In message <[EMAIL PROTECTED]
t>, [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes
>It feels silly posting this amidst all the talk of standards, etc., but I'm
>going to post anyway.
>
>I asked a while ago about drum notation (I'm not a drummer, but I'm trying to
>transcribe the drum music for my Corps). I have since gotten ALMOST everything
>I need to do by using the existing functionality of abcm2ps.
>
>The one thing I'm missing is putting the slashes on the stems of the notes.
>Obviously, an extension to the code is necessary, and I'm even willing to <gasp>
>step outside the bounds of the emerging abc standard to accomplish my goal,
>since my real intention is only in creating pretty postscript output, suitable
>for a tunebook of printed notation.
>
>My problem is (and I'm sure many of you will agree that it is only "my problem")
>that my C skills are pretty minimal (since, obviously, changes to draw.c need to
>happen), and I don't even know where to start in writing the postscript code to
>make this happen.
>
>A notation I propose for my usage (might others find it useful as well?) is to
>put slashes "//" _before_ the note on which I want the slashes to occur, since,
>in my first estimation, they should be unambiguous symbols (please correct if I
>am wrong).
>
>Also note that I am abusing the guitar chord functionality to put the number of
>strokes above the staff where they belong, so my current code looks like this,
>for the first section of a simple beat:
>
>(Note that there is only 1 line of abc, regardless of whatever line breaking my
>mail program creates)
>
>T:Plain 2/4
>M:2/4
>L:1/8
>K:perc
>%%graceslurs no
>V:1 up
>c|:"7"c{c}c {c}cc-|"7"c{c}c {c}cc-|"7"c{c}c {c}c/Lc/c/c/|[1.2.3. {c}c{c}c {c}cc-
>:|[2 {c}c{c}c {c}c{c}c||
>
>The result ps looks surprisingly good, with the exception of the slashes on the
>stems that I want to indicate a roll. The note should look like this (pardon
>the ASCII art):
>
> |
> |
> |/
> /|/
> /|
> |
> |
> 000|
> 00000
> 00000
> 000
>
>So, to make my pickup note in my example a roll using the slashes, how about a
>notation like this:
>
>//c and if I want 3 or 4 slashes, just put them there, like this: ////c
>
>Also, the "7" I put in as a guitar chord is supposed to be the number of strokes
>for the roll, so we could possibly even incorporate that number into the slash
>notation, perhaps like this:
>
>//7c
>
>Am I way out there, or is anything like this even conceivable?
>
>I suppose another way of doing the slashes is to use text annotations, perhaps?
>If we could, say, make the literal slashes appear instead of to the left, or
>right of the note, we could align them with the note, and raise them a certain
>number of units.
>
>Any thoughts?
>
>Thanks for reading if you got this far. :-)
>
>-Chris
>
>Christopher Myers
>em: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
>aim: chrismyers001
>
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>s.html
The term you describe is called a tremolo, or more explicitly a stem
tremolo. Strings (including guitars and mandolins etc) use it.
In timpani it's called a drum roll and may be notated with tr over the
note rather than the slashed stem.
Ironically it was what I understood a "roll" to mean before I was told
that an abc roll was really a pralltriller and I had implemented it as a
stem tremolo in Music Publisher. :-(
Bernard Hill
Braeburn Software
Author of Music Publisher system
Music Software written by musicians for musicians
http://www.braeburn.co.uk
Selkirk, Scotland
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