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increpatio
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« on: 16:00:02, 19-09-2007 » |
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2 THINGS that've been on my mind lately: Hmm. This page by hh reminded me that I have this idea in my head, that I should probably dispell at some point in my life, that occasionally when...lets take an example: I'm pretty sure I've seen pieces where you have a section that's piano, then there's a decres. hairpin, then there's another p after that. That is to say, in my mind, hairpins don't necessarily entail a constant increase/decrease in volume, that there can also be implicit an implicit dynamic change (in the opposite direction to the one that it's going it) at the start also. Am I mad? Also: TIMESPACE TIMESPACE + STEMS notation question. Are people about here familiar with this issue? I posted it on the lilypond thread but I figured maybe it was lost there. (I don't think there's a notation thread elsewhere). |
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« Last Edit: 17:27:38, 19-09-2007 by increpatio »
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harmonyharmony
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« Reply #1 on: 16:05:00, 19-09-2007 » |
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Cool. I'll be back.
Just putting a bookmark in here, as it were.
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'is this all we can do?' anonymous student of the University of Berkeley, California quoted in H. Draper, 'The new student revolt' (New York: Grove Press, 1965) http://www.myspace.com/itensemble |
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time_is_now
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« Reply #2 on: 16:31:51, 19-09-2007 » |
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Hmm. This page by hh reminded me that I have this idea in my head, that I should probably dispell at some point in my life, that occasionally when...lets take an example: I'm pretty sure I've seen pieces where you have a section that's piano, then there's a decres. hairpin, then there's another p after that. That is to say, in my mind, hairpins don't necessarily entail a constant increase/decrease in volume, that there can also be implicit an implicit dynamic change (in the opposite direction to the one that it's going it) at the start also. Erm, I can't say I fully understand you, but if you're asking what I think you're asking then the answer is 'no'. The one situation that one might occasionally want is a crescendo from p and then, at the end of the cresc., a sudden return to a p dynamic. But to simply indicate that by means of p, then a hairpin, then another p would be ambiguous (since it could equally imply a drop below p before the start of the crescendo). So you would need something like the solution Peter Maxwell Davies adopted in Ave maris stella (or possibly earlier, I'm not sure), with a straight vertical line before the second p. (I haven't described this very well, which is mainly because I don't actually remember it very well. Has anyone seen a score of that piece more recently than me?) Also: TIMESPACE notation question. ... was extensively discussed in a different thread, beginning about here. |
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The city is a process which always veers away from the form envisaged and desired, ... whose revenge upon its architects and planners undoes every dream of mastery. It is [also] one of the sites where Dasein is assigned the impossible task of putting right what can never be put right. - Rob Lapsley
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increpatio
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« Reply #3 on: 16:43:13, 19-09-2007 » |
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Hmm. This page by hh reminded me that I have this idea in my head, that I should probably dispell at some point in my life, that occasionally when...lets take an example: I'm pretty sure I've seen pieces where you have a section that's piano, then there's a decres. hairpin, then there's another p after that. That is to say, in my mind, hairpins don't necessarily entail a constant increase/decrease in volume, that there can also be implicit an implicit dynamic change (in the opposite direction to the one that it's going it) at the start also. Erm, I can't say I fully understand you, but if you're asking what I think you're asking then the answer is 'no'. Then I think (also on the basis of what you say after this) you are thinking of what I'm thinking. I'll have a look see if I can find what I think I'm talking about. Given that it probably doesn't exist, I wouldn't ask you to expect much word back from me about this particular topic. Also: TIMESPACE notation question. ... was extensively discussed in a different thread, beginning about here. I followed that thread on and off during it's progression. I don't think the up-down stemming issue in particular was brought up, however. I don't actively mean to bring up the whole discussion again(saying this, I have no issues if people wish to), just this particular aspect, which I find a little curious. You don't find it a little curious? |
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« Last Edit: 16:51:51, 19-09-2007 by increpatio »
