking some books on my shelf, I see that Tom Anderson's Hand me doon da fiddle follows the first of the above styles. There are never any bars (single or double) or repeat signs at the left edge of a staff. In Mel Bay's (very nicely done) reprint of Ryan's Mammoth Collection, flipping it open I note that on page 37, 5 of the 7 tunes indicate a repeat by a bare ':' at the left edge. On other pages, you see a thin-fat double bar before the repeat colon. So Ryan wasn't very consistent. I also have CRE 1-5 at hand. Here, each volume formats the music differently. In vol.1, they solve the repeat problem by never starting any section after the first at the left edge. In vol.2, they do something rather curious: Only the first staff has a clef, and the rest start with a bar line (which is fat-thin for the start of a new section). Then comes the key signature. If the section is repeated, a ':' comes after the key sig. For tunes in D, that little ':' often nearly disappears against the two sharps. Similar interesting notation is used in other books on my bookshelf. And part of the confusion is indicated by the frequent comment here that repeats should go back to the preceding double bar. This implies that a lot of people think that a double bar is a repeat symbol. But, at least in the above two cases, this is clearly not true. And in general, it's the colon that is the repeat symbol. It will usually be after a double bar, true, but the double bar marks a phrase boundary, not a repeat boundary. And some publishers like to separate the colon from the preceding double bar, producing a rather insignificant little ':' next to the key signature. In Ryan's case, the p.37 examples do have a double bar before the repeat colon - at the end of the preceding staff. This may have been the origin of that perverse :|!: example that we saw recently. If the ! means new staff, this would exactly match what Ryan did. In any case, it's pretty clear that publishers' notation and people's interpretation of repeats are both far from standardized. No matter what we do or say, people will type the abc that looks like their own (mis)interpretation of any supposed standard. Printed music doesn't much work as a guideline, because it is so varied, and people can say Look, these books do it that way, so it must be standard. People writing abc players have a problem ... To subscribe/unsubscribe, point your browser to: http://www.tullochgorm.com/lists.html
Re: [abcusers] Changelog of ABC 2.0
Bernard Hill writes: | In message [EMAIL PROTECTED], I. Oppenheim | [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes | | What about the cases where notes in different octaves | have different accidentals ? | | I personally think that the explicit key signature | scheme as it is currently defined in the standard is | already quite complex. Well, I'd suggest that for the current standard effort, we just quietly ignore the topic. In most cases, musicians will be following the rule that accidentals apply in all octaves, so for them it doesn't matter where the key-sig accidentals are drawn. It would be useful if music formatters would notice the capitalization and draw the key-sig accidentals on the corresponding line or space. But this is just to make it look nice; it normally won't mean anything musically. And if some music shows up in which a note has different intonation in different octaves, it will be quite obvious in the key signature. Programs that don't want to handle this should probably produce an error message if they see something like [K:=D^d]. If there are no conflicts like this, you should just assume that all key-sig accidentals apply in all octaves, as usual. If we otherwise ignore it for now, then we can face the problem when we start getting bug reports from traditional Indian musicians that their quite normal K: lines are getting error messages that don't make sense. ;-) To subscribe/unsubscribe, point your browser to: http://www.tullochgorm.com/lists.html
Re: [abcusers] Higher notation anyone?
Bernard Hill writes: | | You *have* to make your standards document intelligible | by normal musicians if ... Normal musicians - what a concept! (Are there enough of them in the world that we should pay any attention to what they think?) To subscribe/unsubscribe, point your browser to: http://www.tullochgorm.com/lists.html
Re: [abcusers] Higher notation anyone?
I. Oppenheim writes: | | What you call strange key signatures, is standard | notation among musicologists, Klezmer musicians etc. | Finale can certainly deal with them, even a simple | program like Noteworthy Composer has support for them! | | If there are any other features that you would consider | non-standard, let us know. I suspect that many people here would consider both musicologists and klezmer musicians non standard. Musical chauvinism is very traditional almost everywhere. (OTOH, there's the universal tradition of If you hear a good tune, steal it.) To subscribe/unsubscribe, point your browser to: http://www.tullochgorm.com/lists.html
Re: [abcusers] ABC20-draft review
From: Phil Taylor [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Wednesday, July 30, 2003 4:27 PM Subject: Re: [abcusers] ABC20-draft review Arent Storm wrote: * ~ I always thought that ~ is used for a prall-trill by default. Hardly anybody will know what an Irish-roll is (is it eatable?) I'll bet there are at least a hundred times as many abc users who know what an Irish Roll is as there are those who recognise what a prall-trill is. Actually, I think the English word for it is Pralltriller, but most people would call it an upper mordent, and in abc it's normally represented by the letter P. I have seen lots of ~ but rarely seen any P Most musicians will know the ~ sign but most will call it by different names; I see the ~ sign as the most common embellishment-sign in any (folk)music I've seen The meaning of ~ is context-dependent. In classical music it will mean a turn (that's what the symbol looks like), and in most places a turn symbol in the staff notation will be correct. What kind of twiddle gets played depends on the tradition that the music comes from. Agree * clefs: Is K: Am transpose=-2 illegal where K: Am treble transpose=-2 is not No. transpose (or t=) is a directive which affects only playing and has nothing to do with clefs, so both are legal. I meant illegal in the sense of the draft spec. ''clef'' starts the specication (I'd rather like to see clef=clefname than clef alone Why? The clef names treble, alto, tenor and bass are all unique identifiers which can't mean anything but a clef, so clef= is redundant. More complicated clef specifications should use the clef= syntax though. It makes the use of the K: field for at least anything other than key more readable / parseable / orthogonal *voices state that all voices to be mentioned in the abc-body have to be declared in the header when using the [V:ID] syntax, where each ID will be referenced over and over. It's good practice, but I don't see why it should be mandatory. To enable software to flag possible typo's when you have header V:First V:Second V:Third body [V:Fisrt] someoabcline2 [V:Second]someabcline3 [V:Third]someabcline What should a program do on encounter of [V:Fisrt] with or without the header. Arent To subscribe/unsubscribe, point your browser to: http://www.tullochgorm.com/lists.html
Re: [abcusers] Let's move on
