Jack Campin wrote: (I wrote:) >>> Someone asked whether a grace note is played on the beat, or ahead of >>> the beat. (Toby wrote:) >> You know, I've asked this question many times before. Especially when >> I first started playing. I think the answer is, at least for me, that >> grace notes don't really exist in the same way that they do in classical >> music. >> When I play grace notes, lopos, cuts, etc.. The grace note & the actual >> note are really part of the same space in time. > > I think we can be a bit less intuitive than that. I've done quite a lot > of tinkering around with tune playback using BarFly, which allows you to > decode whether the gracenotes take time from the preceding or following > note, and what fraction of a melody note they take up. It still sounds > mechanical (and BarFly only lets you set this on a per-tune basis) but > you can hear when you've got *some* settings right for *some* of the > tune. > > By and large instrumental pieces played back this way sound better with > the time taken from the following note. I think that's consistent with > what you're saying here...
Yes, I think you're right on this. I've played around with BarFly some (BTW, the version I have, 1.0d30, lets the user set a default on the grace note timing for all tunes, not just individual tunes) and overall the tunes sound more accurate when time is taken from the following note. After trying to analyze my own playing some more, I still maintain that when a strong beat is needed (e.g., the first beat of a measure), I'm hitting the grace notes earlier than I'd do otherwise. (Although I tend to avoid playing grace notes altogether in this situation.) -Steve -- Steve Wyrick <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> -- Concord, California Posted to Scots-L - The Traditional Scottish Music & Culture List - To subscribe/unsubscribe, point your browser to: http://www.tullochgorm.com/lists.html
