Dotted Notes

[bachus]

As mentioned elsewhere Zylaphon auto-parses note lengths to fit the meters in which they occur. As shown here when a whole note was created at the beginning of a measure of 10/8 meter parsed 2/4+6/8:

http://electro-music.com/forum/download.php?id=24854
Below is another screen shot from Zylaphon. In the upper channel bar of the first measure the second and third 16ths are tied. They did not reduce to an eighth because that form violates the meter in which it occurs (4/4 simple). In the second measure upper channel bar another tie has been added. The series of tied 16ths appears only because auto-parsing was inhibited. Auto-parsing was restarted and the channel bar below was created exactly as the one above, but as soon as the second rest was added the group of 16ths condensed into the dotted form as seen. This reflects the fact that dotted groups are not felt in the flesh as weakening the meter in which they occur. Dotted groups are not “enforced” more than one group level above the beat level. In the third measure a dotted half was not condensed from the tied half and quarter (with the tied eighths completing the dotted group) because the quarter falls on an accent two group levels above the beat level. In the lower channel bar of the first measure the second half-note falls on an accent-group one level higher than the beat level and so that group was condensed. The maximum number of dots that are automatically introduced in the formation of dotted groups is set under score options on the options page by setting preferred max dots.

For an explanation of the gray notes in the third measure see the thread on Certificates.

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[bachus]

I was tapping my foot yesterday and had one of those, "OMG Did I say that?" moments.

All else being equal a long note is felt as having more rhythmic weight than a shorter one in close proximity. The red brackets in the drawing below show the felt metric divisions -- again all else being equal.

So, to be completely consistent Zylaphon should parse the dotted notes in the lower channel into tied parts. But instead it will here bow to convention and add a data bit flag to indicate when a dotted note is in the form shown in the lower channel, i.e. in a short-long grouping. Of course the Meter class' methods would provide a very simple way of determining this algorithmically on the fly. But that would take quite a few more operations than a flag test. And again, time is of the essence, and determining an events metric significance is be something that has to be done millions of times in course of many creative operations.