> Is there any mileage in something like
> Q:Allegro=120 % definition
> ...
> Q:3/8=Allegro % use, meaning that the "beat" is 3/8 in this case
I hadn't thought about the problem of varying beat length in my initial
proposal and I should have.
What I would prefer would be to allow:
Q:[6/8] Allegro 3/8=124 % definition
Q:[C|] Allegro 1/2=120 % definition
so that the speed you'd get from a later use would depend on the time
signature. It's quite likely that this happens in some musical genres
already. That way, the tempo definitions could be in the file header,
perhaps written by somebody other than the tune transcriber, and the
transcriber would not need to think about the size of a beat on a per-
tune level.
The fact that Jim Vint and his users have been getting the notions of
beat and default note length muddled for years suggests that (a) beat
size is something it's easy to get wrong and (b) it isn't going to be
easy to get people fluent with the correct concept.
The scheme above would also allow for more generality when the M: field
gets extended. You can't make a once-and-for-all, culture-independent
definition of what the right beat unit for 9/8 is, regardless of whether
it's 3+3+3 (slip jig) or 2+2+2+3 (aksak). Whereas when we get to be able
to write an aksak time signature explicitly the above simply extends to
Q:[(2+2+2+3)/8] Allegro 2/8=120
which would not match with the header of any slip jig and hence not
confuse their tempi.
=================== <http://www.purr.demon.co.uk/jack/> ===================
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