Paulo Eleut�rio Tib�rcio wrote: > >Thanks for the link, it's a good starting point. I tried to check your >references on the page ( http://www.netaxs.com/~rmk/Chant/index.html and >http://home.mcn.net/~relbooks/gf_salve.gif ), but they seem to be gone.
Ah, I really should check my links more frequently. >I'm a member of the Coral Gregoriano de Belo Horizonte (Minas Gerais, >Brazil - http://www.gregoriano.org.br ), maintained by the Father Nereu >de Castro Teixeira Cultural Society where I've been a student of >Gregorian Chant for the past seven years. It's nice to be able to talk to an expert on this subject. I am by no means an expert - I learned to read the notation at school, actually before I learned standard notation, and it's still the only musical notation that I can read at first sight. Apart from that, though I've made no special study, so your criticism of my suggestions is very welcome. <snip> >To me, abc matches Gregorian Chant in simplicity, so it is a better >candidate for creating sources than an entirely new system I might >design; also it is an open format, so GC coded in abc would be >accessible to a large community. Then, the problem I face is to >represent GC in abc so as to meet my needs and at the same time >keeping the code fairly readable by existing pieces of software. Yes, that's the nub of the problem isn't it? >Some of the solutions you designed for BarFly are good; others are >likely to comply with one style of singing while excluding others >(e.g., repeated pitches on the same syllable, which you tie up for >one long note as in some schools, should be, according to Solesmes, >sang as as many repeated notes, i.e., as written). Yes, but I wonder if that needs to be specified in the abc. Since it's a matter of interpretation, perhaps it could be an option in the playing program rather than written in to the abc. >I like the way you indicate liquescence; that was one problem I >was still trying to solve. Also I like the S and Q in the beginning >of the new melodic fragment (I was using !shortphrase! and the >like, but these are required to be attached to the last note of >the previous fragment, which I find distracting). > >Now, to represent all that information in abc would require a lot of >extensions and the notation might get a little cluttered. I'd like >to make the source readable and easily editable (that's the reason >I've chosen abc, in the first place; SGML/XML might be usable, but >would make code more complex to edit by hand). Maybe I'll have to >think of splitting the information among several layers (as abc does >for lyrics). Do you have many more symbols to add? If so, an extra layer is a good way of doing it. We have sometimes discussed the idea of using this approach for dynamic markings in standard notation, but unfortunately the !text! idea has caught on instead. I dislike this, since it breaks up the flow of musical symbols and makes the abc hard to read. >More ideas are welcome. > >(BTW, when you talk about the horizontal episemata (K in BarFly), >you seem to imply that they always apply to the whole block of notes >that follow. Well, they don't always; in fact, almost any note >in a group may be episematic, i.e., the episema is a feature of >the note to which it is attached, applying to the next only in >specific cases. Also you shouldn't miss a horizontal episema >in the modern notation, as it generally indicates that the note is >to be slightly hold or to receive some expression or emphasis; not >so for the vertical episema, because while the former is represented >in the manuscripts, the latter was introduced in the modern square >notation as an aid to rhythm and is under revision.) Thank you for that. Perhaps I need to use two symbols for the h.e. then, to indicate it's start and end? Phil Taylor To subscribe/unsubscribe, point your browser to: http://www.tullochgorm.com/lists.html