On Wed, Jul 30, 2003 at 10:16:37AM -0400, Wil Macaulay wrote: I agree with Richard wil Richard Robinson wrote: On Wed, Jul 30, 2003 at 11:19:44AM +0200, I. Oppenheim wrote: If I could have a couple of meta-whatsits, for a moment ? All Wil's messages appear in my mailer as above (though without the quote marks, you pedants) - very spaced out vertically. At least 2 0x0a newlines, sometimes more, sometimes interspersed with 0x20s. Do other people see this, or is it an artefact of my system ? In my posting that Wil quotes, where I wrote the existing jcabc2ps understanding of it [1] seems etc the [1] construct was intended as a pointer to a footnote. It never occurred to me that this wouldn't be obvious to all concerned, or that it could be read in any other way. I gather I was wrong in this, for which I apologise. -- Richard Robinson The whole plan hinged upon the natural curiosity of potatoes - S. Lem To subscribe/unsubscribe, point your browser to: http://www.tullochgorm.com/lists.html
Re: [abcusers] Changelog of ABC 2.0
On Wed, 30 Jul 2003, John Chambers wrote: In most cases, musicians will be following the rule that accidentals apply in all octaves, so for them it doesn't matter where the key-sig accidentals are drawn. You seem to forget that ABC players also should be able to make sense of the notation. I suggest the following: 1) [K:D exp _b _e ^f] will accept only lowercase accidentals that apply in all octaves. 2) [K:D oct _B,,, _e'' ^F] will accept octave sensitive key signature definitions. == Only (1) will be adopted in the standard. Programs that have need for octave sensitive key sigs may implement (2) as a private extension. Irwin To subscribe/unsubscribe, point your browser to: http://www.tullochgorm.com/lists.html
Re: [abcusers] ABC20-draft review
On Wed, Jul 30, 2003 at 03:27:13PM +0100, Phil Taylor wrote: Arent Storm wrote: * ~ I always thought that ~ is used for a prall-trill by default. Hardly anybody will know what an Irish-roll is (is it eatable?) I'll bet there are at least a hundred times as many abc users who know what an Irish Roll is ... I think the long roll is currently deprecated, in favour of the baguette. Though this may be a regional usage. -- Richard Robinson The whole plan hinged upon the natural curiosity of potatoes - S. Lem To subscribe/unsubscribe, point your browser to: http://www.tullochgorm.com/lists.html
Re: [abcusers] Higher notation anyone?
Richard Robinson writes: | On Wed, Jul 30, 2003 at 09:38:29AM +0100, Bernard Hill wrote: | | One possible counter-argument would be, that if ABC was able to express | things that no other software can, just imagine the explosion of | usefulness. Tunes might start turning up containing information that | people previously didn't have any way of expressing. | | Some people believe this has already happened, to borrow from Douglas | Adams. Indeed. I've tried a lot of commercial music packages, and what I like to do is to attempt to type in a song like Jovano, Jovanke. Now, most people in the international dance crowd will know this song, and probably most randomly-chosed Serbian 8-year-olds could sing it to you. But it wants a meter of 7/8 and a key signature that (in D) has two flats and one sharp. Both completely normal, simple, everyday rhythm and scale in that part of the world. Almost every music package that I've tried this on flunks badly. When I first ran across abc, I was quite impressed by the fact that it (abc2ps actually) accepted M:7/8 without complaint and did the Right Thing. When I tried M:4+3+4/16, it also did exactly what I wanted it to do. The K:tonicmode obviously couldn't handle the scale. But you can use the short-term kludge of K:Dphr with ^F wherever you need it, and the program's source was freely available. So I could fix this. This was a strong argument in favor of abc against all those feeble commercial packages. The real clincher was that I could email abc tunes to friends. If I can't email tunes to friends or put the tunes on my web site for anyone do use, why would I bother? But abc was plain text, you didn't actually need any software other than a text editor. And there were abc tools for at least the most common computers. The unix software I could get in source form and compile myself. Wow! The very fact that M:7/8 worked correctly was a powerful argument for finally trying some of this computerized music stuff. Someone finally had a clue about something beyond the narrow range of a small corner of the world's music. And with open source software, the path to the rest of the world's music was obvious. It didn't surprise me in the least when abc web sites started showing up. It doesn't surprise me now to see that abc is the only common music notation on the Net. (I do think abc could use some competition, though. When are we going to see some big Lilypond or MusicML web sites?) To subscribe/unsubscribe, point your browser to: http://www.tullochgorm.com/lists.html
Re: [abcusers] Higher notation anyone?
John == John Chambers [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: John (I do think abc could use some competition, though. When are we going John to see some big Lilypond or MusicML web sites?) Mine's a pretty big Lilypond web site. There are pointers to a couple of others on the lilypond page. In terms of number of tunes, of course none of them compare with some of the big ABC sites, but there are still reasons to use ABC for a giant collection of tunes. And of course, I generally provide the ABC in addition to the lilypond, since lots more people are able to install and run ABC software, or to read it without software. -- Laura (mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] , http://www.laymusic.org/ ) (617) 661-8097 fax: (801) 365-6574 233 Broadway, Cambridge, MA 02139 To subscribe/unsubscribe, point your browser to: http://www.tullochgorm.com/lists.html
Re: [abcusers] Higher notation anyone?
From: John Chambers [EMAIL PROTECTED] (I do think abc could use some competition, though. When are we going to see some big Lilypond or MusicML web sites?) I don't know how big is big but the digital tradition database is the largest collection of folksongs I know of on the Internet. The dt itself uses SongWright and Mudcat uses MIDI but you will find a version at http://sniff.numachi.com/~rickheit/dtrad/ with the tunes in Lillypond. To subscribe/unsubscribe, point your browser to: http://www.tullochgorm.com/lists.html
Re: [abcusers] ABC Standard 2.0 revision III
Do we lose anything if we couple this to M:none? or do we need to be able to specify both a meter (M:C comes to mind) and separately the behaviour of accidentals? Laura Conrad wrote: I don't see any discussion of the relationship between accidentals and barlines. This is important, because in order to translate ABC, which records the appearance of a note in staff notation, into, e.g., MIDI or lilypond, which records the absolute pitch of the note, you need to know how long an accidental persists. The _de facto_ standard, as introduced by me into both abc2midi and abc2ly, is that the directive: %%MIDI nobarlines indicates that there are no barlines dividing the measures, so an accidental applies only to the note it's on, and not to all the notes until the end of the piece. It's really necessary to be able to specify this. To subscribe/unsubscribe, point your browser to: http://www.tullochgorm.com/lists.html
Re: [abcusers] %%staves
Dear Phil,
%%staves {1 2 3 4}
Will typeset 4 voices on one keyboard staff.
