[MEI-L] graceful beams

[Johannes Kepper]

Yes, sort of. I would clarify in the guidelines that grace notes inside <beam> elements won't attach their stem to the beam, and if one wants to get this behavior, he would have to use beamSpan instead. 

A consequence of this is that there may be a meaning of nesting beam elements (= when there is a beamed group of grace notes), but that's allowed already.

Thanks for the discussion. 
Best,
Johannes

Am 14.04.2013 um 12:52 schrieb TW <zupftom at googlemail.com>:

> So, to what conclusion do we come?  I think MEI doesn't lack any features here, it should just be made clear at a more prominent place in the specification/documented that grace notes will graphically not be part of a beam, even if they occur within the <beam> element.  If you *really* want grace notes to be part of the regular beam, you can still achieve this using existing means.
> 
> Is this a valid summary of the discussion?
> Thomas
> 
> 
> 
> 2013/4/14 Roland, Perry (pdr4h) <pdr4h at eservices.virginia.edu>
> Hi Don,
> 
> Thanks for joining the discussion.
> 
> I should've been wary of using the word "never".  That's a dangerous word when it comes to music notation. (Note to self:  Always avoid the words "always" and "never".  Never use them.)  Chopin's notation is usually pretty "slippery", so I'm not surprised you found evidence there to trip up the unsuspecting.
> 
> However, in both the Mozart and Chopin examples, the notes in question are clearly not part of the beamed group of "principal" notes.  Stem direction is the best evidence.  The different stem directions leading to the beams attached to the A# in the penultimate measure of the Chopin clearly indicate that there are two "layers/parts/streams/voices" here.  There isn't just one A#, but two which occupy the same visual space. The big A# just obscures the little one.  The grace note A# belongs to the upper layer while the regular note A# goes with the lower one.  The same thing occurs on the B natural in the last measure.  
> 
> Now that the part writing has been disentangled, what is most interesting is the *meaning* of this particular vertical alignment, the collision really, of a "principal" note and a "grace" note.  What is Frederic trying to say?  I believe he's indicating that the grace note arpeggio begins *with* the A#, not *after* it (this comports with Gould) and that the performer shouldn't rush getting to the A# at the top of the arpeggio.  (By the way, I believe the sonic effect would've been the same if he'd simply written a wavy line in front of A#-C#-F#-A# in the right hand, just like what's in the left hand. But he made his choice and we have to live with it.)
> 
> 
> There's an instance in the 3rd measure of the Chopin example that's more closely analogous to the situation in the Mozart that started the discussion: the grace notes between beat 2 and its second half (assuming this notation is counted in 2/4) lie under the beam connecting the G#-A-G# sequence, but they're not touching it.  In addition, they're part of their own little beamed group.  They are *logically excluded* from participating in the "big beam group" in spite of occurring between its participating notes, just like the grace notes in the Mozart example.
> 
> So, I stand by my assertion that grace notes are never (um, "extremely rarely") beamed with "regular" notes, where "beamed with" means "part of the same horizontal sequence as" normal-sized notes.  Granted, I haven't seen the entire universe of music notation, but mixed grace- and normal-note beams are like unicorns -- I've heard talk of them, but as yet I haven't seen one. :-)
> 
> 
> 
> --
> p.
> 
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> Perry Roland
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