[abcusers] V: field (with apologies to RJP)
Without wanting to re-open the whole can of worms re: the V: field Someone recently (?) posted a URL for a web page which compared the existing variant implementations of the V: voices field. I've now lost the link - can anyone help with that address? Steve Mansfield [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://www.lesession.demon.co.uk - abc music notation tutorial and other goodies To subscribe/unsubscribe, point your browser to: http://www.tullochgorm.com/lists.html
Re: [abcusers] V: field
John Chambers a skrivas: Jean-Francois Moine [EMAIL PROTECTED] skrivis: | - there are a limited number of clefs (treble, alto and bass), and | AFAIK there are only 7 usual clefs. The clefs are named by their root | note (G for treble, C for alto and F for bass), and by their line | number (lines are numbered 1 for the lowest, and 5 for the highest). | The 7 clefs are (from highest to lowest): | G(2) - C1 - C2 - C(3) - C4 - F3 - F(4) | - so, a generalized clef indication could be: | | clef=clef_type_and_pitchline_number [snip] Simple, perhaps, but this would probably lead to a lot of confusion among musicians. It is based on the idea that clefs are doing some sort of transposition, but few musicians will be able to make much sense of this. People who use alto and bass clef rarely if ever consider them any sort of transposition. [snip] Transposition refers to a situation where, if you finger a G on your instrument, F or _B comes out. If you finger a G and a G (or g) comes out, this is not transposition. Similarly, saying that "clef=f" or "clef=F," does some sort of transposition makes very little sense, and doesn't help me know how I should type the ABC. I was not thinking about transposition, but only about how the notes are written in ABC. There are 2 schools: the first one says "when I see 'clef=bass', I don't change the indicated note pitch" (abcmidi), the other one says "when I see 'clef=bass', the pitch is 2 octaves lower" (a "c" is converted to the absolute 'C,'). It's only pitch interpretation for both printing and (standard) MIDI playing. About transposition, when some instrument implies it, the player usually knows this transposition, and (s)he does not play the notes as they are written, but better plays the right note the instrument gives. It would be better to adopt notation that says unambiguously how the clef and ABC notes are to map to the staff. Possibly the simplest and least confusing scheme was mentioned by someone (who was it?) a few months ago: Give a clef=name and also a middle=note clause if you want to be precise. The clef name could be one of the three letters CFG, or one of the three common English names. (Maybe we should include the Italian names, too?) (I'm living in latin Europe, but I don't like it: such parsing is time and space consuming while most of the users don't know about the exact ABC syntax) With this scheme, some common clefs might be: clef=G middle=B (standard treble clef) clef=G middle=d (French violin clef) clef=C middle=c (alto clef, abc(m)2ps version) [snip] Hey, stop there! What about: clef=G middle=C clef=C middle=d That's meaningless. You could also use clef=treble, clef=alto or clef=bass, of course. An interesting case would be a double (piano) staff described as: V:1 clef=treble middle=b V:2 clef=bass middle=D I don't like clef definition in voices: the real clefs should only be indicated for staves. Better use K: if you want to change the pitches of a voice. This would be reasonable for piano music, since all notes on either staff would need at most one comma or apostrophe. Note that this doesn't agree with anyone's idea of the "right" default for treble or bass clef. But your typical pianist would like it. A typical pianic may be, but not an organ player: (s)he knows only about voices, and each one may go from the top treble to the bottom bass, on any staff (a voice may span many staves), and (s)he, as a ABC writer, does not want to change the octave pitch each time (s)he'd like to *see* any specific clef on the printed score. This notation would make it easy to correct ABC that was written for a different program than the one you're using. Rather than laboriously changing all the commas in a bass line, you could just insert a "middle=d "or "middle=D," clause in one line (K: or V:) in the header, and it would come out looking good. That is just what I proposed: 'clef=G' or 'clef=g'. May be I did not explain it with clear words? This could be useful even for people who only use treble clef. It's common to see tunes written out in a range that is in the middle of a flute or violin's range, which is an octave high for most human voices. You could add "middle=b" to the tune and get it printed an octave lower, where vocalists are used to reading. Similarly, you [snip] There is a musical notation for that: have a dash line above the staff starting with '8'. In my proposal, this could be done, including the computer to do it by itself... [snip] you map an arbitrary line to an arbitrary note. That would certainly be a possibility, but the question was "Who can do simpler?") When you suggest 'middle=bla', I'd say it's not simpler at all: it asks for more syntax parsing, and more coherence
