Hi,
Here's an odd question. Say you have an abc file in 4/4 with "R:hornpipe" in the
header. Is it possible to notate a pair of straight eighth notes in such a file?
I'm transcribing the bass line to a jazz piece for which "R:hornpipe" is a suitable,
if strange, way of saying "play this one in swing rhythm". Most of the piece has a
swing feel. But at one point, the bassist plays straight eighth notes -- which sounds
pretty cool, but how on earth do you notate that?
I know that using R:hornpipe is deprecated in favor of a>b c<d notation, and that
straight eighths would be a piece of cake if I followed the latter convention.
However, dotted notation of the sort you get in the PostScript output with a>b c<d is
non-standard for jazz charts. So I prefer to work with "R:hornpipe % i.e., swing" in
the header.
To complicate matters further, I have no idea how a jazz publisher would distinguish
between straight and swing eighth notes. So even if it's possible to notate straight
eighths in abc hornpipe rhythm, and the MIDI comes out right, I wouldn't really know
how to assess the typographic "rightness" of the PostScript output.
I don't intend to publish this transcription -- it's just for my own use. But just for
kicks I'd like to do it right. Any thoughts?
- Matt
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