On Wed, 13 Jun 2001, James Allwright wrote:
>
> 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.
My understanding has always been that a>b is equivalent to this. The idea
that the '<' should be peculiar to hornpipes is one I've never come across
before, and I don't think it makes much sense. If a>b is expected to sound
(3a2b, I'd expect to have seen that mentioned in The Standard.
> 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!
Well, maybe. I remember getting an email from someone remarking that I'd
obviously never heard "Harvest Home", because I'd written it as even 4/4
quavers, and it's "in" 6/8. But this _is_ the practice. I'd think an
approach like Henriks, reading the R: field for clues on how to mangle
the written rhythms, is the right way to handle it (as a musician does,
playing from the paper, now I thoink of it). "Hornpipe" isn't exactly a
unitary construct, though, there's a range of different weightings between
the notepairs in different sub-styles.
--
Richard Robinson
"The whole plan hinged upon the natural curiosity of potatoes" - S. Lem
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