[MEI-L] Annotations visible on the music and arbitrary segmentation

Mon Mar 6 08:57:55 CET 2017

Dear all,

I think one of the problems (at least one of my problems while  
encoding MN) is the spacing of the lyrics. It is not always clear,  
which syllable belongs where, so a connection of syllables to notes is  
not always given. The possibility to encode the lyrics separately and  
then attach them to a staff seems unlikely too, as the syllables would  
be spaced according to the rhythm off the staff (the lyrics would only  
appear at the beginning of the staff, as there normally are more notes  
then syllables).

A possibility to connect not only syllables but also whole phrases of  
text to phrases of notes would be really nice; something like "this  
text starts on that note and ends on that note". As it is not clear in  
all the cases how the underlayed text is to be sung and therefore a  
spacing of the lyrics would be an editorial intervention, a solution  
like @startid and @endid (or something else) would at least represent  
the source material the best.

Best,
Daniel

Zitat von Andrew Hankinson <andrew.hankinson at mail.mcgill.ca>:

> Could someone boil down the decisions that need to be made, even  
> just in point form, for those of us who haven't been part of the  
> discussion?
>
> I'm afraid I don't quite understand what we're supposed to be commenting on.
>
> -Andrew
>
>> On Mar 4, 2017, at 4:04 PM, Roland, Perry D. (pdr4h)  
>> <pdr4h at eservices.virginia.edu> wrote:
>>
>>
>> Hi,
>>
>> Text underlay doesn't have anything to do with <dir> or <annot>.
>>
>> I apologize for the confusion created by the definition of <verse>  
>> -- it was too short and too cryptic.  In the version of MEI  
>> currently under development, verse is defined as "Division of a  
>> poem or song lyrics; a stanza."
>>
>> The verse/syl construct is only applicable at the note level.  For  
>> musical material which is repeated, but with different  
>> words/lyrics/sung text, <verse> provides a method of recording  
>> which words belong with each repetition.
>>
>> <note>
>>   <verse n="1">
>>     <syl>Ooh</syl>
>>   </verse>
>>   <verse n="2">
>>     <syl>Ah</syl>
>>   </verse>
>> </note>
>>
>> For text not directly associated with individual notes, lyrics/lg  
>> should be used instead.  <lyrics> occurs outside the stream of  
>> notated events; that is, inside <measure> and <syllable>, although  
>> not within <staff> or <layer> as might be required for mensural  
>> notation.  I'll correct this oversight soon.  The <lg> element is,  
>> of course, borrowed from TEI.
>>
>> For those situations where the sung text is visually separate from  
>> the musical material, one can use --
>>
>> <lyrics>
>>   <lg>
>>     <l>Oh, say can you see</l>
>>   </lg>
>> </lyrics>
>>
>> To associate each syllable of these words with the notes, one can  
>> add <syl> elements --
>>
>> <lyrics>
>>   <lg>
>>     <l>
>>       <syl synch="#n1">Oh,</syl>
>>       <syl synch="#n2">say</syl>
>>       <syl synch="#n3">can</syl>
>>       <syl synch="#n4">>you</syl>
>>       <syl synch="#n5">see</syl>
>>   </lg>
>> </lyrics>
>>
>> One may object to calling the text of a 15th century motet  
>> "lyrics", but the same markup applies.
>>
>> --
>> p.
>>
>> From: mei-l [mailto:mei-l-bounces at lists.uni-paderborn.de] On Behalf  
>> Of Giuliano Di Bacco
>> Sent: Saturday, March 04, 2017 6:28 AM
>> To: Byrd, Donald A.; Music Encoding Initiative
>> Subject: Re: [MEI-L] Annotations visible on the music and arbitrary  
>> segmentation
>>
>> Thanks, Don:
>>
>> I swear that I am not trying to complicate the issue further, but I  
>> should recall that it was another moving part of the mechanism that  
>> originated this discussions on MEI-Mens, that is, <verse>. That is,  
>> also arbitrary segmentation/alignment of... non-arbitrary text (!)  
>> deserves attention:
>>
>> 1 - about its use, as regard to the issue described by Don: how  
>> best to record arbitrary (I prefer: "non standard") placement of  
>> text underlay (alignment of chunks of text in <verse> with  
>> <note>s), when not possible/easy to do it with <syl>.
>>
>> 2- about its definition. This may be slightly off-topic, but  
>> important: discussion on MEI-Mens reveals that there may be some  
>> confusion about what <verse> is supposed to be used for. The  
>> specifications say that this is for "lyric verse". Period. First, I  
>> am not sure whether "verse" has to be intended as "a body of  
>> metrical writing/poetry" or a "stanza/strophe of poetry" or a  
>> "single line of a metrical writing" -- definitions in major  
>> Brit+American dictionaries (and people's opinions) fluctuate  
>> between these poles.  Second, I am not sure whether "lyric" stands  
>> for the genre (lyric poetry as opposed to narrative, epic, didactic  