A keyboard staff consists of two coupled staves
that are connected with a { symbol in front of them.
%%staves (1 2)(3 4)
Will print two separate staves, with two voices on each of them.
No { symbol will appear in front of the staves.
===
%%staves {1} a keyboard staff with only one voice in the right hand.
%%staves {1 2} a keyboard staff with one voice in the right hand
and one voice in the left hand.
%%staves {1 2 3} a keyboard staff with two voices in the right hand
and one voice in the left hand.
%%staves {1 2 3 4} a keyboard staff with two voices in both hands.
It seems to me that the use of {} here is both redundant and
ambiguous.
I hope it is now clear.
Groeten,
Irwin Oppenheim
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
~~~*
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Re: [abcusers] ABC Standard 2.0 revision III
Wil == Wil Macaulay [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: Wil Do we lose anything if we couple this to M:none? or do we Wil need to be able to specify Wil both a meter (M:C comes to mind) and separately the behaviour of Wil accidentals? Yes. Not having barlines is very different from not having a meter. Most Renaissance tunes have a meter of C, C|, 3/2 or something, but they either didn't use barlines at all or used them for something very different from telling you where the effects of an accidental end. -- Laura (mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] , http://www.laymusic.org/ ) (617) 661-8097 fax: (801) 365-6574 233 Broadway, Cambridge, MA 02139 To subscribe/unsubscribe, point your browser to: http://www.tullochgorm.com/lists.html
Re: [abcusers] ABC20-draft review
- Original Message -
From: Jon Freeman [EMAIL PROTECTED]
To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Sent: Wednesday, July 30, 2003 2:45 PM
Subject: Re: [abcusers] ABC20-draft review
From: Arent Storm [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Hardly anybody will know what an Irish-roll is (is it eatable?)
Is there even such thing? In Krassen's version of O'Neils, I find mention
of
a long roll and a short roll in Irish fiddle playing. He also comments
that
his notation is only appropriate for fiddle and that players of other
instruments may have to modify it. It seems to me that the situation is a
lot more complicated than just one universal Irish roll.
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It's equivalent to a 'turn' ,
The note above the main note;
The main note;
The note below the main note;
The main note.
{B}A{G}A
A long roll has the main note played before the turn. A{B}A{G}A
But the constraints of any particular instrument and personal taste cause it
to be modified a lot.
Ray
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Re: [abcusers] Added starter...
On Wed, Jul 30, 2003 at 09:53:19AM -0400, [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: I am one of the world's only specialists in Thuglarki music, which as you know is performed by three or four elderly yak herders in the Kletnuf Mountains of Central Asia when they have nothing better to do. Oh, splendid. I knew there were more voices out there. Thuglarki music, which is horribly (and perhaps needlessly) complex, appears to have a different key signature for each measure. Or maybe it's just that lads are getting a little tone deaf as they age - hard to tell. In any case, I recently ABC'd one of their favorite songs, the Bu Shpremt yig Platsl 'c Uv (roughly Who Was that Nanny Goat I Saw You with Last Night?), and had to use the following K: field: K: D =c^g[?]^A[maybe]=f[are you serious?]_B[aw come on]=D,, ...and that was only for the first measure. Is there any way we can expand the standard to satisfy my (admittedly) peculiar requirements? These guys won't be around forever - the young lad of the group is 113 (gotta love that mountain air and simple diet). A C-style /*...*/ comment syntax would deal with a lot of these, but I think the trailing commas may be a more serious problem. These are intended to represent different intonations on each occurrence of a specific note, are they ? I take it that your needs for the M: field would probably need a separate thread. Oh dear. I just remembered ... one of the first things that happened to me when I got a net connection was a discussion, somewhere in the stranger reaches of alt.*, concerning marching bands and imaginary time signatures. Now, let's have a look at this. The standard says It is also possible to specify a complex meter. Bwahaha. jcabc2ps will accept both 4i/4 and 4/4i without complaint, but only displays the 1st of these correctly. Interesting. Perhaps a better solution would have been to arrange for an acceptable collateral damage due to friendly fire incident, but now you've blown the gaff on this we may have to ... er, just stay where you are, okay ? Don't move. Damn unpredictable creature, Johnny Yak. aside I'll keep him talking, right, while youNO CARRIER -- Richard Robinson The whole plan hinged upon the natural curiosity of potatoes - S. Lem To subscribe/unsubscribe, point your browser to: http://www.tullochgorm.com/lists.html
Re: [abcusers] ABC Standard 2.0 revision III
Strikes me that the %%MIDI directives are the equivalent of an audio stylesheet... wil Laura Conrad wrote: Wil == Wil Macaulay [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: Wil Do we lose anything if we couple this to M:none? or do we Wil need to be able to specify Wil both a meter (M:C comes to mind) and separately the behaviour of Wil accidentals? Yes. Not having barlines is very different from not having a meter. Most Renaissance tunes have a meter of C, C|, 3/2 or something, but they either didn't use barlines at all or used them for something very different from telling you where the effects of an accidental end. To subscribe/unsubscribe, point your browser to: http://www.tullochgorm.com/lists.html
Re: [abcusers] ABC Standard 2.0 revision III
John Chambers wrote: In Ryan's case, the p.37 examples do have a double bar before the repeat colon - at the end of the preceding staff. This may have been the origin of that perverse :|!: example that we saw recently. If the ! means new staff, this would exactly match what Ryan did. It's also what ABC2Win does. I was astonished to find that now it also works in BarFly when it's in its emulate ABC2Win mode. In any case, it's pretty clear that publishers' notation and people's interpretation of repeats are both far from standardized. No matter what we do or say, people will type the abc that looks like their own (mis)interpretation of any supposed standard. Printed music doesn't much work as a guideline, because it is so varied, and people can say Look, these books do it that way, so it must be standard. People writing abc players have a problem ... Not really. Just treat any of :| |] [| || or |: as a start of repeat when playing. It just means that you can't use any of those symbols within a repeated section. The only one I would want to use is the double bar, and I've never yet seen a piece of music which did that (but thousands of tunes where the above rule works correctly). Phil Taylor To subscribe/unsubscribe, point your browser to: http://www.tullochgorm.com/lists.html
Re: [abcusers] Let's move on
On Wed, Jul 30, 2003 at 06:54:42PM +0100, Phil Taylor wrote: Richard Robinson wrote: All Wil's messages appear in my mailer as above (though without the quote marks, you pedants) - very spaced out vertically. At least 2 0x0a newlines, sometimes more, sometimes interspersed with 0x20s. Do other people see this, or is it an artefact of my system ? Yes, I see it too. I guess it's a peculiarity of Wil's email program. Good, good. Just so long as it's not a peculiarity of mine. Ta. -- Richard Robinson The whole plan hinged upon the natural curiosity of potatoes - S. Lem To subscribe/unsubscribe, point your browser to: http://www.tullochgorm.com/lists.html
Re: [abcusers] Let's move on
hopefully this fixes the problem (text only, no html in netscape mailer) wil Phil Taylor wrote: Richard Robinson wrote: All Wil's messages appear in my mailer as above (though without the quote marks, you pedants) - very spaced out vertically. At least 2 0x0a newlines, sometimes more, sometimes interspersed with 0x20s. Do other people see this, or is it an artefact of my system ? Yes, I see it too. I guess it's a peculiarity of Wil's email program. Phil Taylor To subscribe/unsubscribe, point your browser to: http://www.tullochgorm.com/lists.html To subscribe/unsubscribe, point your browser to: http://www.tullochgorm.com/lists.html
Re: [abcusers] ABC20-draft review
From: Ray Davies [EMAIL PROTECTED]
From: Jon Freeman [EMAIL PROTECTED]
From: Arent Storm [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Hardly anybody will know what an Irish-roll is (is it eatable?)
