Donald White writes: | I keep flipping back and forth between which is easier - using | different note lengths within a chord, or multiple voices. Where | multiple voices on a single staff move in parallel, it is easiest | to use chords and then just deal with independent movement of | voices where needed - but currently this is not supported (to my | knowledge) with any consistency in any abc package. The latest | version of abcm2ps seems to support this, but use of it on a | multistaff piece seems to really screw things up. Obviously, where | there is considerable independent movement or voices on one staff, | using multiple voices makes the most sense.
This is the fundamental problem that makes keyboard music the worst case for just about all music software. A basic capability of any keyboard instrument (and the lute/guitar family) is that a "voice" may appear as a transient part of the music, and then disappear. This is difficult for abc, because it is basically a linear, single-voice notation. Multiple voices are handled by literally writing them out as separate musical lines. This works fine for an orchestra of single-voice instruments. It also works fine for keyboard works like a Baroque fugue, which really are N independent voices. It doesn't work nearly as well when a voice pops up, sings a few notes, and then goes away. | One solution might be to allow the definition of additional voices | on the fly - or within a block of music. That way, when you only | have a small portion of a piece that requires independent voices on | one staff you don't have to pad the entire piece with invisible | rests. Possibly. I wonder if there's a reasonably simple way to notate this within the abc world view? The "%" notation for doing multiple voices within a measure is an idea, but is fairly clumsy and not very readable. Introducing a whole new V: voice for a handful of notes in the middle of a staff is somewhat clumsy, too. I've seen abc keyboard music written with two merged treble voices and two merged bass voices. I wonder what fraction of keyboard music can be handled effectively this way. To subscribe/unsubscribe, point your browser to: http://www.tullochgorm.com/lists.html
