Re: [abcusers] Initial repeats
John Chambers writes: From The Norton Manual of Music Notation, First Edition (Heussenstamm, | 1987): | | If a passage is to be repeated from the beginning of a piece, only one Yup; and there ain't a whole lot you're gonna do to fight this, unless you can somehow get control of all ABC software and add code to make it illegal. Nor should one even try. As has been pointed out, there's a school of notation out there---Kerr, O'Neill, et. al. which omits initial repeats because they simply aren't necessary...in that particular music. Irish and Scottish dance music, is (uaually) so regular, with such a simple repeat structure (tunes are divided into parts, each part is played once or twice, as the case may be, and on to the next) that the algorithm when you hit a repeat sign, go back to the end of the last part, is sufficient for the vast majority of the tunes; there's no ambiguity. For the exceptions, one can always put in the start-repeats. In fact, most of the old collections only give the bare bones of the tunes: no decorations, second endings are skipped, etc., because the musicians who play them were---and are---are supposed to flesh them out, add gracenotes and variations to taste, and figure out the correct pickup notes when necessary. (Not entirely dissimilar to the situation of figured bass in early music, which came up in another thread.) It might be interesting to check the old collections to see if those arranged with piano accompaniment (which would be more for non-trad players) are more punctilious about begin-repeats. Just to add a couple of data points to John's list, I checked some of the works on my shelves for the use of initial repeats. I'd guess that most of the Irish collections that omit begin-repeats follow O'Neill. But O'Neill himself was very much aware of the significant---and insignificant--collections preceeding him, so it's quite possible he himself adopted the convention from Kerr or someone else. Is there any evidence that this originated before Kerr? Anyway: These used start-repeats: Geoghegan's Tutor for the Pastoral or New Bagpipe, London, ca 1746. (Usually ends lines with the double repeat ::) John Murphy's collection for violin, violincello and pianoforte, (Edinburgh, 1809) Colclough's Tutor for the UP, ca 1830 Scanlon's Gaelic Collection for the violin, (San Francisco, 1930s?) Roche's collection, 1911 Heather Clarke's Tutor for the UP (1988, the standard UP tutor these days. She also uses the naked colon to start repeats which begin a line, a practice probably picked up from Pat Mitchell.) Ceol Rince na h'Eireann (Breathnach's collection, (Dublin, 1963) And a couple which were mentioned already: Cole's (nee Ryan's Mammoth Collection, late 1800s) Krassen's version of O'Neill's (editorial slag: not significant. Krassen corrected O'Neill's errors to make room for his own.) These ones don't: Leo Rowsome's UP tutor, Dublin Armagh Pipers Club Tutor Bulmer and Sharpley (Actually, they used begin-repeats for about the first ten tunes of volume 1, then stopped.) Ceol An Phiobaire, (Dublin, 1971--78) (This is a book of transcriptions, and start repeats are occasionally used to get the pickup notes right.) O'Neill also published collections arranged for the piano, which one might expect to have the begin-repeats spelled out, but the only one I have at hand is his Waifs and Strays of Gaelic Melody, which doesn't use them. I also checked the more careful of the modern transcriptions, of Patsy Tuohey by Mitchell and Small, and of James Morrison, Michael Coleman, and Paddy Killoran by David Lyth, and, surprise: no begin-repeats...in fact...no repeats at all. Evidently musicians of that calibre repeat a part note-for-note so seldom that repeats aren't worthwhile. I did find a couple in in another collection of careful transcriptions, the Dance Music of Willie Clancy, by Pat Mitchell...tho I had to look hard. The repeats always have begin-repeat attached. Interestingly enough, Mitchell contributed a large number of the tunes in Ceol An Phiobaire, sans start-repeats. There are a couple of peculiarities, already remarked in this thread: begin-repeats which start a staff are marked with a naked colon. The treble clef sign is only on the first staff of a tune, while the key signature heads every staff. When a begin repeat coincides with a barline, and is not at the start of a tune, they write: heavy double barline, key signature, and colon in that order. So that every staff after the first starts with a bar line; then comes the key sig, and after that, the music.) Cheers, John Walsh To subscribe/unsubscribe, point your browser to: http://www.tullochgorm.com/lists.html
