Re: [abcusers] gracenotes
Jack Campin wrote:
Representing Bartok's material in ABC would require substantial extensions
(different lengths of gracenote, glissandi) as well as (the present topic)
implementing already-standard features correctly.
BarFly manages to play and print the following as a recognizable tune,
with one glitch and ignoring the different lengths of gracenote. This
was presumably transcribed off a field recording - Bartok would have
wanted a midi-to-ABC tool if he was working today.
X:1
T:A virgok vetlkedse
B:Bartk/Kodly, Transylvanian Hungarian Folksongs
N:The 8-bit characters are deliberate. I think it's just plain
N:offensive to insist that speakers of languages other than English
N:should go through hoops learning TeX character codes so they can
N:use their own alphabet, and the TeX crap needs to be deep-sixed
N:as soon as possible.
Z:Jack Campin 2001 (from a paper copy I made 20 years ago)
M:4/4
%M:(4/4) % what they actually wrote, meaning it isn't strict
L:1/4
Q:1/4=86
%Q:Lento, poco rubato 1/4=84-88 % what they actually wrote
N:"I" is BarFly's inverted-fermata sign, "H" is a fermata
N:The very long lines are to align the beats right in the source
N:Things I couldn't get into the ABC:
N: 1. the B gracenote in bar 1 and G gracenote in bar 4 have crossed flags
N: 2. I *think* the fermata and inverted fermata are meant, but the printed
N:signs don't have dots.
K:G mixolydian
(D/| G) B({B}d2-{(3ded}) | (d{c/B/}) (c{B/A/})
(B2{c/B/A/}.B/) z/ z|
({B/c/}d2{c/B})c (B{c/B/}{A/B/})| (c{B/A/}) (B{G})HA2
Hz|
A B ({A/B/}c2{d/c/B/}) | ({B}d2{c/B}) ({A/}B/)
(HG3/{A/B/})z|
({A/B/}c{B/A/}) (B{A/G}) (IA2{G}) |({G/A/}B{A/G/}) JAHG2
|]
Is there any more Hungarian stuff like this in ABC already?
Yes, there are a few Hungarian abc series already, but -besides your
transcription above- I have not
seen among them such grace notes-decorated tunes, like those in the
original Hungarian folk song
collections of Bartk en Kodly.
Rgds.
Kroly Nickl
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Re: [abcusers] gracenotes
Henning Kiel wrote:
On Thu, 8 Feb 2001, Phil Taylor wrote:
Laurie wrote:
are proposing for this. If I want to do
| G4 {A} B4 |
how do you write the two cases which would sound like
| G2-G-G/2-G/4-G/8 A/8 B4 |
or
| G4 A/8 B/8-B/4-B/2-B-B2 |
?
BarFly can play it either way (it's a local option, so you can't change
it in mid-tune). As far as writing it is concerned I'd use slurs, i.e.
| (G4 {A}) B4 |
| G4 ({A} B4) |
How about
| G4{A} B4 |
| G4 {A}B4 |
???
Then what does software do with
|G4 {A} B4|
??
Or even worse:
|G4{A}B4|
;-)
Maybe this should default to (the more common used)
|G4 {A}B4||
?
Henning
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Re: [abcusers] gracenotes
John Chambers wrote:
Bruce Olson writes:
|
| Grace notes are automatically slured to the following note in my
| program, because you have to take the time for the graces notes from it,
| and if you don't slur them the main note sounds staccato.
Well, that's exactly why some people have objected to the automatic
slurring. Detached ornaments are normal in some kinds of music. I've
heard this effect from a lot of Scottish and Irish fiddlers. If the
software insists on adding the slur, then you can't accurately
represent the actual ornament. You're in effect saying that those
musicians are wrong, and they should play the notes slurred. This is
a peculiar thing for software to impose.
A lot of publishers also automatically add slurs to all ornaments.
