Re: [abcusers] Z for whole bar rests

2002-01-13 Thread Laurie Griffiths

Ah - I'm an idiot.
z is a rest, Z is not.  At present Muse interprets Z as a misprint for Z.
Fixing that is trivial.  Yes, Z can be whole bars.
Laurie
- Original Message -
From: Erik Ronström [EMAIL PROTECTED]
To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Sent: Saturday, January 12, 2002 10:02 PM
Subject: Re: [abcusers] Z for whole bar rests


--- Laurie Griffiths [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:
 Muse interprets Z3 as 3 units of rest (where a unit is whatever the
 L: says)
 e.g. [L:1/8] Z3 means a dotted crotchet.

 I thought that was standard ABC.

What is then the difference between Z and z (in standard ABC)?

Erik Ronström

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Re: [abcusers] Z for whole bar rests

2002-01-12 Thread Erik Ronström

 --- Laurie Griffiths [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:
 Muse interprets Z3 as 3 units of rest (where a unit is whatever the
 L: says)
 e.g. [L:1/8] Z3 means a dotted crotchet.
 
 I thought that was standard ABC.

What is then the difference between Z and z (in standard ABC)?

Erik Ronström

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Re: [abcusers] Z for whole bar rests

2002-01-11 Thread Laurie Griffiths

Muse interprets Z3 as 3 units of rest (where a unit is whatever the L: says)
e.g. [L:1/8] Z3 means a dotted crotchet.

I thought that was standard ABC.

I think that a way of specifying whole bars of rest is a good idea.  Explain
to me how it avoids this conflict

Laurie.


- Original Message -
From: James Allwright [EMAIL PROTECTED]
To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Sent: Friday, January 11, 2002 2:11 PM
Subject: [abcusers] Z for whole bar rests



Some time ago, the syntax Zn was suggested for n bars of rest.
I know that abcm2ps now implements this, and I'd like to know:

1. What other programs implement this ?

2. Are there programs where this usage would create a conflict ?
(I'm thinking of the reserved characters H-Z here).

The reason I ask is that I have been sent some code to implement
this feature for abc2abc.

Thanks,

James Allwright

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Re: [abcusers] Z for whole bar rests

2002-01-11 Thread Jack Campin

 Some time ago, the syntax Zn was suggested for n bars of rest.
 I know that abcm2ps now implements this, and I'd like to know:

 1. What other programs implement this ?

 2. Are there programs where this usage would create a conflict ?
 (I'm thinking of the reserved characters H-Z here).

One slight problem is that we have other extensions of the rest idea:
x for non-printing rests and y for horizontal space.  BarFly started
this but I think other programs use them too.  X for a whole bar of
non-printing rest could be almost as useful as your proposed Z, but
it's something else to check for conflicts.  (The way BarFly uses y
and does note spacing, a Y for a bar of horizontal space wouldn't
give well-defined output, but maybe some other program might have a
use for it).

So you could expect to have at least one and maybe two other letters
to check for conflicts.  I can't envisage any myself, though.

Example of where you might want multiple-bar non-printing rests: I
recently tried to represent a song where the verse was monophonic and
the chorus was in three or four parts (a common parlour trick in 19th
century Scotland).  BarFly doesn't let you switch the number of voices
in mid-tune, and I suspect it would be hard to add that functionality.
You could do it by writing the verse music out multiple times, which
is redundant.  If you were merging the voices on to a single staff
line, and you used ordinary rests, they'd print rests all over the
melody.  Non-printing rests are the way to go, and you wouldn't need
to write as many of them if you had a multiple-bar non-printing-rest
construct.

That example is a place where we could do better if the ABC spec was
better defined.  In my intuition, a part boundary is one place where
a change of voicing ought to be allowed.   But the relationship between
parts and voices is not pinned down anywhere that I know of.  (There's
one example I can think of where a composition has different numbers
of parts in different voices - a string quartet by Elliott Carter, the
fourth I think, with 6 movements for two of the instruments and 4 for
the others - but stuff like that is too exotic to bother with).

There should perhaps be an even larger-scale kind of rest, a way to
silence an instrument for a whole part.  This is routine in orchestral
music.

There's another way to represent the multiple-bar rests you want that
has more general application: a length modifier that would allow you
to extend any note or chord over multiple bars.  Say

   [c/e/g/]5

for 5 bars of c triads half the default notelength long, with  being
the do this for a whole bar sign.  Then

   z8

for 8 bars of rest is just another special case.


=== http://www.purr.demon.co.uk/jack/ ===


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