Re: [abcusers] problems with the R: field

[John Walsh]

Jack Campin writes:
>
>The R: field is long due for deprecation.  There is no standard
>list of what rhythms it covers and what to do with them, and nobody
>seems interested in making it extensible in any way that would allow
>different users to agree on what their extensions mean.  Why not
>just let it die so that the name can be reused for something more
>important and more definable?
>

 Actually, it's used very effectively by Abcmus and (I think) a couple
of other player programs to give tunes the proper accent and swing. It
makes them a lot easier to listen to. It uses the tune type and meter to
figure out the primary and secondary beats for emphasis, and does things
with the relative length of notes to get closer to what a human might
play. If you replace R:hornpipe with R:reel in the header of a hornpipe,
it'll come out sounding like a reel (well, somewhat) and vice-versa.

 The list of tune-types is user-extensible, and the style for each
tune-type can be defined in detail: you can adjust it to play the phrase
|ABcd| anywhere between straight and |A>Bc>d| (or, for military-style
bagpiping, even further).  I'm sure you could set it up to play
middle-Eastern types too. This feature is designed for control of the
rhythm, and I don't think it's possible (yet) to use it to define
quarter-tone scales for specific tune-types, but I know there is support
for them somewhere in the program: I had a couple of tunes come out
sounding *very* strange: I was using a Q for some special purpose, and it
turned out Henrik had a default which made the notation QA play the A a
quarter-tone flat!  So...hey!  ask Henrik!

John Chambers writes,

>Something that I've thought could be useful in a player: People using
>them  to  learn tunes could benefit from a basic sort of "style" list
>that would modify tunes to fit a style. The point here would be to do
>the standard, stereotypical things of that style. It's not a tool for
>producing masterful music without human intervention; it's a tool for
>helping novices learn the basics of a style. 
>

Check out abcmus...

Cheers,
John


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Re: [abcusers] problems with the R: field

[John Chambers]

Jack sez:
| except that hornpipes aren't always played dotted.  You would need
| yet *another* level of extra information to say the style you're
| using is one where this dotted interpretation is appropriate.
...
| And some of the rhythmic types found in folk music are unimplementable
| by any playback software.  A slow strathspey is intrinsically a form
| where the player is *expected* to do their own thing with the rhythm.
| They are only ever played solo.  What is a MIDI program supposed to do
| with this?  Rubato driven by a random number generator?

This is true only if  you're  expecting  an  abc  player  to  produce
beautiful music.  But this misses an important use of such players: A
number of musicians who prefer to learn tunes by ear like to feed abc
to  a  player,  preferably in a "loop" mode, to learn the tune.  Such
people don't want any cleverness or randomness  from  the  music.   A
"mechanical"  version  that  is  the same every time is just fine for
their purposes.  They are only trying to get  the  notes  into  their
heads, after all, and then they will do their own interpreting.

For such people, recognizing "R:hornpipe" or "R:shottish" (in all its
variant spellings ;-) and playing the notes in a 3:2 or 2:1 ration is
fine, and helps them get the basic feel into their fingers.  The same
would  apply  to  a strathspey, which could be played exactly, or the
dotted notes could be "overdotted" to match the style. But doing this
mechanically and the same every time isn't a problem; it's useful for
the person learning by ear.

Something that I've thought could be useful in a player: People using
them  to  learn tunes could benefit from a basic sort of "style" list
that would modify tunes to fit a style. The point here would be to do
the standard, stereotypical things of that style. It's not a tool for
producing masterful music without human intervention; it's a tool for
helping novices learn the basics of a style. Most musical styles have
a lot of things that  are  conventionally  done,  often  without  the
musicians being very aware of what they're doing.  Incorporating such
things into a player could lead to a good teaching tool.

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[abcusers] problems with the R: field

[Jack Campin]

> I think there are already examples where extra information 
> may need to be added in order to make abc unambiguous.  A simple 
> example is making  | Ac Bd | sound a little more like |A>c B>d |
> simply by adding R:hornpipe to the header.

except that hornpipes aren't always played dotted.  You would need
yet *another* level of extra information to say the style you're
using is one where this dotted interpretation is appropriate.

The R: field is long due for deprecation.  There is no standard
list of what rhythms it covers and what to do with them, and nobody
seems interested in making it extensible in any way that would allow
different users to agree on what their extensions mean.  Why not
just let it die so that the name can be reused for something more
important and more definable?

And some of the rhythmic types found in folk music are unimplementable
by any playback software.  A slow strathspey is intrinsically a form
where the player is *expected* to do their own thing with the rhythm.
They are only ever played solo.  What is a MIDI program supposed to do
with this?  Rubato driven by a random number generator?

===  ===


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[abcusers] Woodenflute tune archive updated

[Steve Mansfield]

I've updated the archive of tunes from the woodenflute mailing list to include
the 28 tunes posted between November 2000 and January 2001. 

Head for 
http://www.lesession.demon.co.uk/abc/woodenflute.htm
for full details.

Steve Mansfield
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
http://www.lesession.demon.co.uk - abc music notation tutorial and other goodies
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