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time_is_now
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« Reply #4 on: 17:01:18, 19-09-2007 » |
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Also: TIMESPACE notation question. ... was extensively discussed in a different thread, beginning about here. I followed that thread on and off during it's progression. I don't think the up-down stemming issue in particular was brought up, however. I don't actively mean to bring up the whole discussion again(saying this, I have no issues if people wish to), just this particular aspect, which I find a little curious. You don't find it a little curious? [/quote] Sorry, I hadn't followed your link and you didn't actually say you were talking about stemming. (You said 'even positioning of notes with staves', and maybe you meant 'stems', but this didn't occur to me at the time.) I find what they say very sensible actually, although it's not really connected with what I'd understand by the phrase 'time-space notation', since they're simply talking about how to make sure you have even spacing between each of a series of note values of the same length, whereas 'time-space notation' implies proportional spacing of notes of different lengths ... |
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The city is a process which always veers away from the form envisaged and desired, ... whose revenge upon its architects and planners undoes every dream of mastery. It is [also] one of the sites where Dasein is assigned the impossible task of putting right what can never be put right. - Rob Lapsley
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martle
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« Reply #5 on: 17:07:17, 19-09-2007 » |
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So you would need something like the solution Peter Maxwell Davies adopted in Ave maris stella (or possibly earlier, I'm not sure), with a straight vertical line before the second p. I'm not sure I'm remembering this well either, and I don't have a score; but I've a feeling PMD (and I've seen others do this too - done it myself in fact) uses a colon, thus - mf: p - where the mf is the dynamic goal of a crescendo hairpin, say, and the p is the immediate new dynamic thereafter. |
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Green. Always green.
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time_is_now
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« Reply #6 on: 17:10:04, 19-09-2007 » |
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Yes, you're absolutely right, martle. Thanks - it's all coming back to me now.
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The city is a process which always veers away from the form envisaged and desired, ... whose revenge upon its architects and planners undoes every dream of mastery. It is [also] one of the sites where Dasein is assigned the impossible task of putting right what can never be put right. - Rob Lapsley
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increpatio
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« Reply #7 on: 17:19:05, 19-09-2007 » |
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You said 'even positioning of notes with staves', and maybe you meant 'stems', but this didn't occur to me at the time. Oops. Yes. My bad. Fixed. Feeling a bit incohesive today (as I was when I wrote the original post which I quoted, where instead of "stem" I thought "staff", so I said "staffs", which, when copying in to the post above, I changed, along with fixing several other errors, to "staves" without thinking much about it). I find what they say very sensible actually, although it's not really connected with what I'd understand by the phrase 'time-space notation', since they're simply talking about how to make sure you have even spacing between each of a series of note values of the same length Now they're talking about how to make sure that it appears that notes of equal value are evenly spaced by, in some sense, distributing them unevenly. , whereas 'time-space notation' implies proportional spacing of notes of different lengths ...
Whereas if the durations are the same one can do what one wishes in time-space notation?  Martle: thanks for that. |
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« Last Edit: 17:29:45, 19-09-2007 by increpatio »
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time_is_now
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« Reply #8 on: 17:30:25, 19-09-2007 » |
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they're talking about how to make sure that it appears that notes of equal value are evenly spaced by, in some sense, distributing them unevenly. Well, they're just talking about the appearance of evenness as opposed to the strict but in one sense thoughtless use of actual evenness. I don't think their argument is remotely controversial - I can't seriously imagine anyone would disagree with what they're suggesting, I think it's just something that some people might not have thought important enough to be worth commenting on. In that sense I'm impressed by their attention to detail. whereas 'time-space notation' implies proportional spacing of notes of different lengths ...
