[MEI-L] Beat in 6/8

Thu Aug 27 17:17:57 CEST 2015

The problem is that when I encounter a <beatRpt> in an encoding I would
like to know how much time it repeats. I understand that it represent the
repetition of the material that occur on a previous musical beat, as you
say. However, since the duration of what the musical beat is not encoded
explicitly (as far as I understand) it does not seem to be possible to know
it (i.e., how much time it repeats.).

Laurent

On Thu, Aug 27, 2015 at 5:02 PM, Roland, Perry D. (pdr4h) <
pdr4h at eservices.virginia.edu> wrote:

>
>
> Did you mean to say it is "unfortunate" that MEI doesn't use "beat" as an
> attribute?
>
> And how does one allow an attribute directly "in" <measure> or <staff>?
>
> We should stay away from determination of meter in MEI.  As we've already
> heard, it often introduces a lot of subjectivity and interpretation.  That
> kind of thing is best left to a different, analytical layer.
>
> I still don't see the point -- what does this have to do with beatRpt?
>
> --
> 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 [mei-l-bounces at lists.uni-paderborn.de] on behalf of Laurent
> Pugin [lxpugin at gmail.com]
> *Sent:* Thursday, August 27, 2015 10:45 AM
> *To:* Music Encoding Initiative
> *Subject:* Re: [MEI-L] Beat in 6/8
>
> What seems fortunate to me is that "beat" is not used as attribute in MEI
> (yet?)
>
> 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.
>
> Laurent
>
> On Thu, Aug 27, 2015 at 4:06 PM, Benjamin Wolff Bohl <bohl at edirom.de>
> wrote:
>
>> Dear Craig,
>>  many thanks for your always helpful advice!
>>
>> Am 27.08.2015 um 11:08 schrieb Craig Sapp:
>>
>> The problem is the ambiguous/conflicting terminology in this sentence:
>>
>> On 27 August 2015 at 01:19, Benjamin Wolff Bohl <bohl at edirom.de> wrote:
>>
>>> meter.unit contains the number indicating the beat unit, that is, the
>>> bottom number of the meter signature.
>>
>>
>> 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.
>>
>>
>> The problem is that in compound meters such as 6/8
>>     https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Meter_(music)#Compound_meter
>> 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.
>>
>>
>> This then would promote using another term in MEI in order to avoid
>> confusion, let's say "meter-unit-n".
>>
>>
>> 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.
>>
>>
>> This could be a beating argument, if it is the purpose and intention of
>> MEI to do musical analysis.
>> 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.
>>
>> 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.
>>
>>
>> "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.
>>
>>
>> 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.
>>
>> 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)?
>>
>>
>> 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.
>>
>>
>> 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.
>>
>>
>> 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.
>>
>>
>> Ok, air is getting thin for me...
>> 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...
>>
>> 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>?
>>
>> 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,
>> ** ambiguous and conflicting**
>>
>> Just for the sake ofplaying advocatus diavoli  3;-)
>> Benni
>>
>>
>> I whine to Perry every once in a while about this, so we can wait for his
>> reply on how to disambiguate such cases...
>>
>> -=+Craig
>>
>>
>>
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