Didn't we cover this at the change of the millenium?

On 2 Dec 2004 at 0:50, Johannes Gebauer wrote:

> For the same reason there is no year 0. 0 is the point in between the
> year -1 and the year +1. Midnight of the 31st December in the year -1
> _is_ zero, but one minute later is in fact the 1st January of the year
> 1.
> 
> The runner _starts_ at zero. But whichever way he goes he will run
> more than zero meters.
> 
> (I really wasn't all that serious anyway...)

The difference here is between measuring continuously vs. counting 
whole units.

At 12am of the year 1, 0 years have elapsed. At midnight July 1st, 
roughty speaking, .5 years have elapsed.

But the year as a whole is the FIRST year and is numbered 1.

In music we are numbering whole units, not parts, so a measure 0 
would make sense only as something that comes before the beginning of 
the actual music.

Of course, as with MIDI base (and bases in numbering array indexes in 
various programming languages), if one understands that 0-based 
systems are not countable without adding 1 (i.e., in a 0-based 
measure numbering system, the measured numbered 7 is the 8th bar), 
then it's no big deal.

But I can't see a use for a measure 0 except for something that truly 
falls outside the realm of the playable.

-- 
David W. Fenton                        http://www.bway.net/~dfenton
David Fenton Associates                http://www.bway.net/~dfassoc

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