The result is that musicians learn that such slurs are just noise and
are to be ignored. You play the ornaments so they sound right, and
ignore what's on the paper. But this is really a case of bad
notation. If the slur is meaningless, we're better off without it on
the page, so we can pencil it in if we like. Even better would be to
make it mean something, so the transcriber can use it to communicate
useful information.
| It's fairly easy to put grace notes after the note from which they get
| their time duration, but such are so rare that it didn't seem to me to
| be worth the effort.
It's certainly rare in ABC, since the software doesn't allow it.
Actually, I'd agree that it's rare in most of the music that I play.
But it does occur, and when I've needed it, I've had to resort to
writing something like A7/4B//c// rather than the more readable
A2{Bc}. And, of course, when I do this, people can include my file in
a list to show that post grace notes aren't used at all. Well, yeah;
if you don't let people use the little notes, they'll write things
out with big notes, and the result will be less readable.
It's fairly standard to write software that doesn't allow something
and then say "Well, our users don't do that, so it must not be
needed." I've heard this sort of reasoning repeatedly from all sorts
of software developers. I don't find it very convincing.
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My ABC player will now play trailing grace notes, all slured to the
preceeding note so they don't sound staccato.
Bruce Olson
--
Old English, Irish and, Scots: popular songs, tunes, broadside
ballads at my website (no advs-spam, etc)- www.erols.com/olsonw
or click below A href="http://www.erols.com/olsonw" Click /a
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Re: [abcusers] gracenotes
Bruce Olson wrote: It's fairly easy to put grace notes after the note from which they get their time duration, but such are so rare that it didn't seem to me to be worth the effort. Hungarian folk songs use grace notes after a main note very often, but you will find them also in Bach's concertos. Rgds. Kroly Nickl To subscribe/unsubscribe, point your browser to: http://www.tullochgorm.com/lists.html
Re: [abcusers] gracenotes
Bruce Olsen wrote:
It's fairly easy to put grace notes after the note from which they get
their time duration, but such are so rare that it didn't seem to me to
be worth the effort.
It's common in slow airs, and in the more highly-decorated vocal styles.
Here's an example. I haven't written the slurs in here, but in each case
the gracenotes are attached to the previous note.
X:12
T:The Green Linnet
M:none
Q:1/4=100
K:AMix
(A/B/) c | d3 e f2{gfe} d e4 |
w:Cu-*ri- o- si-ty___ had led
w:Where*an em-* press___ he saw,
dc A3/ cef g2{agfg} a3{bag} |
w:a* young nat-ive of E- rin___
w:and the robe that she was wea-ring___
ed c3 A (cd) B3{cB} A G2 A A4 :|
w:for to view the long* banks___ of the Rhine.
w:all* O-ver with* dia-___monds did shine.
ef | g2a2 ef2{gf} e3 | e (ea)gb a4 |
w:No* god-dess in splen__dour could ev_er be seen
c d3/efg e4{fed} c2 | B2{cBA} G3A A4 |
w:to eq_ual this fair___ maid, so___ mild and serene
(A/B/)c | d3 ef2{gfe} d e4 |
w:In* soft mur-mer-ing tones
dc A3/cef g2{agfg} a3{bag} |
w:Oh my lin-*net so green
edc3 Acd B3{cB} AG2 A A4 ||
w:Sweet* Bon-ey shall I neer___ see no more.
Phil Taylor
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Re: [abcusers] gracenotes
On Thu 08 Feb 2001 at 12:35PM +0100, Frank Nordberg wrote: (Note: There shouldn't be any grace notes in this tune, of course. I just happened to have it handy for testing...) The results: BarFlydisplays and plays back nicely. abc2midi plays back nicely abc2psignores the grace note yaps comes up with an error message and no output at all yaps seems to be handling the grace note just fine for me. The error message is complaining about A z. Have another look for the output file. James Allwright To subscribe/unsubscribe, point your browser to: http://www.tullochgorm.com/lists.html
Re: [abcusers] gracenotes
Laurie wrote:
I think the distinction between graces that steal time from the
previous note and those which steal from the following is
musically important. I'm not 100% clear on the syntax you
are proposing for this. If I want to do
| G4 {A} B4 |
how do you write the two cases which would sound like
| G2-G-G/2-G/4-G/8 A/8 B4 |
or
| G4 A/8 B/8-B/4-B/2-B-B2 |
?
