Bryan Creer comments: | Richard Robinson wrote - | | >The standard says "It is also possible | >to specify a complex meter". Bwahaha. jcabc2ps will accept both 4i/4 and | >4/4i without complaint, but only displays the 1st of these correctly. | >Interesting. | | I think you will find that, with a little rearrangement, 4/4i is equal to | -4i/4. Negative Meter? Tricky. "Play this piece backwards from the beginning." | Technically, since neither of these has a real component, they are not | really complex but completely imaginary.
Indeed, what I've had jcabc2ps do with complex rhythms is canonicalize them by multiplying both terms by the complex conjugate of the denominator. In a purely imaginary case like M:4/4i, this does reduce to M:-4i/4. But I'm starting to think that maybe this wasn't such a good idea. For example, for the reasonably straightforward M:(3+4i)/(4+2i), it reduces to M:(20-2i)/12. While this may be the complex equivalent, there are nonetheless some serious problems with mapping rhythms based on twelvth notes into standard staff notation. Perhaps truly complex rhythms are best left as is. In any case, I do think that this is something perhaps best left for a future standard. Meanwhile, maybe we can involve a few more practitioners of complex rhythms. We also should include those who play the pure imaginary music, too. We wouldn't want them to feel left out, though we may find that they are not too willing to corrupt their art through the involvement of those who work with real music. To subscribe/unsubscribe, point your browser to: http://www.tullochgorm.com/lists.html
