Jack Campin wrote:
> > I think there are already examples where extra information
> > may need to be added in order to make abc unambiguous. A simple
> > example is making | Ac Bd | sound a little more like |A>c B>d |
> > simply by adding R:hornpipe to the header.
>
> except that hornpipes aren't always played dotted. You would need
> yet *another* level of extra information to say the style you're
> using is one where this dotted interpretation is appropriate.
There is nothing to stop you defining "hornpipe 2" and entering an
appropriate stress program for that. Henrik Norbeck has multiple
definitions for Polska, identified by an extra letter following
the word. I haven't included them in BarFly because I don't
know enough about Scandinavian traditional music to get them
right, but anyone who understands that music could do it for
themselves, and if they send their stress programs to me I'll
distribute them with the next version.
> The R: field is long due for deprecation. There is no standard
> list of what rhythms it covers and what to do with them, and nobody
> seems interested in making it extensible in any way that would allow
> different users to agree on what their extensions mean. Why not
> just let it die so that the name can be reused for something more
> important and more definable?
I think a lot of people find it very useful, although I agree that it
would be nice to have an interchange format for stress programs.
> And some of the rhythmic types found in folk music are unimplementable
> by any playback software. A slow strathspey is intrinsically a form
> where the player is *expected* to do their own thing with the rhythm.
> They are only ever played solo. What is a MIDI program supposed to do
> with this? Rubato driven by a random number generator?
Anybody who expects that degree of interpretative ability from an abc
program is deluding himself. He should be using MIDI to record a
human musician instead.
Phil Taylor
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