Whereas if lengths are the same one can do what one wishes in time-space notation? No, but the point I'm making is that they're talking a very localised issue of how e.g. 1 or 2 bars of crotchets look on the page. I don't think their reason for talking about that is remotely the same reason why, say, Aaron or Richard would want to make sure a dotted semiquaver took up exactly 3/8 the space of a crotchet in one of their scores. |
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« Last Edit: 17:32:07, 19-09-2007 by time_is_now »
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The city is a process which always veers away from the form envisaged and desired, ... whose revenge upon its architects and planners undoes every dream of mastery. It is [also] one of the sites where Dasein is assigned the impossible task of putting right what can never be put right. - Rob Lapsley
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increpatio
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« Reply #9 on: 18:22:30, 19-09-2007 » |
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they're talking about how to make sure that it appears that notes of equal value are evenly spaced by, in some sense, distributing them unevenly. Well, they're just talking about the appearance of evenness as opposed to the strict but in one sense thoughtless use of actual evenness. I don't think their argument is remotely controversial - I can't seriously imagine anyone would disagree with what they're suggesting, I think it's just something that some people might not have thought important enough to be worth commenting on. In that sense I'm impressed by their attention to detail. The nice thing about open-source stuff is that they actually get to talk about the algorithms they use. Sibelius has this feature also as, presumably, does Finale. Neither, to my knowledge, do that cute thing with the ledger-lines that Lilypond does, however. whereas 'time-space notation' implies proportional spacing of notes of different lengths ...
Whereas if lengths are the same one can do what one wishes in time-space notation? No, but the point I'm making is that they're talking a very localised issue of how e.g. 1 or 2 bars of crotchets look on the page. I don't think their reason for talking about that is remotely the same reason why, say, Aaron or Richard would want to make sure a dotted semiquaver took up exactly 3/8 the space of a crotchet in one of their scores. [/quote] I assume that they want a dotted semiquaver to take up exactly 3/8ths the space of a crotchet so that it appears that it takes up 3/8ths of the space of a crotchet, and those notes appear to be temporally in order with any other rhythmically-different things going on at the same time (This is more or less reasonable I think, and is the easiest way to get this effect certainly). Is this the global scope? Or is it that one wants one bar to be the same length as another? Am I missing out on any other possible motivatory factors? |
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harmonyharmony
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« Reply #10 on: 20:14:32, 19-09-2007 » |
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I'm pretty sure I've seen pieces where you have a section that's piano, then there's a decres. hairpin, then there's another p after that. That is to say, in my mind, hairpins don't necessarily entail a constant increase/decrease in volume, that there can also be implicit an implicit dynamic change (in the opposite direction to the one that it's going it) at the start also. Am I mad?
It's kind of what my clarinet teacher told me about playing Brahms (i.e. that a diminuendo can imply an accent of sorts, starting one degree louder than the surrounding material).. The one situation that one might occasionally want is a crescendo from p and then, at the end of the cresc., a sudden return to a p dynamic. But to simply indicate that by means of p, then a hairpin, then another p would be ambiguous (since it could equally imply a drop below p before the start of the crescendo).
Not quite on this topic, but one thing that I've been doing for about four years, is occasionally not specifying an end dynamic to a dim. or cresc., but instead writing poco or molto (because if you're specifying the end point, these indications are surely a bit pointless?) underneath. Every single performer that I've shown this to has been more than happy with it and has known what I meant (I suppose it's a bit like 'phrasing-off') but a few composers have had real issues with it. |
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'is this all we can do?' anonymous student of the University of Berkeley, California quoted in H. Draper, 'The new student revolt' (New York: Grove Press, 1965) http://www.myspace.com/itensemble |
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richard barrett
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« Reply #11 on: 22:02:30, 19-09-2007 » |
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Regarding up-and-down stemming: there's an issue here which I wonder whether the notators among us have come across. Sometimes, for whatever reason, it's expedient to have notes in two different staves (say for piano) stemmed together with the beams between the staves (I believe the opening of Stockhausen's Piano Piece 9 is written like this, but I can't check just at the moment). When this then has to be combined with other instruments, or more polyphonic voices in the piano part, it can become rather annoying that the notes on the lower stave, "dressing to the left" as they do, are a note's distance away horizontally from the notes in the upper stave which go to the right of the stem. In time-space notation this would mean that one of these notes is inevitably in the wrong position! Of course, one way around this is to avoid this method of notation altogether; another (used by Henze I believe, or his copyist anyway) is to have stems intersecting all notes in the middle rather than either at the right or left, but this looks somewhat ugly to me, though I have resorted to it once or twice.
