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 BaÄa wrote: > On 1/2/07, [EMAIL PROTECTED] <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> 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 BaÄa > [EMAIL PROTECTED] > _______________________________________________ lilypond-user mailing list lilypond-user@gnu.org http://lists.gnu.org/mailman/listinfo/lilypond-user