On Fri, 16 Nov 2001, James Allwright wrote: > On Thu 15 Nov 2001 at 02:33PM -0000, Laurie Griffiths wrote: > > The point is that 120 (or Allegro) means 120 of "something or other" every > > minute. > > This is where the problem is. Allegro needs to be defined as 120 3/8 notes > per minute or 180 1/4 notes per minute, so that we don't get left > wondering what the something is.
You just gave a perfect example of the problem: Once you define Allegro as 3/8=120, all of your 4/4 Allegro pieces will be played back at 180 beats per minute, which is much too fast. And all of your 2/2 Allegro pieces will be played back at 90 beats per minute, which is much too slow. And all of your 4/8 Allegro pieces will be played back at 360 beats per minute! > Assigning 120 to the word "Allegro" does not capture the way this term > is used in the musical world. In the musical world, "Allegro" can be understood more or less in terms of beats per minute. Whether this means quarter notes per minute, dotted quarters per minute, or half notes per minute depends on the context, so the note value cannot be part of the definition of "Allegro." "120 beats per minute" is a perfectly reasonable definition of Allegro, whereas "120 dotted quarter notes per minute" is only a valid Allegro in compound meters based on the eighth note (6/8, 9/8, etc.). Therefore, the note value *must not* be part of the tempo definition. > If you avoid this step, you can avoid worrying about the "beat" > altogether. We don't need to know what the "beat" is with our existing > syntax and we can manage without it in any new syntax as well. We *do* know what the beat is with the existing syntax. In Q:3/8=120, 3/8 defines the beat. Hopefully you can see why you would not want to use this if your piece is in 4/4 or 2/2 time. John To subscribe/unsubscribe, point your browser to: http://www.tullochgorm.com/lists.html