BarFly can play it either way (it's a local option, so you can't change
it in mid-tune). As far as writing it is concerned I'd use slurs, i.e.
| (G4 {A}) B4 |
| G4 ({A} B4) |
Phil Taylor
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Re: [abcusers] gracenotes
Bruce Olson writes:
|
| Grace notes are automatically slured to the following note in my
| program, because you have to take the time for the graces notes from it,
| and if you don't slur them the main note sounds staccato.
Well, that's exactly why some people have objected to the automatic
slurring. Detached ornaments are normal in some kinds of music. I've
heard this effect from a lot of Scottish and Irish fiddlers. If the
software insists on adding the slur, then you can't accurately
represent the actual ornament. You're in effect saying that those
musicians are wrong, and they should play the notes slurred. This is
a peculiar thing for software to impose.
A lot of publishers also automatically add slurs to all ornaments.
The result is that musicians learn that such slurs are just noise and
are to be ignored. You play the ornaments so they sound right, and
ignore what's on the paper. But this is really a case of bad
notation. If the slur is meaningless, we're better off without it on
the page, so we can pencil it in if we like. Even better would be to
make it mean something, so the transcriber can use it to communicate
useful information.
| It's fairly easy to put grace notes after the note from which they get
| their time duration, but such are so rare that it didn't seem to me to
| be worth the effort.
It's certainly rare in ABC, since the software doesn't allow it.
Actually, I'd agree that it's rare in most of the music that I play.
But it does occur, and when I've needed it, I've had to resort to
writing something like A7/4B//c// rather than the more readable
A2{Bc}. And, of course, when I do this, people can include my file in
a list to show that post grace notes aren't used at all. Well, yeah;
if you don't let people use the little notes, they'll write things
out with big notes, and the result will be less readable.
It's fairly standard to write software that doesn't allow something
and then say "Well, our users don't do that, so it must not be
needed." I've heard this sort of reasoning repeatedly from all sorts
of software developers. I don't find it very convincing.
To subscribe/unsubscribe, point your browser to: http://www.tullochgorm.com/lists.html
Re: [abcusers] gracenotes
On Thu, 8 Feb 2001, Phil Taylor wrote:
Laurie wrote:
are proposing for this. If I want to do
| G4 {A} B4 |
how do you write the two cases which would sound like
| G2-G-G/2-G/4-G/8 A/8 B4 |
or
| G4 A/8 B/8-B/4-B/2-B-B2 |
?
BarFly can play it either way (it's a local option, so you can't change
it in mid-tune). As far as writing it is concerned I'd use slurs, i.e.
| (G4 {A}) B4 |
| G4 ({A} B4) |
How about
| G4{A} B4 |
| G4 {A}B4 |
???
This should be quite obvious!?
//Henning
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Re: [abcusers] gracenotes
Laurie writes:
| ... (Are trills more important than hammer-ons?
| Depends - which do you play more often? Flute or guitar).
Hmmm ... To non-string players, "hammer-on" seems like a synonym for
"apoggiatura". I'd say it's a lot more common than a trill in every
kind of music that I play.
| I think the distinction between graces that steal time from the
| previous note and those which steal from the following is
| musically important.
