I'm assuming your tongue is firmly in cheek here, but a couple of things
are useful to mention:
- traditional tunes are often notated differently than they are played.
Hornpipes are a good example, since they can be written straight and
played dotted (Note: I am not talking about abc, just about dots and lines)
- the same tune may be played differently in different traditions. Again,
a hornpipe may be played dotted in Ireland, and almost indistinguishably
from a reel in Cape Breton.
- player programs can reproduce the notation exactly, but then it doesn't
sound like the tune, so various explicit or implicit stress programs are
devised. See BarFly for some nice explicit programs.
- MIDI files lose some information in the translation, such as the 'type'
of tune (the R: field in abc) which means that a human being must at a
minimum interactively put that information back by specifying the stress
program to use.
By the way, the > notation was originally invented to notate strathspeys,
not hornpipes (personally I would not use it for hornpipes, but would notate
them straight and assume (in my arrogance) that the reader would know
how to swing the tune appropriately). As such, it was one of the earliest
examples of an extension to notate tunes that were outside the original
scope of abc.
wil
James Allwright wrote:
> On Tue 12 Jun 2001 at 09:29PM +0200, Gianni Cunich wrote:
> > Sorry, but I actually got bored about the discussion about the abc2midi
>behaviour...so bored I actually felt sick!
> >
> > The problem about the way abc2midi handles the broken rythms shortcut is that it
>actually playes (and "save as" midi) any beat using the ">" symbol as a triplet, even
>if in the R: field you state the tune is a schottische (and English schottisches, at
>least the oldest ones, are usually played dotted, unlike the recent ones of the
>hornpipes), or a polka, or anything else...
> >
> > In other terms, the basic thuth is that ac2midi is not an "abc compliant"
>software, or, to say better, is unreliable...and that's all we can (and should) say
>about it!
>
> I have to disagree strongly here. My understanding of the a>b construct is
> that it is specially for hornpipes and so you can use it for a 2:1 ratio
> if that is what you want elsewhere. If you want 3:1, then you can write
> a3/2b/2. The real culprits are the musicians who have been notating
> hornpipes in 4/4 when they should have been using 6/8 or 6/16. In other
> words, you are blaming a piece of software because real musicians have
> sloppy musical conventions!
>
> Remember that abc2midi is intended chiefly to produce playable MIDI files, not
> for back-conversion into notation programs.
>
> James Allwright
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Wil Macaulay email: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
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