> From: John Chambers <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
> Date: Tue, 28 May 2002 01:54:13 UTC
>
> | I suggest nothing like that. Many users seems to use ties instead
> | of slurs. I suggested only to make them both legal (in the
> | standard). What can do more can do less. I will try to use
> | brackets for slurs when it's possible. If not (if it may confuse)
> | I'll use - instead.
>
> In any case, most musicians don't consider them to be different.
This one does. :-) Some folk musicians may not consider them to be
different, but I'd argue that most classical musicians do.
> After all, the most common understanding of a slur is that the second
> note is to be played without an attack or articulation.
That's true in the case of a tie. In the case of a slur, the sound
doesn't stop between notes, but there can be (and often is) a slight
articulation. It's rare, but I have seen slurs with accents (or even
sforzandoes) on notes within the slur. If I saw A4-|A4-|A4, I'd play it
as single note at pitch A that was three bars long. If I saw
(A4|A4|A4), I'd play it as three separate notes, all connected, and with
minimal (but a little) rearticulation on the second and third notes.
(In bowed stringed instruments, the rearticulation is often done mostly
through changes in vibrato.)
> If the second note is the same as the first, the result is a tie. So
> a tie is merely a special case of a slur. A tie is a slur in which
> both notes are the same.
I don't agree. In a tie, each pair of consecutive notes is connected
with a curved line. In a slur, the entire slurred phrase is connected
with a single curved line. In most prorgams, the special case of a
two-note slur looks the same as a tie, though in some published scores
the slur will be slightly farther from the note heads than the tie.
Also, this is splitting hairs, but a tie connects identical _pitches_,
not identical notes. For example,
K:Ab D- | K:A C
would be considered a tie, because D-flat and C-sharp are different
notes, but the same pitch (assuming equal temperament). Ties across key
changes are fairly common in classical music.
> I'd predict that attempting to force musicians to distinguish ties
> and slurs will continue to be a losing battle. Most of them will have
> no idea what you're talking about. "They look the same on paper, and
> they sound the same when you play them. So what's the difference?"
To me, they shouldn't look the same on paper (assuming the program used
to typeset them is sufficiently sophisticated), and I don't play them
the same.
> Granted, a few instruments can distinguish the two. But most can't.
> So to most musicians, there is no difference at all. There's just the
> supreme silliness of having a special name for a slur when the notes
> are the same.
Actually, I can't think of an instrument that would be unable to
distinguish between the two, though I can certainly think of some
_musicians_ who can't. :-)
> The only "user friendly" approach is to allow ties between different
> notes and slurs between identical notes. Anything else is merely
> harrassing your users with silly intellectual hair splitting.
I disagree about the "silly intellectual hair splitting", but I do agree
that a program should allow both ties between different notes, and slurs
between identical notes. The former is intended to cover the case of
tying two different notes that have the same pitch, but if the user
wants to use a tie for notes of different pitches, I see no reason to
disallow it. The latter indicates notes that are more connected than
legato, but should still sound like separate notes.
Jeff
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