Assuming I've managed to express myself with sufficient clarity, any comments?
PS I'm downloading LilyPond even as I write.
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Evan Johnson
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« Reply #12 on: 22:07:37, 19-09-2007 » |
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Regarding up-and-down stemming: there's an issue here which I wonder whether the notators among us have come across. Sometimes, for whatever reason, it's expedient to have notes in two different staves (say for piano) stemmed together with the beams between the staves (I believe the opening of Stockhausen's Piano Piece 9 is written like this, but I can't check just at the moment). When this then has to be combined with other instruments, or more polyphonic voices in the piano part, it can become rather annoying that the notes on the lower stave, "dressing to the left" as they do, are a note's distance away horizontally from the notes in the upper stave which go to the right of the stem.
Yeah. Herr Cassidy is a Henzian in that respect, although I don't know of him ever using the sort of between-staff notation you describe. For myself, I manage to avoid the problem neatly through my belief that between-staff notation like that is uglier than stems intersecting noteheads in the center; if I had a piece where that sort of layout figured prominently I'd almost certainly choose the latter, Cassidian-Henzian solution. Never have, though. I think I recall Xenakis relying rather heavily on that use of stems in his piano music, and there being no effort made by him or by Salabert to line up the noteheads. I think the result is really, really ugly.(I stand corrected; in Evryali the noteheads do in fact line up when connected across staves by a stem, by virtue of the fact that on the lower staff the noteheads are on the right, and thus the wrong, side of the stem. This is what I remembered being ugly, I think; if so, I remembered correctly. It's hideous to behold.) |
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« Last Edit: 22:09:10, 19-09-2007 by Evan Johnson »
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Ian Pace
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« Reply #13 on: 22:13:22, 19-09-2007 » |
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I'll give a vote for the 'stems through the middle' approach - it probably only looks ugly because it's unfamiliar.
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'These acts of keeping politics out of music, however, do not prevent musicology from being a political act . . .they assure that every apolitical act assumes a greater political immediacy' - Philip Bohlman, 'Musicology as a Political Act'
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richard barrett
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« Reply #14 on: 22:35:14, 19-09-2007 » |
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my belief that between-staff notation like that is uglier than stems intersecting noteheads in the center I certainly agree that the Xenakis approach is very nasty indeed, though logical enough. As for the way stems intersect notes, my feeling is that if one takes the middle way then the notes themselves ought perhaps to be round rather than oval (as indeed they are in some scores from the 1960s). I assume that they want a dotted semiquaver to take up exactly 3/8ths the space of a crotchet so that it appears that it takes up 3/8ths of the space of a crotchet, and those notes appear to be temporally in order with any other rhythmically-different things going on at the same time (This is more or less reasonable I think, and is the easiest way to get this effect certainly). Is this the global scope? Or is it that one wants one bar to be the same length as another? Am I missing out on any other possible motivatory factors?
One reason is of course to do with synchronisation. Another is to do with simplifying the performer's process of getting to grips with rhythmically complex notation. (The length of bars isn't really relevant, since the metre could change with every bar anyway, or there might be no or very few barlines.) If one knows that an eighth-note in whatever tempo subtends, say, 1cm horizontally, it's much easier to get started with a 6:5 subdivision inside a 13:11 or whatever. The proportional notation isn't a substitute for assimilating the rhythms but it does flatten the learning curve somewhat, or such at least is what most performers tell me. A third reason is to do with ease of score-reading when one of the most obvious cues might be changes in overall density. And a fourth is that this is the most natural way for some composers (including myself) to visualise the notation of the sounds they have in mind. |
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