>> poetry) or generically for "the words of a song". Admittedly, in  
>> romance languages both terms are less ambiguous than in English, so  
>> I suppose that we just need to clarify, through a more generous  
>> description, if <verse> is "whatever poetic text underlay" (my best  
>> guess) or what. It would be very useful to clarify this point while  
>> we talk about "text". The next step would be to decide if we  
>> need/want to represent poetical structures of lower (or higher)  
>> order (it would seem logical to me if we borrowed stuff from TEI),  
>> and how to distinguish text underlay proper from  
>> text-that-goes-with-these-notes but not-laid-under-the-notes, that  
>> is, written/printed somewhere else in the page (introducing some  
>> tag/att like "underlay" and "displaced" perhaps). But this is  
>> really off-topic (premature) for now.
>>
>> As usual, please don't hesitate to correct me if I  
>> misunderstood/misrepresented anything -- it would be helpful.
>>
>> Best,
>>
>> Giuliano
>>
>>
>>
>> Byrd, Donald A. wrote on 04/03/2017 01:36:
>> For quite awhile, some of us -- mostly Laurent, Giuliano, Craig,  
>> Perry and I, plus other members of the mensural IG -- have been  
>> discussing the need for annotations with arbitrary text that are  
>> displayed on the music. Unfortunately, the discussion so far has  
>> been scattered among several places, including the mensural IG  
>> mailing list and Verovio GitHub issues #248 ("Directives in  
>> mensural notation aren't drawn"), 388 ("@n for <harm>"), and  
>> especially 389 ("implement <annot> display"). You can read #389 at
>>
>>    https://github.com/rism-ch/verovio/issues/389  
>> <https://github.com/rism-ch/verovio/issues/389>
>>
>> and similarly for the other Verovio issues. Anyway, I'll try to  
>> summarize the issues here.
>>
>> We've talked about using one of two existing tags for these  
>> annotations, namely <dir> and <annot>. It seems clear that <dir> is  
>> not what we want because it's specifically intended for performance  
>> directions. As for <annot>s, of course they are currently only for  
>> annotating the encoding, not the music, and they're not displayed  
>> in the SVG. We could add a @visible attribute to <annot>, but the  
>> problem then is _where_ on the music should they appear? But it  
>> seems to me this is only a serious problem if you expect the  
>> notation engine to position everything automatically, and that's  
>> something that I think is completely unrealistic for complex music  
>> regardless of annotation. I suggest visible <annot>s should have a  
>> crudely-calculated default position, and it'd be up to the user to  
>> specify a different position if they want.
>>
>> Giuliano has raised a related concern. He wrote yesterday that
>>
>> "[N]ot only something like <dir> for arbitrary non-lyric text is  
>> needed, but also some arbitrary segmentation, to encapsulate  
>> portions of music and/or lyric/non-lyric text where things happen  
>> (such as, lyric text loosely connected with a portion of music, or  
>> passages where the mensuration is uncertain...).
>>
>> "If I understand correctly, most of the problem with <dir>   
>> originates from the missing <measure> level in the hierarchy (at  
>> least this creates problems with Verovio), so I was wondering  
>> whether the introduction of a tag <segment> at that level could be  
>> useful. The latter, contrary to <measure> would be totally  
>> optional, and contrary to <measure> or <section> would be used  
>> without any structural meaning.
>>
>> "This is the point where we felt the need that the discussion  
>> escalates on MEI-L.  Non-structural segmentation is something that  
>> TEI introduced lately in their schema (they call it <seg> when the  
>> portion of text is shorter than a paragraph, and <ab> when an  
>> 'anonymous block' of text is found that escapes from the paragraph  
>> structure). In my experience this is one of the most useful  
>> features when dealing with complex documents, and in past projects  
>> I used it also to provide annotations. I wonder whether there are  
>> any reasons for not having a <seg>-like tag available at any level."
>>
>> Giuliano's ideas make sense to me, but I don't feel very well  
>> qualified to evaluate them.
>>
>> I'm looking forward to hearing people's thoughts on all of this!
>>
>> --Don
>>
>>
>> ---
>> Donald Byrd
>> Woodrow Wilson Indiana Teaching Fellow
>> Adjunct Associate Professor of Informatics
>> Visiting Scientist, Research Technologies
>> Indiana University Bloomington
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
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>> mei-l at lists.uni-paderborn.de
>> https://lists.uni-paderborn.de/mailman/listinfo/mei-l

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