James Allwright writes:
>The idea is that we introduce another V: directive
>
V:SYNC
>
>which marks the point in the abc where all the currently active voices
>synchronize together and we go back into a global mode. Any K:, L: or
>Q: field from this point on will apply to all voices (so we have a
>mechanism for global parameters). The V:SYNC also provides a checkpoint
>in the abc - if the different voices have different musical time, then
>we know that something has gone wrong and any good abc program should
>report an error.
Hmm. Sort of like a tab stop? Tell me, can you use that to
synchronize at other than a bar line? Because I've just been playing a
little bit with multistaff music and voices, and from a few of the
examples I've looked at, I had the impression that if we ever got serious
about them, we'd have to introduce some kind of tabs to allow
synchronization at other than bar lines. (And de-synchronize at some bar
lines.) It comes up in polyrhythmic music. So I'm happy to see
that the suggestion came forth, but a bit surprised that it was in the
form of a header field, not an in-line tab. An alternative would be to
use, say "&" as a tab stop in-line---that's what tex and latex use. (It
would conflict with the use of & in abc2mtex, but I wonder if anybody else
has ever actually used it?) The convention would be that all the voices
would line up at these tabs.
The following example seems relevant. It came from the users guide
to MusixTeX, which gave the MusiXteX code. I translated it to abc, but I
admit that I don't really understand how to use the voices correctly on
this one. It's polyrhythmic music---the first voice is in 3/4, the second
in 2/4, and the last in 3/8. The notes should line up, but the only bar
lines at which all three parts line up are the double bars and the
repeats. All parts should finish at the same time. (I'm saying this,
because it may not be evident in the print-out---at least I wasn't able to
get it to work in what I've tried so far. There is probably a better way
to write out the abc---it should *at least* be possible to get the meters
of the different staves to be different. I tried to get it via in-line
changes of rhythm, but that didn't seem to work either.)
(This is part of a project which Laura Conrad has agreed to post
on Source Forge, so it should be available shortly at, I'm afraid, *much*
greater length.)
Cheers,
John Walsh
X:7
T:Polyrhythmic with No Coherent Bar Division
Z:The notes line up, but the bars don't
B:MusiXTeX doc p 47
M:3/4
L:1/8
K:C
V:1
F2 F2 F2|F2 F2 F2||F2 F2 F2|F2 F2 F2:|
V:2
M:2/4
F2 F2|F2 F2|F2 F2||F2 F2|F2 F2|F2 F2:|
V:3
M:3/8 L:1/8
F3|FFF|F3|FFF|F3|FFF|F3|FFF|F3|FFF|F3|FFF:|
To subscribe/unsubscribe, point your browser to: http://www.tullochgorm.com/lists.html
