Re: Two different time signatures with different tuplets in 'em

[mclaren]

David Wright remarked:

"What I can't understand is why you would want 
to print out a score that is basically impossible to play, and is, in 
any case, written in a notation that is debatably incapable of 
expressing it."

This score might be impossible for _humans_ to play. That doesn't mean that
the score can't be played. It can be entered with trivial ease into a MIDI
sequencer, and a MIDI sequencer can play it without any trouble at all. In
fact, the big dichotomy here involves the huge gap between how easy it is to
enter this kind of score into a MIDI sequencer, and how nearly impossible it
is to generate this kind of score using a computer-based music notation
program.

To enter this kind of score using a MIDI sequencer, you simply choose STEP
ENTRY and then figure out the number of ticks of each tuplet. In the case of
an 11:9 eighth note, for example, if the timebase is 480 ticks per quarter
note, then an 11:9 eighth note is 9/11*(240) =  196.3636 ticks. To round
things off, add an extra tick every three 11:9 eighth notes.  You can enter
this entire score in just a few minutes using this method with any MIDI
sequencer. It's ridiculously easy.

Musical scores have two functions: analysis and performance. When electronic
instruments and electromechanical devices like the Disklavier piano from
Yamaha appeared, the combined function of analysis + musical performance
split into two separate streams. One of the earliest examples of such a
score is Mikel Rouse's Quorum (1984), a polyrhythmic piece for the Linn Drum
Machine. You can get Quorum on iTunes here:
https://itunes.apple.com/us/album/quorum-remastered-quorum-music/id264549486

More recently, composer Kyle Gann has produced nearly an hour of
polyrhythmic microtonal piano pieces for the Yamaha Disklavier. You can hear
them, and study the scores, here:
http://www.artsjournal.com/postclassic/2016/08/another-do-it-yourselfer.html

David Wright went on to mention:
"I've also not met many people who enjoy making programs crash and yet 
don't seem to be interested in exactly why they crash under those
circumstances. In my day, I loved working with people who used my 
software in ways far beyond the capabilities I had designed into it, and
when they ran into problems, we would work together on improving the design
or implementation for their benefit, and for future users."

Given the acid contempt with which I've been treated, my working assumption
as a musician is that Lilypond programmers will make zero effort to fix any
bug in the Lilypond program, and so far my assumption has proven correct.
Experience shows that programmers are usually distinguished by their
ignorance and incompetence, and spend far more time denying that any bugs
exist than actually correcting them. 

Experience suggests that LISP stands for "Laughably Incompetent So-called
Programmer." If you want to add 2 + 2 and get 3, give the problem to a LISP
programmer. Fifty percent of all large programming projects in any language
end in failure. Computer "science" is still in the dark ages, at the level
of alchemy or the phlogiston theory of heat. Anyone who expects a programmer
to actually help fix any bugs in a large program is badly deluded, and as a
result, all end users must expect to be ridiculed, disdained, sneered at and
jeered at by programmers whenever they report a bug in a large program.  

Thus end users must go it alone and find workarounds for themselves.
Programmers will never lift a finger to help you when things go wrong.
Instead, the programmer will typically blame the victim: "Oh, the program is
supposed to work that way. That's a feature, not a bug." Or: "You shouldn't
want to do that, no user would ever want to do what you're doing."  

Musicians must develop a very thick skin and learn to expect this. The
crucial issue is to get a score, by whatever means possible, and then move
on. Practicing musicians quickly learn to regard programmers as a form of
damage and route around them.



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