Re: Constructive Criticism and a Question

[stk]

Trevor --

Thank you for your very clear explanation.  I learned a lot from that.
I am nevertheless amazed that a performer would be able to keep track of
15/56ths of a whole note(!).

> Note, importantly, that, with the present tuplet syntax, lily handles
> all tuplets -- *including broken ones* -- correctly out of the box.
> This sort of thing brings Finale and Sibelius screaming to their
> knees. (This seems to be an extension of the fact that lily gets one
> thing *exceedingly* correct: the duration model of musical time.

Well, isn't that a good argument for just leaving the whole thing alone?

> I think changing \times to \tuplet is a great idea for the reason that
> started the thread: \times is too close to \time.

That I really don't get.  LilyPond is written in *English*.  There is a
word "time" and there is another word "times"; they don't mean the same
thing, that's all.  To write LilyPond code, we have to distinguish between
   \override & \set,
   Script & TextScript,
   \addlyrics & \lyricsto,
   (not to mention foo & bar).
People who speak a Romance language have to learn the difference between
   \clef & \key.
And we have to write things like
   #(override-auto-beam-setting '(end * * 5 8) 3 8)
and
   \override Score.RehursalMarc #'brake-visibility =
         #begin-of-align-invisibile
and
   \acciaccatura { c16[ d] } e4  % 4 c's, not 2 or 3, no ch's or k's
correctly.  But people are "confused" by \time vs. \times ?????

Hmmm.  Well then, I'm confused about \with-color, \center-align, and
\lyricmode (I've never seen a "lyric").  Could we please get these changed
to \with-colour, \centre-align, and \lyricsmode?

-- Tom

************************************************************************

On Tue, 2 Jan 2007, [UTF-8] Trevor Bača wrote:

> On 1/2/07, address@hidden <address@hidden> wrote:
> >
> > > ... in irregular, tuplet-intensive music it may be sensible to create a
> > > music function for sequences of tuplets. In addition, it's IMHO a more
> > > lilypondesque solution than tupletSpannerDuration, once we support 
> > > fractions
> > > as music function arguments.
> >
> > If I understand you correctly, this would involve specifying, one way or
> > another, the duration of each actual tuplet.  Explicit specification of a
> > duration (other than by an external tupletSpannerDuration declaration) has
> > been suggested by another user, and IMO it would be a good idea, although
> > I gather that Han-Wen is not in favour of the idea.
> >
> > But I have a question about how one would specify a duration.  Specifying
> > durations in the way we usually think about them allows actual durations
> > that look like this:
> > 1    ==> 1
> > 2... ==> 15/16
> > 2..  ==> 7/8
> > 2.   ==> 3/4
> > 4... ==> 15/32
> > 4..  ==> 7/16
> > 4.   ==> 3/8
> > 4    ==> 1/4
> > (etc.)
> > so that only durations of the form
> >    2^(p-1) / 2^q  (where p < q)
> > can be specified this way.  But given the extravagancies of contemporary
> > music, wouldn't it be possible, for example, to have a tuplet where 4
> > eighth notes would be played over a time interval of 5 eighths --
> >       \times 5/4  {c8 d e f}
> > Or does such a thing never happen?
>
> It most certainly does. All the time, in fact.
>
> Not only that, but an increasing amount of modern music considers the
> following valid:
>
>   \times 5/7 { c'16 c'16 c'16 c'16 c'16 c'16 } % note six sixteenths
> only (not seven)
>
> What's going on here are 7 sixteenths in the time of 5 sixteenths BUT
> only the first 6 of those 7 sixteenths actually appear. You could call
> this sort of thing a "broken" tuplet, and the overall duration of the
> figure here is then 6/7 of 5 sixteenths or 15/56 of a whole note
> (which lily would express as #(ly:make-moment 15 56)).
>
> These broken tuplets would then pose a much, much greater difficulty
> of expressing were we to move to a duration-based syntax for tuplets.
>
> Broken tuplets may look insane, but take a look at the devestatingly
> beatiful Sciarrino flute pieces -- plenty of examples, and all
> completely idiomatic.
>
> Note, importantly, that, with the present tuplet syntax, lily handles
> all tuplets -- *including broken ones* -- correctly out of the box.
> This sort of thing brings Finale and Sibelius screaming to their
> knees. (This seems to be an extension of the fact that lily gets one
> thing *exceedingly* correct: the duration model of musical time. Out
> of the box you can also specify time signatures like 6/15, 5/28, 3/10
> and so on, all of which bring other musical notation programs -- with
> the the notable exception of SCORE -- to a crashing standstill. Or at
> least the last time I bothered to check.)
>
> I've been watching the tuplet discussion with some hesitation. I think
> chaning \times to \tuplet is a great idea for the reason that started
> the thread: \times is too close to \time. But it seems to me that most
> of the suggestions following that initial suggestion begin to confuse
> the essential time-scaling function of tuplet brackets (which is their
> absolutely core purpose, both in the common practice and now) and
> other graphical aspects of the notation such as beaming, grouping (and
> even accentuation). Beaming and grouping are terribly important, of
> course, but I think that it's best to leave their specification out of
> the core tuplet syntax.
>
> More important is to fix the fact that
>
>   \times { c8 d e f }
>
> will currently by default print with only a 4 in the tuplet bracket,
> which is mathematically wrong; the denominator 5 must appear.
>
>
> --
> Trevor Bača
> address@hidden
>