Re: [abcusers] re : re: what does that means ?? & slurs and ties
I am not a programmer, but I have been a musician for many years, and I am just starting to use the 'magic' of ABC. I am just beginning to really appreciate the effort that has gone into its development, and what a wonderful tool it is. I promised myself that I would stay out of this, but... At some point, someone (I lost track of who) wrote: > > The only "user friendly" approach is to allow ties between different > > notes and slurs between identical notes. Anything else is merely > > harrassing your users with silly intellectual hair splitting. This is anything but silly intellectual hair splitting... It is just simply incorrect to not make the normal distinction between ties and slurs in any form of musical notation (which does include ABC), and, worst of all, ultimately confusing to users if improper usage is allowed. Ties and slurs are not the same thing, nor are they intended to be, nor were they ever intended to be so far as I know. To not make the correct distinction is just simply unnecessary, in my opinion, and will continue to promote sloppy, or lazy, or ignorant, or individualistic, or non-standard, or what ever you want to call it, practices in writing ABC. It's obvious from the continued discussion that this just make life harder for everyone. Why not just do it correctly and be done with it once and for all? Perhaps my inexperience with the traditional uses of ABC showing? I don't mean to offend anyone, and I offer my apologies if through some manifestation of ignorance or misunderstanding I have done so. Pardon my rant, and now off my box, Don To subscribe/unsubscribe, point your browser to: http://www.tullochgorm.com/lists.html
Re: [abcusers] re : re: what does that means ?? & slurs and ties
> The only "user friendly" approach is to allow ties between different > notes and slurs between identical notes. Anything else is merely > harrassing your users with silly intellectual hair splitting. Tried playing the McFarlan MS tune "Shuffle and Cut" I posted a while back via a player program or MIDI converter with the slurs replaced by ties? In fact, tried to play it on a real instrument that way? If we are to support computer playback of ABC files at all, this distinction is essential. It's immediately obvious whenever you try to turn ABC into anything other than a graphical score. If people want their ABC tunes to be computer-playable, and transcriber X writes stuff that plays as nonsense, those people aren't going to go back to transcriber X's site to look for more. If some transcribers don't get it, too bad. There are tunes out there with all kinds of misconceptions about what ABC constructs mean. Nobody needs to use them when there are better alternatives, and for any reasonably popular tune there always will be alternatives. Eventually crap ABC will die. (One great advantage of a standard that slowly mutates to be incompatible with older versions is that the early, sloppy efforts get left behind - is there *any* tune out there using + for chords that we need to preserve?) - Jack Campin * 11 Third Street, Newtongrange, Midlothian EH22 4PU, Scotland tel 0131 660 4760 * fax 0870 055 4975 * http://www.purr.demon.co.uk/jack/ food intolerance data & recipes, freeware Mac logic fonts, and Scottish music To subscribe/unsubscribe, point your browser to: http://www.tullochgorm.com/lists.html
Re: [abcusers] re : re: what does that means ?? & slurs and ties
John Chambers wrote: >Jeff wrote: >| > From: John Chambers <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> >| > In any case, most musicians don't consider them to be different. >| >| This one does. :-) Some folk musicians may not consider them to be >| different, but I'd argue that most classical musicians do. > >Yeah; fiddlers generally distinguish them. Players of plucked strings >and keyboard generally don't. I play all three, so I'm completely at >odds with myself on the issue ... I'm a guitar player, and I certainly distinguish them. <> >Well, golly; I was expecting to trigger a flame war. And here >everyone seems to be very nearly agreeing ... > >My recommendation for a standard recommendation would be to say that >in ABC, these are all legal: > A- A >(A A) > A- B >(A B) I don't have a lot of use for A- B (although I suppose you could use it to imply that you get from A to B by bending the note sharp, rather than plucking or hammering on, which is what I would take (A B) to mean). I don't think most people would understand that though, so if I used it for that purpose I'd have to say so in words in the header. >We should also attempt an education campaign to teach musicians what >the difference is between a tie and a slur. This will be a losing >battle, and a lot of ABC will always confuse the two, just as a lot >of printed music confuses them. But attempting to restrict usage to >some obscure rules isn't very useful; education is much better. Despite all suggestions to the contrary, I haven't yet come across an abc tune where