[linux-audio-dev] Re: XAP: a polemic

David Olofson david at olofson.net
Wed Dec 18 11:44:01 UTC 2002


On Wednesday 18 December 2002 17.40, vanDongen-Gilcher wrote:
[...]
> There can be easily multiple time-frames going happening in a
> single piece of music that have non-lineair relationships.
> A computer can also be used to make sounds that a player cannot
> make. A sequencer/daw will also be used for non-musical ordering of
> sounds in time. It might be handy to use an extended beat/measure
> structure for setting event frames for dialog editing for a radio
> play.

That's a very good point that I pretty much forgot about. The jingles 
and effects in betwen songs have to be timed very accurately to sound 
right. Yet, it doesn't have much to do with traditional meters, since 
you're usually dealing with two songs and one or more effects at the 
same time. The professional radio guy at work does this "blind" in 
real time with special software, but I suppose it could be rather 
useful to be able to do this kind of stuff in sequencers as well. 
(Then you could just edit instead of trying to record in real time 
over and over until you get it right.) 


> BTW measure are much more complicated than just A/B. Even a 6/8 is
> really 2/ 2.6666666.... in a way. Unless it is divided differently.
> See Brahms for nice examples of playing with the groupings of eight
> notes in 4/4. The notation x/y is just a shorthand in classical
> music _notation_, that only becomes meaningfull in the context of
> other notation parameters, such a note-beam groupings etc.
> So notating 17/16 instead of 4.25/4 is fine, because the score
> gives the grouping information. (to the player and conductor)
> Although I have written (4+1/2) / 4 because I wanted to mae sure
> that the piece s counted that way and not in 9/8 (=3+3+3).
>
> Anyway my point is that the A/B concept of measure if only really
> relevant if your dealing with western _notation_, and then together
> with the entire score.

This is exactly what I mean when I say that the meter has a musical 
meaning, and that it should be possible to express it correctly, for 
plugins to interpret if they need to.


//David Olofson - Programmer, Composer, Open Source Advocate

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