Re: [abcusers] Initial repeats
John Walsh [EMAIL PROTECTED] asked ... are nested repeats common in serious music?... Muse allows nested repeats because it fell out of the code and would have needed extra work to ban them, but I have never seen any music printed to be played from that actually uses them. I think it would be a disaster. Like John I have heard music go wrong in live performances because musicians couldn't find the start repeat sign in time. On some occasions the wrong notes seemed to be coming from somewhere extremely close to me (at the time though I was too busy trying to find the repeat sign to pay much attention). Laurie To subscribe/unsubscribe, point your browser to: http://www.tullochgorm.com/lists.html
[abcusers] Linux abc HOWTO
I am toying with the idea of writing a Linux abc HOWTO. This would cover: * what abc software is available for Linux and where to get it. * What you need to do to play MIDI files. * What you need to do to display music on-screen. * How to go about printing music. What it wouldn't cover would be how to write abc - there are already plenty of references for this. Hopefully for most of the more technical bits I can just refer to one of the existing HOWTO documents. The idea is that this will stop the Linux abc user from getting stuck on a problem such as setting up their sound card (something which took me quite a while). Before I get started on this, has anyone already written a document along these lines ? James Allwright To subscribe/unsubscribe, point your browser to: http://www.tullochgorm.com/lists.html
Re: [abcusers] Linux abc HOWTO
On Thu, 20 Dec 2001, James Allwright wrote: I am toying with the idea of writing a Linux abc HOWTO. This would cover: ... Before I get started on this, has anyone already written a document along these lines ? I don't know of one - it sounds like a good idea. It would be useful to have the little scraps all gathered together, could save some time, and might draw a few peoples' attention to ABC as well. -- Richard Robinson The whole plan hinged upon the natural curiosity of potatoes - S. Lem To subscribe/unsubscribe, point your browser to: http://www.tullochgorm.com/lists.html
Re: [abcusers] Initial repeats
Laurie Griffiths [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: John Walsh [EMAIL PROTECTED] asked ... are nested repeats common in serious music?... Muse allows nested repeats because it fell out of the code and would have needed extra work to ban them, but I have never seen any music printed to be played from that actually uses them. I think it would be a disaster. Like John I have heard music go wrong in live performances because musicians couldn't find the start repeat sign in time. On some occasions the wrong notes seemed to be coming from somewhere extremely close to me (at the time though I was too busy trying to find the repeat sign to pay much attention). I have seen a couple of pieces of music, typeset with NoteWorthy that uses nested repeats. The outer repeats (which covered the entire work) were drawn light, while the inner repeats were drawn bold. The entire work had a (A2B2)2 structure (or similar, I'd have to double-check), so the first two repeat starts were adjacent, and *obviously* different. Laurie To subscribe/unsubscribe, point your browser to: http://www.tullochgorm.com/lists.html -- Buddha Buck [EMAIL PROTECTED] I will not die an ironic death -- Scott Ian, lead singer for the metal band Anthrax, after bioterrorist attacks using anthrax. To subscribe/unsubscribe, point your browser to: http://www.tullochgorm.com/lists.html
[abcusers] Twelve Days of Christmas