Is there even such thing? In Krassen's version of O'Neils,
I find mention of a long roll and a short roll in Irish fiddle playing.
He also comments that
his notation is only appropriate for fiddle and that players of other
instruments may have to modify it. It seems to me that the situation is a
lot more complicated than just one universal Irish roll.
Agreed.
My main concern is the name it seems to get.
As far as I know, ornamentation signs are heavily used
in two main areas:
- Baroque/Classical/Romantical periods in Classicalmusic
- Folk music from all over the world.
There's more (folk)music than that from the British isles,
so capturing a particular ornamentation sign to named
'Irish roll' makes it difficult.
It comes in handy as terminology remains context free.
- trill, prall, turn and mordent are used commonly names for
the 4 most common ornaments for many instruments:
trill ( tr )
prall ( ~ shaped thing )
mordent ( slashed ~ )
turn: ( 8 shaped thing (rotated 90deg ))
All 4 ornments come in lots of variations, most not having
a context free name.
- uppermordent and lowermordent is googled only in abc-context
so I would stop using the term
It's equivalent to a 'turn' ,
The note above the main note;
The main note;
The note below the main note;
The main note.
{B}A{G}A
A long roll has the main note played before the turn. A{B}A{G}A
But the constraints of any particular instrument and personal taste cause it
to be modified a lot.
Ray
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Re: [abcusers] %%staves
From: I. Oppenheim [EMAIL PROTECTED]
To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Sent: Wednesday, July 30, 2003 6:11 PM
Subject: Re: [abcusers] %%staves
Dear Phil,
%%staves {1 2 3 4}
Will typeset 4 voices on one keyboard staff.
A keyboard staff consists of two coupled staves
that are connected with a { symbol in front of them.
I'd expect {(V1 V2)(V3 V4)} or something similar.
And what if I want one large { with four staves ?
%%staves (1 2)(3 4)
Will print two separate staves, with two voices on each of them.
No { symbol will appear in front of the staves.
===
%%staves {1} a keyboard staff with only one voice in the right hand.
%%staves {1 2} a keyboard staff with one voice in the right hand
and one voice in the left hand.
%%staves {1 2 3} a keyboard staff with two voices in the right hand
and one voice in the left hand.
%%staves {1 2 3 4} a keyboard staff with two voices in both hands.
Some (organ music) uses 3 staves...
It seems to me that the use of {} here is both redundant and
ambiguous.
I hope it is now clear.
I'm afraid that there are a few open ends here,
especially when taking the grand-staff as one keyboard-staff
(where abc will regard it as two)
Arent
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Re: [abcusers] ABC Standard 2.0 revision III
From: Phil Taylor [EMAIL PROTECTED] Also I don't like the idea of %%MIDI nobarlines because it means something totally at odds with what it says. Bar lines have nothing to do with midi - the midi standard provides no way of representing them because they are a purely visual feature of printed music If you want to specify that accidentals are non-persistent you should not use %%midi becuase the implication is that a program which plays abc directly without using midi can ignore it. Seconded Arent To subscribe/unsubscribe, point your browser to: http://www.tullochgorm.com/lists.html
[abcusers] (no subject)
Richard Robinson wrote - The standard says "It is also possible to specify a complex meter". Bwahaha. jcabc2ps will accept both 4i/4 and 4/4i without complaint, but only displays the 1st of these correctly. Interesting. I think you will find that, with a little rearrangement, 4/4i is equal to -4i/4. Negative Meter? Tricky. "Play this piece backwards from the beginning." Technically, since neither of these has a real component, they are not really complex but completely imaginary. Bryan Creer
Re: [abcusers] ABC Standard 2.0 revision III
Phil == Phil Taylor [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: Not having barlines is very different from not having a meter. Most Renaissance tunes have a meter of C, C|, 3/2 or something, but they either didn't use barlines at all or used them for something very different from telling you where the effects of an accidental end. Phil M:3/2 normally means three half notes per measure, There we go with that word normal again. Before the 18th century, there was nothing 'normal' about a measure -- they just didn't exist. Which doesn't mean that composers didn't use the time signature to tell performers what the meter of the piece was. Phil so what does the metre mean in the context of a piece of Phil music which is not divided into measures? That you expect things to be in groups of three or four or whatever. For instance, you wouldn't say there was nothing triple about a jig even if it were written in a notation that didn't put barlines every N eighth notes, would you? Phil Also I don't like the idea of Phil %%MIDI nobarlines Phil because it means something totally at odds with what it says. Bar Phil lines have nothing to do with midi - the midi standard provides Phil no way of representing them because they are a purely visual Phil feature of printed music I think it's a pretty good description of the music that would want to tell a MIDI (or lilypond) writing program what I want to tell it, though. The barlines are not purely visual, because any program that translates standard notation into MIDI has to use them to decide how to interpret the accidentals. Phil If you want to specify that accidentals are non-persistent you Phil should not use %%midi becuase the implication is that a program Phil which plays abc directly without using midi can ignore it. I'm perfectly willing to live with some other terminology if other people feel it communicates the idea better. The standard does need a way to communicate this idea, though, and as far as I know, this is the only method in current use. -- Laura (mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] , http://www.laymusic.org/ ) (617) 661-8097 fax: (801) 365-6574 233 Broadway, Cambridge, MA 02139 To subscribe/unsubscribe, point your browser to: http://www.tullochgorm.com/lists.html
Re: [abcusers] Let's move on
On Wed, Jul 30, 2003 at 02:26:03PM -0400, Wil Macaulay wrote: hopefully this fixes the problem (text only, no html in netscape mailer) wil Looks good here. Thanks, you just became a lot easier to read. -- Richard Robinson The whole plan hinged upon the natural curiosity of potatoes - S. Lem To subscribe/unsubscribe, point your browser to: http://www.tullochgorm.com/lists.html
Re: [abcusers] %%staves
On Wed, 30 Jul 2003, Phil Taylor wrote:
%%staves [(1 2)(3 4)]
Gives a score format: two staves, coupled with a large
[ on the left side.