A- B appeared to be a genuine attempt to convey a stylistic nuance rather than a mistake. You see it most often in tunes which are full of other mistakes. >This doesn't make life easy for those trying to write ABC players. You can say that again. >One idea might be to officially encourage the use of the A: header >field to label specific styles. This could help if you want to make >sense of such style-specific notation. And, since people won't do >this, and because we want to play things in different styles, the >software should have options to override any such things and impose a >style. This is really how things like > and < should be handled. Yes and no. > and < should be handled first exactly as the standard says, but with the option of applying a stress program which shortens or lengthens the notes in each bar in a regular pattern invoked by the R: field. Phil Taylor To subscribe/unsubscribe, point your browser to: http://www.tullochgorm.com/lists.html
Re: [abcusers] re : re: what does that means ?? & slurs and ties
Jeff wrote: | > From: John Chambers <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> | > In any case, most musicians don't consider them to be different. | | This one does. :-) Some folk musicians may not consider them to be | different, but I'd argue that most classical musicians do. Yeah; fiddlers generally distinguish them. Players of plucked strings and keyboard generally don't. I play all three, so I'm completely at odds with myself on the issue ... | Actually, I can't think of an instrument that would be unable to | distinguish between the two, though I can certainly think of some | _musicians_ who can't. :-) Well, that depends on what you mean by disgintuishing. I recall from my early days as a piano student thinking that the definitions of a "slur" were all totally nonsense. They invariably required that the second note be played without an attack, and on a piano you quite literally can't do that. It's not mechanically possible. (But there has been an ongoing discussion among the mechanical types of the fact that experienced piano players can in fact play a number of different attacks, including some that are "theoretically impossible".) | > The only "user friendly" approach is to allow ties between different | > notes and slurs between identical notes. Anything else is merely | > harrassing your users with silly intellectual hair splitting. | | I disagree about the "silly intellectual hair splitting", but I do agree | that a program should allow both ties between different notes, and slurs | between identical notes. The former is intended to cover the case of | tying two different notes that have the same pitch, but if the user | wants to use a tie for notes of different pitches, I see no reason to | disallow it. The latter indicates notes that are more connected than | legato, but should still sound like separate notes. Well, golly; I was expecting to trigger a flame war. And here everyone seems to be very nearly agreeing ... My recommendation for a standard recommendation would be to say that in ABC, these are all legal: A- A (A A) A- B (A B) We should also attempt an education campaign to teach musicians what the difference is between a tie and a slur. This will be a losing battle, and a lot of ABC will always confuse the two, just as a lot of printed music confuses them. But attempting to restrict usage to some obscure rules isn't very useful; education is much better. I also might add that, in my guise as a fiddler, I can very easily make a distinction between (A B) and A- B. The former implies (to me) more articulation on the B than does the latter. I wouldn't expect a lot of musicians, even fiddlers, to understand this, and I'd be quite tolerant of their confusion. If they asked, I'd try to explain what I did differently. I also might add that I wouldn't necessarily make this distinction based on what I see on the page, but more likely on what I think the music calls for. (No self-respecting "folk" musician should ever honor what's on the page. ;-) An interesting case: Some years back, I graduated (;-) from piano to accordion. One of the characteristics of a free reed is a very weak attack. Accordions, concertinas and the like really want to play very smoothly. They're just baby reed organs, really. They sound bad in the hands of a novice because you have to learn how to get rhythm out of them, while they want to turn everything into a church hymn. It's sorta the inverse problem to a harpsichord (or mandolin or banjo). Part of becoming a good accordion player is learning how to "fake" an attack. The basic technique is to separate the notes by various small amounts. Also, being precisely on the beat comes across as more of an attack than being slightly off, so a "hornpipey" reel with 3:2 or 4:3 ratios will sound smoother than a precise 1:1 ratio. On accordion, I also distinguish (A B) from A- B, and the strathspey posted earlier from my collection is an example. In the trad Scottish crowd, there is a special ornament used a