Jack Campin writes:
| > We've had the suggestion a few times in the past that there
| > be a way to give a length for bracketed chords, instead of
| > repeating the length for each note. Thus [Ace]4 could be
| > used for [A4c4e4]. In one discussion, we even had the
| > suggestion of multiplying lengths if they are present in
| > both places, so [A4ce]2 would be [A8c2e2].
|
| I think it got lost within the discussion about having notes of
| differing lengths within chords. [Ace]4 doesn't have anything
| like the same semantical problems as [A4ce] so it might be
| better to discuss it separately.
You're probably right. Different note lengths like this don't work
too well in staff notation, of course. I'd bet that most users
wouldn't ever combine lengths this way. But I gave one example of a
sort that you would see occasionally, with a held "drone" note that
would translate into a white note head.
| There shouldn't be any problem with any durational modifier being
| applied to a chord made up of same-length notes, should there?
|
| {[DGB][EAc]}(3:2:4[EGB]2[DFA]/<<{[EGB]}[EGc]/
|
| for example.
Good example. I wish that chords as grace notes generally worked. No
reason they shouldn't, of course, but how many programs actually
implement them?
Back to the topic at hand. That [EGB]2 in the middle shouldn't cause
any parsing problems, for the same reason that just E2 shouldn't. A
group of notes on one stem (also known as a "chord" ;-) should be
syntactically very much like a single note. The general syntax of abc
puts the length after a note, and applying this to a group of notes
really shouldn't be a stretch. It would probably require a bit more
code in a parser, but it would be a nice feature for people typing or
reading abc.
Some programs already half-implement this, because [AF]>[BG] works in
at least some programs. It's curious that this would work, while the
simpler [AF]3[BG] doesn't. I know this is true of abc2ps, because I
use the former a lot, and I was a bit surprised when I discovered
that the latter is an error.
Maybe we should fire up another thread about the meaning of a chord
with different-length notes. It would be handy if there were a
standard way of deciding on the length of such a chord, in the sense
of when the next note/chord starts. But that really should be a new
topic, so as not to derail this one.
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