or should that be
%%staves ([1 2)(3 4])
No. That has no defined meaning.
%%staves {1 2 3} a keyboard staff with two voices in the right hand
and one voice in the left hand.
Why two on the right and one on the left, rather than the other
way round?
You can achieve that with:
%%staves {1 (2 3)}
%%staves {1 2 3 4} a keyboard staff with two voices in both hands.
Or three on the right/one on the left or vice versa.
Use parentheses to make the sub-grouping explicit, eg
%%staves {(1 2 3) 4} etc.
No, it's still both redundant and ambiguous as far as I can see.
Now clearer?
Groeten,
Irwin Oppenheim
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
~~~*
Chazzanut Online:
http://www.joods.nl/~chazzanut/
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Re: [abcusers] (no subject)
On Wed, Jul 30, 2003 at 02:45:58PM -0400, [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Richard Robinson wrote - The standard says It is also possible to specify a complex meter. Bwahaha. jcabc2ps will accept both 4i/4 and 4/4i without complaint, but only displays the 1st of these correctly. Interesting. I think you will find that, with a little rearrangement, 4/4i is equal to -4i/4. Negative Meter? Tricky. Play this piece backwards from the beginning. Oh, yes ! Technically, since neither of these has a real component, they are not really complex but completely imaginary. *sigh*. So it is. But not to worry. jcabc2ps will accept, and display correctly M:(4 - 4i) / 4 BWAHAHAA ! I'm impressed, John :) -- Richard Robinson The whole plan hinged upon the natural curiosity of potatoes - S. Lem To subscribe/unsubscribe, point your browser to: http://www.tullochgorm.com/lists.html
Re: [abcusers] %%staves
On Wed, 30 Jul 2003, Arent Storm wrote:
And what if I want one large { with four staves ?
You could use %%staves [1 2 3 4] instead,
which will place a [ before the staves, though.
We can of course consider to make the semantics of {..}
similar to [...].
I.e: %%staves {1 2 3 4} will print 4 staves with
a { before, while %%staves {(1 2) (3 4)} gives two
staves with two voices each.
Would that be a good suggestion?
Irwin Oppenheim
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
~~~*
Chazzanut Online:
http://www.joods.nl/~chazzanut/
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RE: [abcusers] %%staves
I still have some problems understanding the %%staves directive,
and it still strikes me as being extremely cryptic compared with
putting the same information into V: fields in the header.
So what's the difference between
You can look at
http://anamnese.online.fr/abc/passemedio.pdf
It doesn't need I write how to use it, it's self explanatory. Just | is for separation
of voices, I should have done it for %%staves [1 2 3 4] (ex : staves [1 2 3 | 4]) it
would have been more strikening...
I've processed the same tune 5 times :
X:1 staves {1 2 3 4}
X:1 staves {1 2 | 3 4}
X:2 staves (1 2)(3 4)
X:3 staves {1 2 3}
X:4 staves [1 2 3 4]
you can even find the source here : http://anamnese.online.fr/abc/passemedio.abc
X:4
T:Pavane - Pass e medio
R:Pavane
Z:[EMAIL PROTECTED] -- http://anamnese.fr.st
M:C
L:1/4
Q:1/4=110
K:C
%%staves [1 2 3 4]
V:1
f3 e | d f2 e/d/ | ed e/f/e/d/ | e3e | dc d/e/ d | dfed | ^cB c/d/c/B/ | ^c3 d/e/ |
f3 e | d f2 e/d/ | ed e/f/e/d/ | e/f/g/f/ ed | ^c/d/e/c/ d =B |\
^c/A/ d3/2 c/4=B/4 d/c/ | d3d | d2 d2 :|]
V:2
D3 E | FGAB | c3 c | c4 | A2 AA | _B A2 G | A3 A | A4 |
D3 E | FGAB | c4 | c2 c/B/A/G/ | A2 D2 | AGA2 | ^F3 F | ^F4 :|]
V:3
A3G | FDF2 | GF G/A/G/F/ | G3 G | F D/E/ F/G/F/E/ | F2 GD | ED E/F/E/D/ | E3 A |
A3G | FDF2 | GF G/A/G | G3 F | EA FG | EDE2 | D3 D | D2D2 :|]
V:4
%%MIDI transpose -12
D4 | D4 | C4 | C4 | D4 | D2 C _B, | A,3 A, | A,4 |
D4 | D4 | C4 | C3D | A,2 _B, G,| A, B, A,2 | D3 D | D4 :|]
It seems to me that the use of {} here is both redundant and
ambiguous.
no, it's not : it's for piano partition only
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Re: [abcusers] %%staves
From: I. Oppenheim [EMAIL PROTECTED]
On Wed, 30 Jul 2003, Arent Storm wrote:
And what if I want one large { with four staves ?