Re: [abcusers] V: field
Frank Nordberg a skrivas: James Allwright wrote: On Sun 19 Nov 2000 at 11:02PM +0100, Jean-Francois Moine wrote: Also, about playing, it would be nice to have more than one MIDI channel per voice (any idea James? :). If you mean voices should be polyphonic, then you needn't worry - MIDI channels are already polyphonic. I think Jean-Francois meant it the other way round. That it ought to be possible to play the same voice through two or more midi channels simultaneously. Right, I was thinking about organ stuff :). On a pipe organ, the sound may be changed only by adding or removing whole ranges of pipes called 'stops' (when you press a key, one or many pipes play simultaneously). In MIDI, these are the channels. So, in ABC, it would be nice to have such a (dynamic) stop/channel definition. -- Ken ar c'hentañ | ** Breizh ha Linux atav! ** | http://moinejf.free.fr/ Pépé Jef| please, on reply, mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] |or mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] To subscribe/unsubscribe, point your browser to: http://www.tullochgorm.com/lists.html
Re: [abcusers] V: field
James Allwright wrote: On Sun 19 Nov 2000 at 11:02PM +0100, Jean-Francois Moine wrote: Also, about playing, it would be nice to have more than one MIDI channel per voice (any idea James? :). If you mean voices should be polyphonic, then you needn't worry - MIDI channels are already polyphonic. James Allwright To subscribe/unsubscribe, point your browser to: http://www.tullochgorm.com/lists.html I think Jean-Francois meant it the other way round. That it ought to be possible to play the same voice through two or more midi channels simultaneously. Frank Nordberg To subscribe/unsubscribe, point your browser to: http://www.tullochgorm.com/lists.html
Re: [abcusers] V: field
On Tue, 14 Nov 2000, Phil Taylor wrote: James Allwright wrote: When I first introduced the V: field into abc2midi, the syntax was very simple: V:voice number Since then, people have added extra fields after the voice number, which is where the complication arises. Could we all agree on this first bit ? Simple parsers can then just ignore extra fields. When I added the V: field to BarFly I considered that the voice which follows a V: label was a part of the field, so I allowed it to follow on directly after the space which delimits the number. This is nice, because the voices get grouped closely together, and you can align the notes vertically to make it easy to see which notes are playing simultaneously. If you do this, however, you do have to allow inline fields in the bit of the tune on the same line as the V: field. BarFly doesn't require this; you can write the music either on the same line as the V: field or on the following line, but the former makes for compact and readable music, and I would like to retain it as an option. (It's not difficult to program; you just have to treat a space following the voice number as equivalent to a line end.) So then why not use inline V: fields for this case? [V: 1] ab g2 | fe [V: 2] g2 bf | d2 Looks neat and does not require music in a field (which is IMO *very* clumsy). Viele Gruesse, Henning Kiel [EMAIL PROTECTED] To subscribe/unsubscribe, point your browser to: http://www.tullochgorm.com/lists.html
Re: [abcusers] V: field
Henning Kiel wrote So then why not use inline V: fields for this case? [V: 1] ab g2 | fe [V: 2] g2 bf | d2 No real reason except that it takes a couple of extra symbols, and involves placing an inline field at the start of a line, which seems a bit redundant. Looks neat and does not require music in a field (which is IMO *very* clumsy). The trouble is that the music IS a field - for some reason Chris didn't give it a field identifier separate from K:, and that in turn has led to various problems with the order of fields which can precede or follow K:, like P: and M:. Phil Taylor To subscribe/unsubscribe, point your browser to: http://www.tullochgorm.com/lists.html
Re: [abcusers] V: field
