> On long notes and bar-less scores: I would like the people interested > in these to let me know in detail what options you would like to have. I'm a bit late on this, but I hope it might still be useful. Excuse the long message, and please do let me know if I'm becoming a nuisance with my recent flooding of the list with questions and requests. I'm not entirely sure what you mean by bar-less scores. What I, personally, would like to do is scores with \interbarrules (with the musixlit package), and no tied notes across a bar line; i.e. in 4/2 meter, when a whole note starts on the 4th beat, it is still written as a whole note, then the bar line between the staves (Finale calls these "Mensurstriche"), and then a blank space at the beginning of the next bar; as wide as a half note would occupy. I'm appending an example at the end of this message to give you an impression of what this would look like. I left out the lyrics for now; I didn't manage to figure out how to attach a syllable to a \zwh (using musixlyr). > 1. Which long note symbols (i.e., which TeX commands) are desired, > and (pardon my ignorance) how many beats (quarter-note=1 beat) do they > get. I'm confused between \zbreve and \zlonga ... aren't they both 8 > beats? No; a breve is 8 beats, a longa is 16 beats when it appears in the middle of a piece. As the final note of a piece, longa has a different meaning; it is a note of unspecified length, with fermata, so to speak. Note that the final longas needn't come at the same time in all voices; see the example .tex file below, 1st alto. So for the singer (singing from a part book), longa would mean "hold note until all others have finished too". As for maxima, I think this is twice as long as a longa, but I'm not sure either; maybe it has special uses too, I don't know. Personally I have never needed a maxima. One problem with the longa in MusiXTeX is that it has too short a stem, and the stem is always down. A longa should have a stem as long as a quarter note, and it should be up or down depending on pitch; but always on the right side of the note head. > 2. Should the horizontal spacing for these long notes follow the same > rule as all the others, i.e., space proportional to square root of > duration ? This would give a double whole note twice as much > horizontal space as a half note. Yes. In practice it won't matter much though, because when there's a breve or longa in one voice, there are almost always smaller values in other voices which determine the spacing. > 3. At present I do not plan to include 4-line staves or those wierd > Gregorian note symbols. Are the long notes of any use without also > having Gregorian notation? Definitely. They are needed for anything from Ockeghem or Josquin to Sch�tz or later, which is over two centuries of music; including all of Palestrina, Lasso, etc. > 3. I'm thinking about having a bar-less mode. This will be rather > complicated to do right, since PMX now processes one bar at a time. > > a. In bar-less mode, should there be a bar line at the end, and if > so, which kind? For my taste there should be a normal "thin-thick" double bar at the end of the piece -- see example. > Should there be possibilities of bar lines in other places, and if so, > which types? Ideally it should be possible to replace any interbarrule by a stdbarrule, either a normal one or a double bar. In such places you would have to use tied notes of course, but this should be no problem. > b. Will there ever be notes with flags or beams? I'm thinking of > disabling automatic beaming in this mode. Definitely! Most of the time when eighth notes occur in this style of music, it's within a melisma, so they are beamed (see example). Eighth notes with flags (one syllable per note) are much rarer, but do occur occasionally. > c. Will there ever be more than one instrumental staff per system? I'm not sure what you mean here. The voices in such a piece as I have in mind can be either all vocal or all instumental, or any combination thereof; but I don't see what difference this makes to PMX. There will probably never be more than one line of music per staff, if that's what you meant. -- Stefan Haller Berlin, Germany http://www.snafu.de/~stk/ <<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<< cut here >>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>> \input musixtex \input musixmad \input pmx \input musixlit \interbarrules \smallmusicsize \nopagenumbers \tracingstats=2\relax \hsize=524pt \vsize=740pt \def\nbinstruments{6} \setclef16 \setclef24 \setclef34 \setclef43 \setclef53 \setclef61 \generalsignature{-1} \parindent 0pt \elemskip1pt\afterruleskip1.000pt\beforeruleskip0pt\relax \stafftopmarg0pt\staffbotmarg5\Interligne\interstaff{10}\relax \grouptop16\groupbottom11% \setsize6{\normalvalue}% \startmuflex\startpiece\addspace\afterruleskip% \bigaccid% \znotes&&&&&\zcharnote{16}{\titles{2.0}{}{0}{}{0}{}{0}}\en% % bar 1 \def\NOtes{\vnotes2.00\elemskip}% \def\NOtesp{\vnotes2.45\elemskip}% \def\NOTes{\vnotes2.83\elemskip}% \def\NOTesp{\vnotes3.46\elemskip}% \def\NOTEs{\vnotes4.00\elemskip}% \def\NOTEsp{\vnotes4.90\elemskip}% \def\NOTES{\vnotes5.66\elemskip}% \NOTEs\hl{'D}\wh B&\whp{`f}&\hu{`d}\hlp{'d}&\hpause\hl f&\wh d&\hl{'a}% \wh b\en% \NOTes&&&\hl d&\wh f&\en% \NOtes&&\ibl3c{-2}\qb3c\tbl3\qb3b&&&\en% \NOTes\hu F&\hu{`f}&\ql a&\ql c&&\zwh{'c}\sk\en% \NOtes&&\ql b&\ibu4b{-2}\qb4b\tbu4\qb4a&&\en% % bar 2 \xbar \NOTEs\wh{'C}&\whp{`g}&\hl c&\hup{`g}&\wh e&\sk\en% \NOTes\sk\sk\wh G&&\hl c\sk\hl b&\sk\qu a\qu b\ql c&\sk\sk\zbreve{d}\sk&% \wh g\en% \NOTEs&\hu{`d}&\zhup{'G}\sk&\zwh{d}\sk&&\hl{'b}\en% % bar 3 \xbar \NOTes\wh{'D}&\hu{`d}&\sk&\sk&\sk&\wh{'a}\en% \NOtes&&\ibu3{`f}{-2}\bigsh f\qb3f\tbu3\qb3e&&&\en% \NOTEs\sk\zwp{G}\sk&\wh{`d}\sk\hu d&\hu{`f}\hu g\zwh{'b}\sk&\hu a\hu b% \zwh{'G}\sk&\sk\wh d&\sk\hpause\zwh{'d}\sk\en% % bar 4 \xbar \NOTEs\sk\bigsh F\hu F\hu G\hu G&\wh{`d}\sk\wh d&\sk\hl a\hu{`g}\hu g&% \sk\hl d\hu b\hu{`g}&\zlonga{d}\sk\sk\sk&\sk\hl{'a}\hl b\hl b\en% % bar 5 \xbar \NOTES\zlonga{'D}\sk&\zlonga{'D}\sk&\zlonga{'^F}\sk&\zlonga{a}% \sk&\sk&\zlonga{'a}\sk\en% \stdbarrules \Endpiece \vfill\eject\endmuflex \bye
