[MEI-L] How to use <ftrem>

Roland, Perry (pdr4h) pdr4h at eservices.virginia.edu
Fri Jun 17 05:31:18 CEST 2011


Hi Thomas,

One should never count beams separate from slashes -- count only slashes.  Treating tremolandi this way makes them uniform in the markup regardless of the note durations involved.  So, the way to encode your first example is

<ftrem slash="4">
  <note pname="f" dur="32" oct="4"/>
  <note pname="a" dur="32" oct="4"/>
</ftrem>

Your second example should be

<ftrem slash="3">
  <note pname="f" dur="2" oct="4"/>
  <note pname="a" dur="2" oct="4"/>
</ftrem>

In fact, all the tremolandi except the last are encoded exactly the same way (<ftrem slash="3">) except for the note durations.  Now, exactly *how* the slashes are drawn is left to the rendering process.

What you're calling a "beam" isn't really.  Depending on the rhythmic values involved, one or more of the "slashes" are drawn connecting the notes (making it/them look "beam-like"), the rest are disconnected from the note stems.  Therefore, none of the notes in the example are "properly" or "improperly" beamed -- they're not "beamed" at all.

I don't have access to Read at the moment, but the rules for tremolandi are covered there.  In fact, this example comes directly from Read, which is invaluable for answering notational questions.  I highly recommend that anyone working with CMN notation have a copy nearby.  And, no, I don't get any reward from the author or the publisher for the recommendation.

I suppose that somewhere out in the "wild" there are 2-beat tremolos with "no beam and 3 slashes" (especially in manuscript), but that notation would just be incorrect.  If we set ourselves the goal of representing incorrect notation, then we'll be back to describing "lines and circles"; in other words, nothing more than the marks on the page.  If it's important, one can include a facsimile image to show the incorrect notation, using something like

<ftrem slash="3" facs="idOfTheZoneContainingIncorrectNotation">.

I think adding @dur on ftrem makes sense because it would allow the omission of it on the individual notes, just as on chord.  Is that what you were thinking?

Yes, the documentation is an on-going effort.  Regrettably, I haven't had as much time to devote to it as it deserves. Any volunteers to mark up the notation in the Tag Library?

--
p.

__________________________
Perry Roland
Music Library
University of Virginia
P. O. Box 400175
Charlottesville, VA 22904
434-982-2702 (w)
pdr4h (at) virginia (dot) edu
________________________________________
From: mei-l-bounces at lists.uni-paderborn.de [mei-l-bounces at lists.uni-paderborn.de] on behalf of TW [zupftom at googlemail.com]
Sent: Thursday, June 16, 2011 5:34 AM
To: Music Encoding Initiative
Subject: [MEI-L] How to use <ftrem>

I'm not sure what's the proper way of using <ftrem>.  If I want to
encode the last <ftrem> from this image:

http://www.music-encoding.org/pix/tagLibrary/meiTagLibrary2010-05_html_25c82644.png

would I do it like this (assuming it's in treble clef):

<beam>
  <ftrem slash="1">
    <note pname="f" dur="32" oct="4"/>
    <note pname="a" dur="32" oct="4"/>
  </ftrem>
</beam>

i.e. this is a pair of properly beamed 32nd notes with an additional
stroke, or like this:

<ftrem slash="4">

  <note pname="f" dur="32" oct="4"/>

  <note pname="a" dur="32" oct="4"/>

</ftrem>


assuming that slash="4" and @dur="32" imply that we have three beams
and one slash?

Analogously, how would I encode the second <ftrem>:

<beam>

  <ftrem slash="2">

    <note pname="f" dur="2" oct="4"/>

    <note pname="a" dur="2" oct="4"/>

  </ftrem>

</beam>

i.e. a pair of "improperly" beamed half notes with an additional
slash?  I'm not sure, could there be half note heads with two or more
beams?  How do I tell how many beams?  Or like this:

<ftrem slash="3">

  <note pname="f" dur="2" oct="4"/>

  <note pname="a" dur="2" oct="4"/>

</ftrem>


and ftrem/@slash="3" and note/@dur="2" imply that I have one beam and
two slashes?  Could there be half notes without beam and only with
slashes?  And wouldn't it make sense to have an ftrem/@dur attribute,
analogously to chord/@dur?

It would be great if the images in the documentation could be
supplemented with code examples (did I understand correctly that this
is work in progress?)

Thanks!
Thomas Weber

_______________________________________________
mei-l mailing list
mei-l at lists.uni-paderborn.de
https://lists.uni-paderborn.de/mailman/listinfo/mei-l


More information about the mei-l mailing list