On Tue, 14 Nov 2000, Phil Taylor wrote: John Atchley wrote: On Tue, 14 Nov 2000, Phil Taylor wrote: as an option. (It's not difficult to program; you just have to treat a space following the voice number as equivalent to a line end.) Doing so would blow all the abc with V:1 clef=bass (used by abcm2ps and very common in multi-voice abc files) right out of the water. V:1 clef=bass blows BarFly out of the water! If you want to change clef in BarFly you have to do it in a K: field, so you would write that as V:1 [K:bass] or V:1 [K:clef=bass] or V:1 K:bass etc. That kind of illustrates the point I was making, that "it's not difficult to program" is a bit of an oversimplification ;-) The fact is that we have an awful lot of music out there using both styles, so any solution has to at least offer a chance of getting it right for files written both ways. It seems the way to handle this is to update the standard to permit either method (and to standardize it before we end up with another dozen or so variations) and leave it up to software (probably with user-definable configuration) to decide which syntax is in use for any given file. -- John Atchley -- http://www.guitarnut.com http://www.guitarnuts.com So many guitars, so little time... To subscribe/unsubscribe, point your browser to: http://www.tullochgorm.com/lists.html
Re: [abcusers] V: field
Phil Taylor wrote: Would you then expect a K: field in multivoice to affect all voices simultaneously? It's not the case in BarFly, since you can have simultaneous voices playing in different keys. (I haven't actually found any use for this, but it might come in handy if I ever get avant garde.) Yep -- quite a bit of polytonal music (such as that of Charles Ives) uses this a great deal. Currently, as far as I know, all the programs out there treat K: as applying to the current voice only, and I think it would be a good idea to keep it that way. Not doing so would basically make handling more modern music impossible. Also, even in Baroque music, you have clarinets notated (albeit not played) in a different key from C-based instruments. But maybe that's getting into clef transposition -- a kettle of fish I'd rather not plunge into just at the moment. :) - Eric -- ---=---=-=-==-===-=//===//=-===-==-=-=--= - "God is real, unless // Name: // Eric Galluzzo // [EMAIL PROTECTED] declared integer." // WWW: // http://w3.one.net/~eng/ -- Unknown // Work: // Synchrony // Product Engineer ---=-=-==-===-=//===//=-===-==-=-=--= - To subscribe/unsubscribe, point your browser to: http://www.tullochgorm.com/lists.html
Re: [abcusers] V: field
hi I'd tried many times to un subscribe with no success. Can someone pleazse remove me? Thanks Steph At 21:28 14/11/00 -0500, you wrote: Phil Taylor wrote: Would you then expect a K: field in multivoice to affect all voices simultaneously? It's not the case in BarFly, since you can have simultaneous voices playing in different keys. (I haven't actually found any use for this, but it might come in handy if I ever get avant garde.) Yep -- quite a bit of polytonal music (such as that of Charles Ives) uses this a great deal. Currently, as far as I know, all the programs out there treat K: as applying to the current voice only, and I think it would be a good idea to keep it that way. Not doing so would basically make handling more modern music impossible. Also, even in Baroque music, you have clarinets notated (albeit not played) in a different key from C-based instruments. But maybe that's getting into clef transposition -- a kettle of fish I'd rather not plunge into just at the moment. :) - Eric -- ---=---=-=-==-===-=//===//=-===-==-=-=--= - "God is real, unless // Name: // Eric Galluzzo // [EMAIL PROTECTED] declared integer." // WWW: // http://w3.one.net/~eng/ -- Unknown // Work: // Synchrony // Product Engineer ---=-=-==-===-=//===//=-===-==-=-=--= - To subscribe/unsubscribe, point your browser to: http://www.tullochgorm.com/lists.html The joy of the Lord Jesus Christ is my strength, I will rejoice in him always, for he is my fortress and rock and I can do all things through Christ who gives me strength To subscribe/unsubscribe, point your browser to: http://www.tullochgorm.com/lists.html
[abcusers] V: field
On Mon 13 Nov 2000 at 10:42AM +, Phil Taylor wrote: I think the answer to the first part is "sporadically". It is indeed a great lack of the current draft that the V: field is not discussed. The problem is that this is a very complicated extension, and nobody seems to want to sit down and write a draft proposal for it. There are already several mutually-incompatible variants about, which will have to be resolved. When I first introduced the V: field into abc2midi, the syntax was very simple: V:voice number Since then, people have added extra fields after the voice number, which is where the complication arises. Could we all agree on this first bit ? Simple parsers can then just ignore extra fields. James Allwright To subscribe/unsubscribe, point your browser to: http://www.tullochgorm.com/lists.html
