Kieren MacMillan <[email protected]> writes: > [David K:] >> 8/20 does not specify more than the basic >> subdivision for expressing beats (not necessarily identical with the >> number of beats as signatures like 9/8 show) > > Ah, I think I now see where your confusion lies.
It's great that you show so much patience with rank beginners in LilyPond. > The time signatures 8/20 and 9/8 *do* function identically: > — the bottom number identifies the duration, *expressed as a fraction > of a whole number*, that should be considered the functional division > of the measure; And here is where your plan falls down because LilyPond's definition of a duration does not agree with the words you are comfortable throwing around because of your education. What you are thinking of is a Moment, the unit in which the _length_ of a duration is expressed. There is no 1:1 mapping between moments and durations: various different durations may correspond to a single moment when involving scale factors, and lots of moments don't have corresponding durations when you forego scale factors. > — the top number identifies how many functional divisions are required > to fill a complete measure. > > *By convention*, traditional classical music groups the 9 > one-eighth-of-a-whole-note events into three groups of three each, > leading people to say that the duration of a “beat” is equal (in that > case) to three eighth notes. > > The time signature “9/8” does *not* (as you imply) actually convey > *any* information about the number of “beats” — the *convention* does > that. I am certain you will be able to provide a definite quote where I "imply" any such thing. > I suppose Carl and my surprise (revelation?) is that Lilypond has > *never* handled time signatures correctly (where “correct” means > “according to the accepted definition of 'time signature'”). Nor has his ever handled durations correctly according to your definition of "duration". Which means you should get a grip on what LilyPond calls a duration before proposing to use it. -- David Kastrup