A small correction (I have problems counting up past four at this time of year, never mind twelve). X:1 T:The Twelve Days of Christmas M:none %a cop out P:AB ACDB AC2DB AC3DB AEDB ACEDB AC2EDB AC3EDB AC4EDB AC5EDB AC6EDB AC7EDB K:D [P:A] AA | A2 dd d2 cd | efge f3 || w:On the nth day of Christmas* my true love sent to me [P:B] g |a2 bg fd e2 | d3 || w:a partridge** in a pear tree. [P:C] a2 | ef g2 [P:D]||f || w:Two tur-tle doves and w:Three French* hens w:Four ca-lling birds %etc [P:E] a2 b^g a4 || agfe d2 g2 | B2 d2 edcB A2 | w:Five gold* rings, Four* calling birds, Three french hens, Two turtle doves Phil Taylor To subscribe/unsubscribe, point your browser to: http://www.tullochgorm.com/lists.html
[abcusers] Twelve Days of Christmas
John Walsh wrote: A Christmas challenge: find the shortest abc for the music to the Twelve Days of Christmas. (all verses, all extensions suggested in this thread are welcome, of course.) Ooh, I can't resist. Here's a starter using no extensions other than inline fields: X:1 T:The Twelve Days of Christmas M:none %a cop out P:AB ACDB AC2DB AC3DB AEDB ACEDB AC2EDB AC3EDB AC4EDB AC4EDB AC5EDB AC6EDB K:D [P:A] AA | A2 dd d2 cd | efge f3 || w:On the nth day of Christmas* my true love sent to me [P:B] g |a2 bg fd e2 | d3 || w:a partridge** in a pear tree. [P:C] a2 | ef g2 [P:D]||f || w:Two tur-tle doves and w:Three French* hens w:Four ca-lling birds %etc [P:E] a2 b^g a4 || agfe d2 g2 | B2 d2 edcB A2 | w:Five gold* rings, Four* calling birds, Three french hens, Two turtle doves Plays fine in BarFly. Now I've wasted all that time when I should have been shopping:-) Phil Taylor To subscribe/unsubscribe, point your browser to: http://www.tullochgorm.com/lists.html
Re: [abcusers] Linux abc HOWTO
On Thu, 20 Dec 2001, James Allwright wrote: I am toying with the idea of writing a Linux abc HOWTO. This would cover: [snip] Before I get started on this, has anyone already written a document along these lines ? I'm writing a rather comprehensive guide on typesetting music with abc, but it's not going to be ready any time soon. I suppose an HOWTO would be welcome. Ciao, Guido =8-) -- Guido Gonzato, Ph.D. gonzato at sci . univr . it - Linux system manager Universita' di Verona (Italy), Facolta' di Scienze MM. FF. NN. Ca' Vignal II, Strada Le Grazie 15, 37134 Verona (Italy) Tel. +39 045 8027990; Fax +39 045 8027958 --- Timeas hominem unius libri To subscribe/unsubscribe, point your browser to: http://www.tullochgorm.com/lists.html
[abcusers] (no subject)
Buddha Buck said - I have seen a couple of pieces of music, typeset with NoteWorthy that uses nested repeats. The outer repeats (which covered the entire work) were drawn light, while the inner repeats were drawn bold. NoteWorthy Composer has two sorts of repeat called (for no obvious reason) Master Repeats, which are drawn bold, and Local Repeats, which are drawn light. The Master Repeats repeat the passage once and the Local Repeats allow you to specify the number of times played. Each can be nested inside the other once but can't but can't be nested inside themselves. Both tolerate missing repeat starts at the beginning of the tune but only Local Repeats tolerate them in the body of the tune, returning to the previous end repeat. I tend to use Master Repeats for the basic structure of the tune and Local Repeats to repeat the entire tune. I use Master Repeats when converting from abc but this may have to change if/when the standard is extended. Bryan Creer
RE: [abcusers] Initial repeats
-Original Message- From: Laurie Griffiths [SMTP:[EMAIL PROTECTED]] Sent: Wednesday, December 19, 2001 1:39 AM To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject:Re: [abcusers] Initial repeats I think it's a bit late for that. May be that's true, but ... Although there are some problems they are not so frequent in practice and there is enough stuff out there that we wouldn't want to re-edit and can't wish it away. ...there's nothing to re-edit because older stuff just doesn't use it. And when some older software complains about new things the people will look for an upgrade. I think we should just live with it. ;-) when will we start with the next major version of ABC-standard? Toni To subscribe/unsubscribe, point your browser to: http://www.tullochgorm.com/lists.html
Re: [abcusers] Linux abc HOWTO