This is something that staff notation has traditionally not made
clear. The culprit is usually the publisher, who typically has rules
saying how such things are drawn, so that all cases are mapped to the
same marks on the paper. Some people have indicated the distinction
by drawing the grace note next to the big note that it steals time
from, with or without a slur to that note. But if your printer
refuses to do that, or quietly rewrites it, there's not much you can
do. So musicians have learned that grace-note notation is meaningless
and they have to work it out from what they know of the style.
| I'm not 100% clear on the syntax you
| are proposing for this. If I want to do
| | G4 {A} B4 |
| how do you write the two cases which would sound like
| | G2-G-G/2-G/4-G/8 A/8 B4 |
| or
| | G4 A/8 B/8-B/4-B/2-B-B2 |
| ?
Well, what would probably be intuitively clear to a lot of readers
would be to write things like:
| G4 {A}B4 |
| G4{A} B4 |
| G4 ({A}B4) |
| (G4{A}) B4 |
| (G4 {A})B4 |
| G4({A} B4) |
These would have the obvious translation to staff notation. A player
would simply make ornaments steal time from their adjacent note. I'd
think that most musicians would understand any of these without
explanation. There's no new ABC syntax here, only a clarification of
what it means to group notes together.
Of course, there's still a need to understand the style, to determine
such things as how long the grace note should be, how it should
really be articulated, and so on. But ABC's use of spaces to group
notes is fairly clear and obvious (though limited to a depth of one).
We might suggest that people start using such notation right now, to
notate their favorite airs for example. Then we can challenge the
programmers to do the Right Thing with them. If we succeed at this,
then we'll have one more thing we can point to as an example of why
ABC is better than printed music.
(Not that printed music can't do the same thing; the problem is that
the stupid publishers f*** it up. ;-)
This doesn't say what to do about something like |G{A}B|, where the
intent is to have G anb B beamed together with a grace note between
them. I suspect that this can't be handled without a significant
addition to ABC's syntax. This is similar to the problem of doing
subgrouping of notes within a double beam, which standard music
notation can do easily but can't be represented in ABC. The simplest
way I can think of to handle these problems would be to extend the w:
use of the tilde as a "non-separating space", and also use it within
groups of notes to indicate an internal subgrouping. It would mean
you could write CDE~FGA with L:1/16, and get a double beam connecting
CDE and FGA, but just a single beam connecting EF. G{A}~B would then
imply that the {A} is attached to (i.e., drawn closer to and stealing
time from) the G and not the B. But this would definitely be new ABC
syntax.
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Re: [abcusers] gracenotes
James Allwright wrote: On Thu 08 Feb 2001 at 12:35PM +0100, Frank Nordberg wrote: (Note: There shouldn't be any grace notes in this tune, of course. I just happened to have it handy for testing...) The results: BarFlydisplays and plays back nicely. abc2midi plays back nicely abc2psignores the grace note yaps comes up with an error message and no output at all yaps seems to be handling the grace note just fine for me. The error message is complaining about A z. Have another look for the output file. You're right. Sorry. Frank To subscribe/unsubscribe, point your browser to: http://www.tullochgorm.com/lists.html
[abcusers] gracenotes
Hi,
I just found out that abc doesn't support gracenotes at the end of a
note (as an ending to a trill or so (and "long" trills, ie. spanning
multiple bars or so, are not implemented AFAICS., but that is a
feature which should be possible right now (like long
crescendos))). What I would like to have is
X:1
M:3/4
K:C
!trill(!c6-|c6!trill)!{=Bc} | !accent!e z z2 z2 |
Viele Gruesse,
Henning Kiel [EMAIL PROTECTED]
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Re: [abcusers] gracenotes
Henning Kiel schrieb:
| I just found out that abc doesn't support gracenotes at the end of a
| note (as an ending to a trill or so (and "long" trills, ie. spanning
| multiple bars or so, are not implemented AFAICS., but that is a
| feature which should be possible right now (like long
| crescendos))). What I would like to have is
|
| X:1
| M:3/4
| K:C
| !trill(!c6-|c6!trill)!{=Bc} | !accent!e z z2 z2 |
This has already been noticed. Actually, the ABC standard doesn't
really say that trailing grace notes like this are illegal. It
doesn't say anything on the topic at all. The real problem is that
current ABC software doesn't much allow this syntax.
