<div dir="ltr">What seems fortunate to me is that "beat" is not used as attribute in MEI (yet?)<div><br></div><div>Maybe we could use it when we need to specify a musical beat that is not the meter.unit. As I suggested with <beatRpt>, it would be assumed to be 1 in most cases, but could be "3" in 6/8 (or similar) when the desired musical beat is 4. . In 5/8, we could imagine having an attribute value such as "2+3" if the beat is expected to be 4 - 4. . Along the same lines, it could be useful to allow the attribute directly in <measure> (or even <staff>?) when the beat structure is changing.</div><div><br></div><div>Laurent</div><div class="gmail_extra"><br><div class="gmail_quote">On Thu, Aug 27, 2015 at 4:06 PM, Benjamin Wolff Bohl <span dir="ltr"><<a href="mailto:bohl@edirom.de" target="_blank">bohl@edirom.de</a>></span> wrote:<br><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0 0 0 .8ex;border-left:1px #ccc solid;padding-left:1ex">
<div bgcolor="#FFFFFF" text="#000000">
Dear Craig,<br>
many thanks for your always helpful advice!<span><br>
<br>
<div>Am 27.08.2015 um 11:08 schrieb Craig
Sapp:<br>
<br>
</div>
<blockquote type="cite">
<div dir="ltr">
<div class="gmail_extra">The problem is the
ambiguous/conflicting terminology in this sentence:</div>
<div class="gmail_extra"><br>
<div class="gmail_quote">On 27 August 2015 at 01:19, Benjamin
Wolff Bohl <span dir="ltr"><<a href="mailto:bohl@edirom.de" target="_blank">bohl@edirom.de</a>></span>
wrote:<br>
<blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0px 0px 0px 0.8ex;border-left-width:1px;border-left-color:rgb(204,204,204);border-left-style:solid;padding-left:1ex"><span style="border:0px;font-family:inherit;font-size:14px;font-style:inherit;font-weight:inherit;margin:0px;outline:0px;padding:0px;vertical-align:baseline">meter.unit</span>
contains the number indicating the beat unit, that is, the
bottom number of the meter signature.</blockquote>
</div>
</div>
</div>
</blockquote>
<br></span>
This is only ambiguous/conflicting if you are to smart and know too
much about music! Regarding the term "beat" in the closed system of
MEI everything is obvious an unambiguous.<span><br>
<br>
<blockquote type="cite">
<div dir="ltr">
<div class="gmail_extra">
<div class="gmail_extra"><br>
</div>
<div class="gmail_extra">The problem is that in compound
meters such as 6/8</div>
<div class="gmail_extra"> <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Meter_%28music%29#Compound_meter" target="_blank">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Meter_(music)#Compound_meter</a></div>
<div class="gmail_extra">The "musical beat" is a dotted
quarter note, while the MEI "beat unit" is an eighth note.
Using the word "beat" in such a way is unfortunate as it can
conflict with the musical definition of a beat, and this
will continue to cause mis-interpretation of what a beat is.</div>
</div>
</div>
</blockquote>
<br></span>
This then would promote using another term in MEI in order to avoid
confusion, let's say "meter-unit-n".<span><br>
<br>
<blockquote type="cite">
<div dir="ltr">
<div class="gmail_extra">
<div class="gmail_extra"><br>
</div>
<div class="gmail_extra">The duration of a beat is necessary
for music analysis, since the treatment of dissonance and
consonance is tied to the location of a note on or off of
the beat. <br>
</div>
</div>
</div>
</blockquote>
<br></span>
This could be a beating argument, if it is the purpose and intention
of MEI to do musical analysis.<br>
Is it? I'd rather say it provides a basis for doing analysis, the
logic of the analysis is not part of MEI, although the result of the
analysis might be encoded in MEI.<span><br>
<br>
<blockquote type="cite">
<div dir="ltr">
<div class="gmail_extra">
<div class="gmail_extra"> The musical beat is also needed to
automatically beam notes. Implicit interpretation of the
musical beat can be done with 6/8 by assigning it to be a
dotted quarter note, but there are exceptions to this
definition which would require a way of assigning an
explicit duration to the musical beat.</div>
</div>
</div>
</blockquote>
<br></span>
"Automatically" beaming notes is not part of the encoding but of the
rendering logic an thus will not be reflected in
(pure-logical-domain-)MEI. <br><span>
<br>
<blockquote type="cite">
<div dir="ltr">
<div class="gmail_extra">
<div class="gmail_extra"><br>
</div>
<div class="gmail_extra">For example, the middle slow
movements in a piano sonata may be labeled as 6/8, with the
beat actually assigned to the eighth note, in which case the
"musical beat" and the MEI "beat unit" are the same.</div>
<div class="gmail_extra"><br>
</div>
<div class="gmail_extra">Another more common corner case would
be time signatures such as 3/8. Is that a compound meter
with one beat in a measure, or a simple meter with three
beats in the measure (a variant on a 3/4 meter also possible
in slow movements)? <br>
</div>
</div>
</div>
</blockquote>
<blockquote type="cite">
<div dir="ltr">
<div class="gmail_extra">
<div class="gmail_extra"><br>
</div>
<div class="gmail_extra">And of course in modern music with
irregular meters such as 5/8, the musical beats in the
measure may may have two beats as 3+2 eighth notes, or 2+3
or a mixture of both in different measures.</div>
</div>
</div>
</blockquote>
<br></span>
The two above are only a problem if we consider "beat" as being the
"musical beat". If we consider it to be "meter-unit-n" instead,
everything would work out fine.<span><br>
<br>
<blockquote type="cite">
<div dir="ltr">
<div class="gmail_extra">
<div class="gmail_extra"><br>
</div>
<div class="gmail_extra">Compound meters resulted in a
degeneration of mensural notation. Since modern rhythms are
always "imperfect", to emulate a perfect mensuration dots
are added to the notes (which would usually be implicit the
mensural metric equivalent). These are represented as
compound meters in modern notation (who knows why they did
not invent "2/4." time signatures instead of "6/8" for such
cases). The problem is that modern time signatures are
ambiguous, since 6/8 could be considered like C-dot, or it
could be considered as a non-compound meter with 6 beat at
the eighth-note level.</div>
</div>
</div>
</blockquote>
<br></span>
Ok, air is getting thin for me...<br>
I've had a problem with modern transcription of mensural notation
ever since I first encountered it, or more precisely I was whinig
about modern notation being so restrictive due to having abandoned
mensuration signs. I would prefer modern transcription sticking to
mensuration signs and logic instead of adding dots, but I might not
be able to change the world about this...<br>
<br>
But to bang the drum for "meter-unit-n": Couldn't this problem also
be solved by <mensur> or some additional attribute on
<scoreDef> or <staffDef>? <br>
<br>
Considering the case of a modern transcription of "perfect" mensural
notation using <beatRpt> in terms of "meter-unit-n" would
result in completely different applicable cases compared to using it
in the sense of "musical beat". An there it is the again,<br>
** ambiguous and conflicting**<br>
<br>
Just for the sake ofplaying advocatus diavoli 3;-)<br>
Benni<br>
<br>
<blockquote type="cite"><span>
<div dir="ltr">
<div class="gmail_extra">
<div class="gmail_extra"><br>
</div>
<div class="gmail_extra">I whine to Perry every once in a
while about this, so we can wait for his reply on how to
disambiguate such cases...</div>
<div class="gmail_extra"><br>
</div>
<div class="gmail_extra">-=+Craig</div>
<div class="gmail_extra"><br>
</div>
</div>
</div>
<br>
<fieldset></fieldset>
<br>
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