I am not aware of such a document - and I'd be very interested - starting to get into Linux as I am!! Thanks for the intention!! Chris Davidson In message [EMAIL PROTECTED], James Allwright [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes I am toying with the idea of writing a Linux abc HOWTO. This would cover: * what abc software is available for Linux and where to get it. * What you need to do to play MIDI files. * What you need to do to display music on-screen. * How to go about printing music. What it wouldn't cover would be how to write abc - there are already plenty of references for this. Hopefully for most of the more technical bits I can just refer to one of the existing HOWTO documents. The idea is that this will stop the Linux abc user from getting stuck on a problem such as setting up their sound card (something which took me quite a while). Before I get started on this, has anyone already written a document along these lines ? James Allwright To subscribe/unsubscribe, point your browser to: http://www.tullochgorm.com/list s.html -- Chris Davidson To subscribe/unsubscribe, point your browser to: http://www.tullochgorm.com/lists.html
Re: [abcusers] Initial repeats
are nested repeats common in serious music? Serious not meaning classical, just that someone is seriously expected to read it The obvious example is strophic songs. The way these are often transcribed, they are a good case for an extended-repeat notation, because folklorists like to write down small variations in specific stanzas. But there's more to it than that since nearly all ballads have internal repeats within each stanza. As you might represent it with a nested repeat (here without stanza variation): X:1 T:The Outlandish Knight B:Northumbrian Minstrelsy M:6/8 L:1/8 K:Eb [|18:|: B |BcB efe|dBB B2 [1 B |BcB edc|B3- B2:| [2 G/A/|BCB AFD|E3- E2|]:18|] I suppose P: allows for much the same expressive power. Hmm...before even thinking about nested repeats, how about making segnos and codas work? Absolutely. But perhaps nail down the extended-repeat thing first? We seem to covered most of what's involved. === http://www.purr.demon.co.uk/jack/ === To subscribe/unsubscribe, point your browser to: http://www.tullochgorm.com/lists.html
Re: [abcusers] Initial repeats
My theory is that once upon a time, the repeat sign consisted of two dots (:), and always coincided with a bar line. An interesting theory, but I don't buy it because your symbol is symmetrical and so you can't tell the difference between a start repeat and a end repeat. Suppose your music has the form A |: B :| C |: D :| E you are now in big trouble if you can't tell the difference between a start repeat and an end repeat. Big trouble or not, you do find similar syntax in 18th century Scottish sources, both print (e.g. Aird) and manuscript. They often got by with only symmetric repeat signs. A section was repeated if you could find a repeat sign (or the start of the tune) at each end of it. Effectively the symmetric repeat was the normal double bar, with the simple double bar being a special case indicating *non*-repetition (which is the statistically efficient way to arrange things with that repertoire, since most sections do get repeated). There was a special left repeat sign only used in practice when you had a non-repeating upbeat at the very start. I tried being faithful to Aird's notation in the transcript on my site by using :: repeat signs at the ends of tunes. I think that crashed BarFly with a memory error every time and I didn't expect any other implementation to allow for such lunacy, so out it went. One 18th century layout which is genuinely useful is the ultra- compact tunebook format where tunes don't need to start on a new line (see Rogier's _Oude en Nieuwe Boerenlietjes en Contradansen_ for a well-done example). Lots of manuscripts use that, with a paper size rather larger than A5 in landscape format. This was meant to be pocket-sized for some sufficiently large value of pocket. In that format you need something much more dramatic than a thin-thick bar to mark the end of a tune, so they used a series of parallel vertical lines starting the height of the staff and tapering down to a dot, or in manuscript a damped-harmonic- motion or Bessel function curve with 3 to 6 oscillations. The feature that often went along with this in manuscripts that you possibly don't want abc2ps to support is filling the book from both ends at once, opposite ways up. This was very common and nobody now knows why. === http://www.purr.demon.co.uk/jack/ === To subscribe/unsubscribe, point your browser to: http://www.tullochgorm.com/lists.html