There are a number of similar situations, where you can express a bit
of music in ABC easily, but various programs don't allow it. Another
one is having an incomplete bar at the end of a staff. ABC allows
this (simply by not saying much on the subject), and some ABC tools
implement it correctly (by not drawing a bar line at the end of the
staff). But some ABC programs were written by programmers who "know"
that staffs always end with bar lines.
The best solution is probably to continue to bring up such problems,
and push for getting them fixed. I'd consider the lack of trailing
grace notes to be simply a bug, since it's clearly legal musical
notation. But programmers have to be told that it's legal, or a lot
of them won't think of implementing it.
As we discover such problems, it might help if we could add comments
about them into the ABC standard, whatever and wherever it is at the
time. Maybe the standard needs a sort of "Implementation Guidelines"
section to mention cases like this.
There's another gracenote-related issue that a lot of software gets
wrong:Some programs automatically connect gracenotes to the
following note with a slur. There are musical styles where such a
slur is significant, and is sometimes written and sometimes not.
Programs should only do this if the ABC has an explicit slur. Again,
the ABC standard really doesn't mention this, so programmers have
done whatever they thought was "normal".
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Re: [abcusers] gracenotes
John Chambers wrote:
Henning Kiel schrieb:
| I just found out that abc doesn't support gracenotes at the end of a
| note (as an ending to a trill or so (and "long" trills, ie. spanning
| multiple bars or so, are not implemented AFAICS., but that is a
| feature which should be possible right now (like long
| crescendos))). What I would like to have is
|
| X:1
| M:3/4
| K:C
| !trill(!c6-|c6!trill)!{=Bc} | !accent!e z z2 z2 |
This has already been noticed. Actually, the ABC standard doesn't
really say that trailing grace notes like this are illegal. It
doesn't say anything on the topic at all. The real problem is that
current ABC software doesn't much allow this syntax.
There are a number of similar situations, where you can express a bit
of music in ABC easily, but various programs don't allow it. Another
one is having an incomplete bar at the end of a staff. ABC allows
this (simply by not saying much on the subject), and some ABC tools
implement it correctly (by not drawing a bar line at the end of the
staff). But some ABC programs were written by programmers who "know"
that staffs always end with bar lines.
The best solution is probably to continue to bring up such problems,
and push for getting them fixed. I'd consider the lack of trailing
grace notes to be simply a bug, since it's clearly legal musical
notation. But programmers have to be told that it's legal, or a lot
of them won't think of implementing it.
As we discover such problems, it might help if we could add comments
about them into the ABC standard, whatever and wherever it is at the
time. Maybe the standard needs a sort of "Implementation Guidelines"
section to mention cases like this.
There's another gracenote-related issue that a lot of software gets
wrong:Some programs automatically connect gracenotes to the
following note with a slur. There are musical styles where such a
slur is significant, and is sometimes written and sometimes not.
Programs should only do this if the ABC has an explicit slur. Again,
the ABC standard really doesn't mention this, so programmers have
done whatever they thought was "normal".
To subscribe/unsubscribe, point your browser to:
http://www.tullochgorm.com/lists.html
Grace notes are automatically slured to the following note in my
program, because you have to take the time for the graces notes from it,
and if you don't slur them the main note sounds staccato.
It's fairly easy to put grace notes after the note from which they get
their time duration, but such are so rare that it didn't seem to me to
be worth the effort.
Bruce Olson
Old English, Irish and, Scots: popular songs, tunes, broadside
ballads at my website (no advs-spam, etc)- www.erols.com/olsonw
or click below A href="http://www.erols.com/olsonw" Click /a
To subscribe/unsubscribe, point your browser to: http://www.tullochgorm.com/lists.html