lot that is like a tie, but it's a straight line. It's used when the two notes are the same or different. Fiddlers often play it as two notes under a single bow stroke, with a slight relaxing of the pressure at the end end of the first, giving a very weak attack on the second note. For two identical notes, it sounds more like a "stumble" at the start of a single note. I do this on accordion a lot, too. It's a different ornament than the triple-note "shiver" that you hear a lot. As people adapt ABC for different styles, we are going to see a lot of this sort of peculiar usage that might strike others as unusual. There are stylistic reasons for wanting to do such things. If we want ABC to spread to other styles, we should probably ackowledge such things, and document their usage rather than criticising them. This doesn't make life easy for those trying to write ABC players. One
AW: [abcusers] re : re: what does that means ?? & slurs and ties
> Jeff Bigler wrote: > ... I totally agree with all. And if we handle it like this the only problem is to find out if the _writer_ knows what ties and slurs are. Toni To subscribe/unsubscribe, point your browser to: http://www.tullochgorm.com/lists.html
Re: [abcusers] re : re: what does that means ?? & slurs and ties
> From: John Chambers <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> > Date: Tue, 28 May 2002 01:54:13 UTC > > | I suggest nothing like that. Many users seems to use ties instead > | of slurs. I suggested only to make them both legal (in the > | standard). What can do more can do less. I will try to use > | brackets for slurs when it's possible. If not (if it may confuse) > | I'll use - instead. > > In any case, most musicians don't consider them to be different. This one does. :-) Some folk musicians may not consider them to be different, but I'd argue that most classical musicians do. > After all, the most common understanding of a slur is that the second > note is to be played without an attack or articulation. That's true in the case of a tie. In the case of a slur, the sound doesn't stop between notes, but there can be (and often is) a slight articulation. It's rare, but I have seen slurs with accents (or even sforzandoes) on notes within the slur. If I saw A4-|A4-|A4, I'd play it as single note at pitch A that was three bars long. If I saw (A4|A4|A4), I'd play it as three separate notes, all connected, and with minimal (but a little) rearticulation on the second and third notes. (In bowed stringed instruments, the rearticulation is often done mostly through changes in vibrato.) > If the second note is the same as the first, the result is a tie. So > a tie is merely a special case of a slur. A tie is a slur in which > both notes are the same. I don't agree. In a tie, each pair of consecutive notes is connected with a curved line. In a slur, the entire slurred phrase is connected with a single curved line. In most prorgams, the special case of a two-note slur looks the same as a tie, though in some published scores the slur will be slightly farther from the note heads than the tie. Also, this is splitting hairs, but a tie connects identical _pitches_, not identical notes. For example, K:Ab D- | K:A C would be considered a tie, because D-flat and C-sharp are different notes, but the same pitch (assuming equal temperament). Ties across key changes are fairly common in classical music. > I'd predict that attempting to force musicians to distinguish ties > and slurs will continue to be a losing battle. Most of them will have > no idea what you're talking about. "They look the same on paper, and > they sound the same when you play them. So what's the difference?" To me, they shouldn't look the same on paper (assuming the program used to typeset them is sufficiently sophisticated), and I don't play them the same. > Granted, a few instruments can distinguish the two. But most can't. > So to most musicians, there is no difference at all. There's just the > supreme silliness of having a special name for a slur when the notes > are the same. Actually, I can't think of an instrument that would be unable to distinguish between the two, though I can certainly think of some _musicians_ who can't. :-) > The only "user friendly" approach is to allow ties between different > notes and slurs between identical notes. Anything else is merely > harrassing your users with silly intellectual hair splitting. I disagree about the "silly intellectual hair splitting", but I do agree that a program should allow both ties between different notes, and slurs between identical notes. The former is intended to cover the case of tying two different notes that have the same pitch, but if the user wants to use a tie for notes of different pitches, I see no reason to disallow it. The latter indicates notes that are more connected than legato, but should still sound like separate notes. Jeff To subscribe/unsubscribe, point your browser to: http://www.tullochgorm.com/lists.html
Re: [abcusers] re : re: what does that means ?? & slurs and ties
