Jack wrote: (after I wrote:) | > I'm not sure what's being requested here. But I've seen optional bars | > in bagpipe and some other music, written with the usual sort of | > endings but with just the one bar bracketed. I wrote up a little | > test fragment: | > | > X:1 | > T:TEST: Optional bar | > N:Optional bar inside a phrase | > K:C | > | CD EF |2 GA Bc || de fg | | | I don't believe I've ever seen that in a pipe score. On the other hand | *alternate* single bars are quite common. The alternate case can | subsume the optional one, since one of the alternates could be empty.
Well, I'd have to say it's rare, but I have seen it on rare occasions in several kinds of music. I'd also have to admit that my main motive for this notation is that I have on hand a number of pieces of music that have endings of different lengths. Current tools (including abc2ps) are not always satisfactory here. The most common problem is a phrase in which the second ending has an extra bar or two. What abc2ps does is remember the length of the first ending, and draw the second ending's bracket to cover the same number of bars. So it doesn't cover the entire second ending. Now, after a brief "Huh?" reaction, most musicians can figure it out, but it's ugly. When I've put such printed music before musicians, they always remark on the clumsiness of the ending notation, and wonder why the software did something so strange. All I can tell them is that it's because the ABC notation doesn't mark the end of an ending, so the software has to guess. Having a clear way to mark the end of an ending would be an advantage in such cases. Not that it would be used all that often. Most music has regular phrases, after all. But some doesn't. | > Like the '[', this would be optional, and would default in the | > obvious manner. | | I don't see any obvious default here. Leaving it out is almost always | going to be ambiguous. Hmmm ... Maybe I was wrong to say "obvious". In previous discussions, it seemed fairly clear that most people would expect all endings to end at the next double bar symbol (which would include :| as well as the others). This is what's done for determining the length of the first ending, and it's reasonable for any ending. | > But then you could write: | > | CD EF |[2 GA Bc ]| de fg | | | or using an empty alternate: | | CD EF |[1 ]|[2 GA Bc ]| de fg | Well, yeah, but I'd call that "ugly". ;-) And I'd bet that most (of the very few) users would casually omit that dummy bar, since there's no musical reason for it. It implies that something was omitted, and in my experience, different-length alternates are rarely a case of leaving anything out, but rather of stretching things. | No need for a staff notation program to print the empty bar if the | user doesn't want it. Well, I'm sorta partial to programs that notate what I write and don't try to outsmart me. If I type a bar line, it means that I want a bar line there. But I suppose that's a matter of taste, which we find a lot of among musicians. | Note that there needs to be a semantic check that this thing really | does occur within the scope of a repeat. Nah; I don't need that. ;-) But I'll avoid arguing against it here. | We've discussed this before. ... Yeah, we always discuss things N times before anyone does anything. | ... A notation whose main point is | reproducing 19th century cockups isn't going to see much use. It's | exceptionally difficult to learn to read it. Hey, someone already did a 4-line staff; this isn't nearly *that* obscure. And, while I do agree that not many musicians would need it, I'd also say that when I first saw such "endings" in the middle of a phrase, I thought the meaning was obvious. And I had no more trouble reading it than I did the usual end-of-phrase endings. It's the same notation, after all; it just doesn't happen to be at the end of a phrase. There's really no obvious (there I go using that word again) reason that such alternatives be restricted to phrase endings. That's where you usually see them, because Western music mostly varies phrases at their ends. But there are more kinds of music lurking about on this funny planet. I've heard (and played) music in which the variants come at the start of phrases but all the ends are the same. This does remind me of a tune, one that's too complex for the above notation. Here's a well-known Swedish waltz tune. Note that bars 9-16 are very nearly a repeat of 1-8, but bar 9 is different from bar 1. Of course, bars 7-8 and 15-16 also differ. One could write this out with a 4-time first phrase, with variants on the first bar and the last two bars, but this wouldn't save you that much paper. It would be clumsier to read, so people always write out the first phrase. If you like somewhat twisted tunes, this is a good one, which will be known by most trad Scand musicians you encounter. The first phrase is 16 bars long, but ... X: 1 T: Vals fr\aan Orsa Z: 1998 by John Chambers <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> N: Some players repeat only the 2nd half of the third part. M: 3/4 L: 1/8 K: D |: FG \ | "D"A3A A2 | AB AG FA | d4 de | "A7"d2 cA ce | "D"f4 fa | "A7"a2 gf ed | c2 eg fe || "G"d2 Bd BG | | "A7"A4 FG | "D"AB AG FA | d4 de | "A7"d2 cA ce | "D"f4 fa | "A7"a2 gf ec | Ac eg fe || "D"d4 :| |: g2 \ | "G"b2 gb gb | "D"a2 fd fa | "A7"ab ag ec | "D"A2 df a2 \ | "G"b2 gb gb | "D"a2 fd fa | "A7"ab ag ec | "D"d4 :| |: A2 \ | "D"A2 d2 g2 | f3 e d2 | "G"d2 gb gb | "D"a3 f d2 | "Dm"de =f2 d2 | "Am"e4 =c2 | |"G"B2 Bd BG | "A7"A4 A2 | | "D"A2 f2 a2 | "A7"g3 f g2 | "D"A2 d2 f2 | "A7"e3 d e2 | AB c2 d2 | "Em"E3 G B2 | |"A7"AB AG EC | "D"D4 :| To subscribe/unsubscribe, point your browser to: http://www.tullochgorm.com/lists.html