You could use %%staves [1 2 3 4] instead,
which will place a [ before the staves, though.
We can of course consider to make the semantics of {..}
similar to [...].
Why not; seems perfectly logical to me.
I.e: %%staves {1 2 3 4} will print 4 staves with
a { before, while %%staves {(1 2) (3 4)} gives two
staves with two voices each.
Would that be a good suggestion?
Much better.
Arent
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Re: [abcusers] Higher notation anyone?
Jon Freeman writes: | From: John Chambers [EMAIL PROTECTED] | | (I do think abc could use some competition, though. When are we going | to see some big Lilypond or MusicML web sites?) | | I don't know how big is big but the digital tradition database is the | largest collection of folksongs I know of on the Internet. The dt itself | uses SongWright and Mudcat uses MIDI but you will find a version at | http://sniff.numachi.com/~rickheit/dtrad/ with the tunes in Lillypond. I looked into making my Tune Finder handle SongWright a few years ago, but everything I found in that format had been translated into abc, so I didn't bother. I'm thinking more and more seriously about fetching some Lilypond software and getting familiar with it. I wouldn't be at all surprised if it turned into a real competitor of abc in the near future. To subscribe/unsubscribe, point your browser to: http://www.tullochgorm.com/lists.html
[abcusers] abcm2ps and 'extras'
It feels silly posting this amidst all the talk of standards, etc., but I'm going to
post anyway.
I asked a while ago about drum notation (I'm not a drummer, but I'm trying to
transcribe the drum music for my Corps). I have since gotten ALMOST everything I need
to do by using the existing functionality of abcm2ps.
The one thing I'm missing is putting the slashes on the stems of the notes.
Obviously, an extension to the code is necessary, and I'm even willing to gasp step
outside the bounds of the emerging abc standard to accomplish my goal, since my real
intention is only in creating pretty postscript output, suitable for a tunebook of
printed notation.
My problem is (and I'm sure many of you will agree that it is only my problem) that
my C skills are pretty minimal (since, obviously, changes to draw.c need to happen),
and I don't even know where to start in writing the postscript code to make this
happen.
A notation I propose for my usage (might others find it useful as well?) is to put
slashes // _before_ the note on which I want the slashes to occur, since, in my
first estimation, they should be unambiguous symbols (please correct if I am wrong).
Also note that I am abusing the guitar chord functionality to put the number of
strokes above the staff where they belong, so my current code looks like this, for the
first section of a simple beat:
(Note that there is only 1 line of abc, regardless of whatever line breaking my mail
program creates)
T:Plain 2/4
M:2/4
L:1/8
K:perc
%%graceslurs no
V:1 up
c|:7c{c}c {c}cc-|7c{c}c {c}cc-|7c{c}c {c}c/Lc/c/c/|[1.2.3. {c}c{c}c {c}cc-:|[2
{c}c{c}c {c}c{c}c||
The result ps looks surprisingly good, with the exception of the slashes on the stems
that I want to indicate a roll. The note should look like this (pardon the ASCII art):
|
|
|/
/|/
/|
|
|
000|
0
0
000
So, to make my pickup note in my example a roll using the slashes, how about a
notation like this:
//cand if I want 3 or 4 slashes, just put them there, like this: c
Also, the 7 I put in as a guitar chord is supposed to be the number of strokes for
the roll, so we could possibly even incorporate that number into the slash notation,
perhaps like this:
//7c
Am I way out there, or is anything like this even conceivable?
I suppose another way of doing the slashes is to use text annotations, perhaps?
If we could, say, make the literal slashes appear instead of to the left, or right of
the note, we could align them with the note, and raise them a certain number of units.
Any thoughts?
Thanks for reading if you got this far. :-)
-Chris
Christopher Myers
em: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
aim: chrismyers001
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Re: [abcusers] (no subject)
Richard Robinson writes: | On Wed, Jul 30, 2003 at 02:45:58PM -0400, [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: | Technically, since neither of these has a real component, they are not | really complex but completely imaginary. | | *sigh*. So it is. | | But not to worry. jcabc2ps will accept, and display correctly | M:(4 - 4i) / 4 | | BWAHAHAA ! | | I'm impressed, John :) I don't take credit for this. If you try it with Micheal's original abc2ps, you'll find that it works there, too. One of the abc files in my collection is the Mozart piece that is to be placed between two players on opposite sides of a table. Each reads it from their own viewpoint. Each is playing it upside-down and backwards from the other. One of the things wrong with the abc2ps output is that it should have inverted treble clefs on the right end of each staff. If we take M:-4/4 to mean to Play it backwards, we are halfway to what we need. We just need a way to say Play it upside-down, and we'll be able to properly represent this important historical work in abc. http://trillian.mit.edu/~jc/music/abc/by/Mozart/UpsideDownCanon_G.abc To subscribe/unsubscribe, point your browser to: http://www.tullochgorm.com/lists.html
[abcusers] Subject: ABC 2.0 - reviving E:
I am just about catching up with this review process and think I should add my tenpennorth as an advocate of abc2mtex. The ABC 2.0 draft was based on ABC 1.7.6, but the last version of ABC2mtex produced was 1.6.1 which is pretty well backwards compatible with all previous versions. 1.7.6 did not include the E: (spacing) field which is pretty well essential in TeX based type setting. Proposal: The E: field should be added as an information field specifying a spacing parameter Header: yes Tune: yes Example E:12 Multiple occurence: Replace To subscribe/unsubscribe, point your browser to: http://www.tullochgorm.com/lists.html
[abcusers] ABC 2.0 Compatibility with ABC2MTEX
I am concerned about the lack of backwards compatibility of the proposed standard with abc2mtex. Since this was the original program for ABC, I think these issues deserve some consideration. 1. I have already mentioned the E: field in a previous e-mail. This needs reinstating 2. This version of the standard has gone overboard in specifying %% type directives. As I understand it, this is a postscript notation. In abc2mtex, lines starting with \ were used to pass information directly to the typesetting level. These must be allowed in the new standard 3. When the last (none-space) character on a line is a backslash (\) the next line is appended.. If the next line is a comment, meta-comment, directive or begins with a backslash, it should be treated appropriately and the the next line appended to the previous unless (I'm sure there is a more concise way of putting this). 4. Line-breaking. I understand the logic behind the approach, but it conflicts with the ABC standard. This stated that a line of ABC generated one or more lines of input. All music was left justified and a right justified break could be forced by using *. In earlier ABC music was terminated with ** to ensure a justified final line. This is no longer part of the standard, but future software should not fall over when this is encountered. Get rid of !. Note that it has been used, it was never standard and its use is severely deprecated. 5. I preferred the approach in Guido's Draft: It should be stressed that meta-comments are not part of the ABC notation Meta-comments should be allowed to start with ' \' or '%%' The exact range of forms (The Stylesheet specification) should be an appendix. To subscribe/unsubscribe, point your browser to: http://www.tullochgorm.com/lists.html
[abcusers] Revising the ABC standard.
