I play in two bands. In one of them we tend to play hornpipes as though they were written in 12/8 (indeed I've heard other musicians call some of the tunes "12/8 hornpipes". In the other, one of the musicians tends to play *everything* dotted and hornpipes very dotted - at least 3:1. It's very hard to keep an even tempo until you reach an agreement on how dotted it is. Otherwise each of you keeps hearing the odd note from the other fellow coming in ahead of you (the late notes get drowned and don't notice) and the whole thing runs downhill and speeds up. That band plays for a display dance team and the dancers very soon let us know!
I know this isn't very relevant to ABC but I thought you might find it interesting. Laurie (Retires into the corner mumbling into his beard. Remembers that he's shaved his beard off. Hides deeper in the corner). ----- Original Message ----- From: "James Allwright" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> To: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Sent: Sunday, May 26, 2002 11:13 AM Subject: Re: [abcusers] The F > F (and F > F2) problems On Sat 25 May 2002 at 09:39AM -0400, Laura Conrad wrote: > > Actually, abc2midi formerly assumed R:Hornpipe whenever you used > "F > F". And then assumed a different split of time, which was > appropriate for the way someone somewhere plays hornpipes. > > And when the inconsistency between abc2midi and the standard was > pointed out, the author of abc2midi decided that consistency was more > important than correctness, so he provided a workaround, rather than a > fix. The inconsistency is deliberate. The point is that when you play a hornpipe or anything else with dotted rhythm (or swing, or whatever you want to call it), keeping a 3:1 ratio is rather harder than keeping a 2:1 ratio and doesn't really add much musically apart from a certain pedantic pleasure in knowing that you are playing exactly what your notation says. This is why abc2midi makes the assumption that a>b is meant to be played as a 2:1 ratio. I think this is in accordance with the original spirit of '>' even if this is not spelt out in the standard. The effect of R:Hornpipe in abc2midi is to introduce '>' between 1/8 notes so that a piece written as a reel will come out sounding like a hornpipe. Because there is this aethetically displeasing discrepancy between notation and performance, I have taken the view that '>' is a function to be used only in a very specific setting and trying to generalize it for other uses is courting trouble. James Allwright To subscribe/unsubscribe, point your browser to: http://www.tullochgorm.com/lists.html To subscribe/unsubscribe, point your browser to: http://www.tullochgorm.com/lists.html
