>>repeat signs are bars, > I don't think so. At a quick glance, seven out of the first twelve > tunes in the Northumbrian Piper's Tune Book have repeat symbols that > don't coincide with bars.
Okay, I guess both I and the 1.6 standard are wrong on that. > For instance, I want to be able to do this - > >X:1 >T:Brighton Camp >I:abc2nwc >M:4/4 >L:1/8 >K:G >|:gf|e2dc B2A2|B2G2E2D2|G2G2GABc|d4B2gf| >e2dc B2A2|B2G2E2G2|FG A2D2EF|G4G2:| >|:dc|B2d2e2f2|g2dc BA G2|Bc d2e2f2|g4f2gf| >e2dc B2A2|B2G2E2G2|FG A2D2EF|G4G2:| > > Leaving out the first |: would be no problem but I prefer to keep the second. > Insisting that repeat symbols coincide with barlines produces something like - > >gf|:e2dc B2A2|B2G2E2D2|G2G2GABc|d4B2gf| >e2dc B2A2|B2G2E2G2|FG A2D2EF|1G4G2gf:|2G4G2dc|] >B2d2e2f2|g2dc BA G2|Bc d2e2f2|g4f2gf| >e2dc B2A2|B2G2E2G2|FG A2D2EF|1G4G2dc:|2G4G2|] > > which is unnecessarily complicated and ambiguous about where the repeat > of the second half starts. You're right about the unnecessary complication, but the convention in sources like Kerr's is absolutely clear. If ABC had a nested-repeat construction there would be an ambiguity, but that's years away. I just looked that tune up in O'Neill's 1001 (it's #972). There is a notational convention there that I really *don't* think we oughta emulate... read a dotted crotchet as a minim??? For this one, he did put a repeat at the start of the line (he does it different ways in different places in the same book). Kerr (v3, The Girl I Left Behind Me) puts the whole tune on one line with no initial repeat and a double-sided repeat in the middle, his usual practice for tunes short enough to fit. Does anybody's software support O'Neill's attitude to clefs and key signatures? - "one per tune is enough". I think I've seen that in other Irish sources. I don't mind either way. I think I've seen other Irish stuff that dropped the clef at the start too: you assume treble, trusting that St Patrick drove the others out of Ireland. You can do wonders of compression with nested repeats. There is a sheet in Murdoch Henderson's manuscripts titled "64 Great Scottish Reels in A Major", and he gets them all on one side, one line each, 64 lines (the sheet is the size of a folded tabloid page). There's no hint in the manuscripts of why he wanted to do this in the first place. Must have taken him days. =================== <http://www.purr.demon.co.uk/jack/> =================== To subscribe/unsubscribe, point your browser to: http://www.tullochgorm.com/lists.html