How are we going to reach decisions on a new standard? How come the proposal by Guido was suddenly expanded? Shall I now post my version on a website and call it revision IV? Are we going to vote? If so who votes?. The density of mail on the list is no guide to the opinion of list members. If someone raises an objection to some element of the standard do we then have to have 30 I agree messages on an already very active list to show this is the will of the assembly I think we must first decide whether Revision III is a step forward. Then, whichever version is taken as a basis for discussion, we need it reformulated in a hierarchically numbered fashion so that we can discuss particular sections ( 2.7.6 or whatever), propose changes and come to a decision. It may be that we have to revive the developers list and restrict discussion to the new standard until we have sorted it. What is Chris Walshaw's position on this? ABC is his invention and I would have thought he had some ownership of the standard. There is no reason why anyone should not be extend ABC and call it ABD, but for a self-selected group to take over a standard and change it gratuitously seems to set a very dodgy precedent - standard hijacking? The best examples I can think of come from Microsoft (HTML, Java) and we wouldnt want to end up like that, now would we. To subscribe/unsubscribe, point your browser to: http://www.tullochgorm.com/lists.html
Re: [abcusers] abcm2ps and 'extras'
In message [EMAIL PROTECTED]
t, [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes
It feels silly posting this amidst all the talk of standards, etc., but I'm
going to post anyway.
I asked a while ago about drum notation (I'm not a drummer, but I'm trying to
transcribe the drum music for my Corps). I have since gotten ALMOST everything
I need to do by using the existing functionality of abcm2ps.
The one thing I'm missing is putting the slashes on the stems of the notes.
Obviously, an extension to the code is necessary, and I'm even willing to gasp
step outside the bounds of the emerging abc standard to accomplish my goal,
since my real intention is only in creating pretty postscript output, suitable
for a tunebook of printed notation.
My problem is (and I'm sure many of you will agree that it is only my problem)
that my C skills are pretty minimal (since, obviously, changes to draw.c need to
happen), and I don't even know where to start in writing the postscript code to
make this happen.
A notation I propose for my usage (might others find it useful as well?) is to
put slashes // _before_ the note on which I want the slashes to occur, since,
in my first estimation, they should be unambiguous symbols (please correct if I
am wrong).
Also note that I am abusing the guitar chord functionality to put the number of
strokes above the staff where they belong, so my current code looks like this,
for the first section of a simple beat:
(Note that there is only 1 line of abc, regardless of whatever line breaking my
mail program creates)
T:Plain 2/4
M:2/4
L:1/8
K:perc
%%graceslurs no
V:1 up
c|:7c{c}c {c}cc-|7c{c}c {c}cc-|7c{c}c {c}c/Lc/c/c/|[1.2.3. {c}c{c}c {c}cc-
:|[2 {c}c{c}c {c}c{c}c||
The result ps looks surprisingly good, with the exception of the slashes on the
stems that I want to indicate a roll. The note should look like this (pardon
the ASCII art):
|
|
|/
/|/
/|
|
|
000|
0
0
000
So, to make my pickup note in my example a roll using the slashes, how about a
notation like this:
//cand if I want 3 or 4 slashes, just put them there, like this: c
Also, the 7 I put in as a guitar chord is supposed to be the number of strokes
for the roll, so we could possibly even incorporate that number into the slash
notation, perhaps like this:
//7c
Am I way out there, or is anything like this even conceivable?
I suppose another way of doing the slashes is to use text annotations, perhaps?
If we could, say, make the literal slashes appear instead of to the left, or
right of the note, we could align them with the note, and raise them a certain
number of units.
Any thoughts?
Thanks for reading if you got this far. :-)
-Chris
Christopher Myers
em: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
aim: chrismyers001
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s.html
The term you describe is called a tremolo, or more explicitly a stem
tremolo. Strings (including guitars and mandolins etc) use it.
In timpani it's called a drum roll and may be notated with tr over the
note rather than the slashed stem.
Ironically it was what I understood a roll to mean before I was told
that an abc roll was really a pralltriller and I had implemented it as a
stem tremolo in Music Publisher. :-(
Bernard Hill
Braeburn Software
Author of Music Publisher system
Music Software written by musicians for musicians
http://www.braeburn.co.uk
Selkirk, Scotland
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Re: [abcusers] abcm2ps and 'extras'
From: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
T:Plain 2/4
M:2/4
L:1/8
K:perc
%%graceslurs no
V:1 up
c|:7c{c}c {c}cc-|7c{c}c {c}cc-|7c{c}c {c}c/Lc/c/c/|\
[1.2.3. {c}c{c}c {c}cc-:|[2 {c}c{c}c {c}c{c}c||
The result ps looks surprisingly good, with the exception
of the slashes on the stems that I want to indicate a roll.
The note should look like this (pardon the ASCII art):
|
|
|/
/|/
/|
|
|
000|
0
0
000
This is the perception of a *roll* I am used to ;-)
I'd suggest that you use a few of the redefinable symbols
(you wont use mordents and the like in percussion do you?)
U: ~ = +roll1+
U: T = +roll2+
U: M = +roll3+
for 1 2 and 3 slashes through. These won't interfere with
the use of / as division.
Within the interpreteing program, drawing one or more slashes
trough a notestick is very similar as drawing a symbol near it.
BTW, I think that these symbols ar to be within the new standard
Every notation for mandoline and thelike needs them also.
