In message <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>, John Chambers <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes >Richard Robinson writes: >| On Thu, Jul 31, 2003 at 04:48:04PM +0000, John Chambers wrote: >| > >| > On the other hand, when I first tried transcribing some Zwiefacher >| > tunes, I also discovered that abc2ps accept M:23/44 and did the, uh, >| > "Right Thing" with it, too. I was appalled! >| > >| > ;-) >| >| laughter. >| >| I suppose the bug will have to be fixed, now it's been mentioned ? > >Not so far. We did have at least one discussion of the Right Way to >handle such things. I think the general concensus was that the syntax >should be: > >M:2/4,3/4 > >This would be drawn in the obvious way, with the time signatures next >to each other (and a slight space between). Software that checks bar >lengths should accept any of the listed lengths, and give a warning >for others. > >If this were implemented in the major abc apps, I'd be quite happy to >change my tunes to match it. But as far as I know, nobody has done >it. > >For those who wonder what the hell we're talking about: The term >"Zwiefacher" refers to a Bavarian folk dance that is a jumbled >mixture of 3/4 (waltz) and 2/4 (pivot) steps. Each tune has its own >pattern. The patterns range from trivial to insanely complex. There >are several ways of notating the bar lengths in the music. Some music >has a new meter every time it changes. But some musicians think this >is cluttered, and just put multiple time sigs at the very beginning. >Some don't bother with a time sig at all, but just write "Zwiefacher" >at the top as a warning.
In normal notation, no warning is needed. 2/4 3/4 would be fine. But also omitting the time sig would also. There are many instances of that. > >Some of them correct the spelling to "Zweifacher". But I think native >speakers of Bayrisch will sneer at this. In this subject area, any >attempt at seriousness loses you points. > >To see some examples, look in: > http://trillian.mit.edu/~jc/music/abc/Intl/ >Scroll down to the bottom, to the Zwie_*.abc files. One that our >international dance crowd likes to hear in December is > http://trillian.mit.edu/~jc/music/abc/Intl/Zwie_SilentNight.abc >This isn't exactly the original form of this tune. It should be >played in a loud, boisterous, German oom-pa-band style. > >You can clutter your abc with [M:3/4] and so on in every other bar >(as I did in that tune). Or you can try to put the multiple meters at >the beginning. Currently, M:23/44 or M:34/44 is the only thing that >does this reliably. This works fine with abc2ps and clones. But you >can probably imagine what some other abc programs think of it. > >Some software does implement M:none, for the no-time-sig approach. >But that totally turns off all bar checking, so it's not really the >right solution if you like software to do this checking for you. And >this music isn't free meter at all. It has very strong, strict bars. >They just aren't all the same length. Music with weak bars would probably have dotted barlines. I would expect that your music, being dance music, has strong barlines and the music itself probably makes that apparent. > > >Anyway, it's good for a bit of evil laughter now and then. > No, I think it's a serious point. Although it took me a while to figure out what you were talking about with 23/44! FWIW I have seen music with a t.s. of 3/3... Bernard Hill Braeburn Software Author of Music Publisher system Music Software written by musicians for musicians http://www.braeburn.co.uk Selkirk, Scotland To subscribe/unsubscribe, point your browser to: http://www.tullochgorm.com/lists.html