| I suggest nothing like that. Many users seems to use ties instead | of slurs. I suggested only to make them both legal (in the | standard). What can do more can do less. I will try to use | brackets for slurs when it's possible. If not (if it may confuse) | I'll use - instead. In any case, most musicians don't consider them to be different. After all, the most common understanding of a slur is that the second note is to be played without an attack or articulation. If the second note is the same as the first, the result is a tie. So a tie is merely a special case of a slur. A tie is a slur in which both notes are the same. I'd predict that attempting to force musicians to distinguish ties and slurs will continue to be a losing battle. Most of them will have no idea what you're talking about. "They look the same on paper, and they sound the same when you play them. So what's the difference?" Granted, a few instruments can distinguish the two. But most can't. So to most musicians, there is no difference at all. There's just the supreme silliness of having a special name for a slur when the notes are the same. The only "user friendly" approach is to allow ties between different notes and slurs between identical notes. Anything else is merely harrassing your users with silly intellectual hair splitting. To subscribe/unsubscribe, point your browser to: http://www.tullochgorm.com/lists.html
Re: [abcusers] re : re: what does that means ?? & slurs and ties
Forgeot Eric wrote: >I can read it (even if it's not pleasant). But some abc software >can't and play badly the "legal" way of noting slurs. >If Barfly has no problem with this, that's good. >I've downloaded a mac emulator in order to try it but unfortunatly >I haven't managed yet to install a 7.0 system on the emulator so I >can't have a look at barfly. (I'd really like to !) System 7.0 was a bit buggy - try and get hold of 7.1, 7.5 or 7.6 as they should all work better. I've tried BarFly on a couple of emulators, Fusion (www.emulators.com) and Executor (www.ardi.com). Of the two, Fusion is free but very complicated to install, and requires a Mac ROM image to work. I couldn't get any sound out of it (probably due to lack of the appropriate sound card driver) but everything else worked fine. It's DOS based, and you have to re-start the machine in DOS mode to use it. Executor is very simple to install and runs under Windows. It doesn't require a Mac ROM or any special drivers to work. It doesn't support Quicktime or the modern Mac Sound manager, so again it won't play, or export midi, aiffs, QT Movies or pictures of the music in any format other than PICT. Ardi tell me that they are currently working to support Quicktime, so this should improve in future. Executor is expensive, but the free demo version does everything but print. If you need any help, mail me offlist. Phil Taylor To subscribe/unsubscribe, point your browser to: http://www.tullochgorm.com/lists.html
[abcusers] re : re: what does that means ?? & slurs and ties
It's strange because I'm using the email addess I submited to subscribe. Maybe it doesn't like my name : "=?iso-8859-1?q?Forgeot=20Eric?=" kindly submited by yahoo (I can't change this). >separate issues. And neither of them has anything whatsoever to do with >the square or curved bracket often placed over notes in a tuplet. I agree, I didn't say that we should confuse slurs or ties with triplets, but the problem is only because of the multiple brackets we are forced to use in order to notate slurs. Jack Campin said : >Just learn to read it that way. And a triplet sign in ABC should I can read it (even if it's not pleasant). But some abc software can't and play badly the "legal" way of noting slurs. If Barfly has no problem with this, that's good. I've downloaded a mac emulator in order to try it but unfortunatly I haven't managed yet to install a 7.0 system on the emulator so I can't have a look at barfly. (I'd really like to !) >between tieing and slurring on to the first note of a triplet, and your >suggested change would preclude that. I suggest nothing like that. Many users seems to use ties instead of slurs. I suggested only to make them both legal (in the standard). What can do more can do less. I will try to use brackets for slurs when it's possible. If not (if it may confuse) I'll use - instead. For Frank : This tune (Springleik) was found on the website of Folldal Spellmannslag ( http://home.no.net/janwes/folldal/ ) as an example of the music of their area. Most of their tunes are after Trondgård. If I remember well Jan Wesenberg has learnt some tunes from Trondgård himself. You could contact him to know more. They have released a CD, "Óslift", you should check it. Anbefalt på det sterkeste ! I have a couple more I transcribed by hear, some of them are not very accurate. Ask if you want them. ___ Do You Yahoo!? -- Une adresse @yahoo.fr gratuite et en français ! Yahoo! Mail : http://fr.mail.yahoo.com To subscribe/unsubscribe, point your browser to: http://www.tullochgorm.com/lists.html