Arent
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Re: [abcusers] ABC20-draft review
The largest body of published abc is in the realm of Irish dance music, in which the roll is a well-understood term meaning 'decorate here as appropriate to your combination of instrument, region and personal aesthetic'. It will be interesting to see where the next explosion (of content, I mean, not of personality!) takes place. I'd love to see it in the area of vocal music - hymns and such-like. My personal opinion is that abc is most useful for large bodies of similarly-styled music to be used by musicians as a rough guide to repertoire instead of an exact guide to performance. I guess that's why I don't expect an explosion of content when/if Finale supports abc output... wil Jon Freeman wrote: From: "Arent Storm" [EMAIL PROTECTED] Hardly anybody will know what an Irish-roll is (is it eatable?) Is there even such thing? In Krassen's version of O'Neils, I find mention of a long roll and a short roll in Irish fiddle playing. He also comments that his notation is only appropriate for fiddle and that players of other instruments may have to modify it. It seems to me that the situation is a lot more complicated than just one "universal" Irish roll. To subscribe/unsubscribe, point your browser to: http://www.tullochgorm.com/lists.html
Re: [abcusers] Changelog of ABC 2.0
I. Oppenheim writes: | | I suggest the following: ... | 2) [K:D oct _B,,, _e'' ^F] will accept octave sensitive key signature definitions. That's wonderful! I'm going to have to find an excuse to do something like this. I'm not too sure of Zouki's example, but with a bit more thought, I'm sure I can cook up an example that makes it look reasonable. With a bit more work, we can produce some abc versions of those musical parodies that float around in the classical music crowd ... To subscribe/unsubscribe, point your browser to: http://www.tullochgorm.com/lists.html
Re: [abcusers] (no subject)
On Wed, Jul 30, 2003 at 09:49:33PM +, John Chambers wrote: Richard Robinson writes: | On Wed, Jul 30, 2003 at 02:45:58PM -0400, [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: | Technically, since neither of these has a real component, they are not | really complex but completely imaginary. | | *sigh*. So it is. | | But not to worry. jcabc2ps will accept, and display correctly | M:(4 - 4i) / 4 | | BWAHAHAA ! | | I'm impressed, John :) I don't take credit for this. If you try it with Micheal's original abc2ps, you'll find that it works there, too. It certainly makes your point that the abc-midi converters often have it harder than the typesetters. One of the abc files in my collection is the Mozart piece that is to be placed between two players on opposite sides of a table. Each reads it from their own viewpoint. Each is playing it upside-down and backwards from the other. It's a shame he couldn't have had ABC. God only knows what he might have done with it ... One of the things wrong with the abc2ps output is that it should have inverted treble clefs on the right end of each staff. If we take M:-4/4 to mean to Play it backwards, we are halfway to what we need. We just need a way to say Play it upside-down, and we'll be able to properly represent this important historical work in abc. Uh-oh ... -- Richard Robinson The whole plan hinged upon the natural curiosity of potatoes - S. Lem To subscribe/unsubscribe, point your browser to: http://www.tullochgorm.com/lists.html
Re: [abcusers] abcm2ps and 'extras'
Chris Meyers writes: The one thing I'm missing is putting the slashes on the stems of the notes. Obviously, an extension to the code is necessary, and I'm even willing to gasp step outside the bounds of the emerging abc standard to accomplish my goal, since my real intention is only in creating pretty postscript output, There are two solutions here. The first is, as has been suggested, include these as decorations e.g. !roll-types!; that could be added into the standard right now. Then alias them with one of the letters H--Z for use in the abc itself. This might be generally useful, since I gather that these also occur as tremolo markers in string music. A more elegant solution, which is bound to be done...manana...is to develop an abc percussion notation, starting from the beginning. This might be possible, because some presently-used abc notation will be freed in a percussion clef. The problem, of course, is that it requires someone who *really* knows about percussion to do this. Any candidates? (Vicious circle: Drummers don't use abc because abc doesn't cater to drummers because drummers don't use...) Cheers, John Walsh To subscribe/unsubscribe, point your browser to: http://www.tullochgorm.com/lists.html
RE: [abcusers] %%staves
I still have some problems understanding the %%staves directive,
and it still strikes me as being extremely cryptic compared with
putting the same information into V: fields in the header.
So what's the difference between
You can look at
http://anamnese.online.fr/abc/passemedio.pdf
Oh, I've got abcm2ps - I can figure out what it does for myself.
However, we're talking about a standard here, and it should
describe exactly how the format works. Anyone reading it
should be able to write a standard-compliant program given
that information, without having to look at the way another
program implements it. At present that's not true.
Sorry, but I do find this %%staves thing messy and ill thought
out. Here's another example. Piano staff, just two voices,
and for convenience I'll label them V:Left and V:Right.
%%staves {Right Left}
Notice anything wrong here?
There are some synths where you can re-program the keyboard so
that the high notes are on the left. Some people can even play
them like that.
And here's another - to turn long barlines off you add a | between
the voice labels. That's the abc bar line symbol, and it's being
used to mean no bar line.
Phil Taylor
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Re: [abcusers] abcm2ps and 'extras'
in addition,Chris your suggested solution would be inadvisable because it would be errror prone: //C //C and //C//C look pretty similar, but most parsers use C// as a synonym for C/4 wil John Walsh wrote: Chris Meyers writes: The one thing I'm missing is putting the slashes on the stems of the notes. Obviously, an extension to the code is necessary, and I'm even willing to gasp step outside the bounds of the emerging abc standard to accomplish my goal, since my real intention is only in creating pretty postscript output, There are two solutions here. The first is, as has been suggested, include these as decorations e.g. !roll-types!; that could be added into the standard right now. Then alias them with one of the letters H--Z for use in the abc itself. This might be generally useful, since I gather that these also occur as tremolo markers in string music. A more elegant solution, which is bound to be done...manana...is to develop an abc percussion notation, starting from the beginning. This might be possible, because some presently-used abc notation will be freed in a percussion clef. The problem, of course, is that it requires someone who *really* knows about percussion to do this. Any candidates? (Vicious circle: Drummers don't use abc because abc doesn't cater to drummers because drummers don't use...) Cheers, John Walsh To subscribe/unsubscribe, point your browser to: http://www.tullochgorm.com/lists.html To subscribe/unsubscribe, point your browser to: http://www.tullochgorm.com/lists.html
