Re: Microrhythm

[Han-Wen Nienhuys]

On Sat, May 26, 2018 at 8:35 AM, metachromatic <address@hidden> wrote:
>     To see how silly your comment on this issue is, let's calculate the
>  difference in time twixt a tuplet like 7919/4451 against a tuplet
>  7909/4447 over the course of two minutes and 13 seconds of 4/4 time at
>  a tempo of metronome marking 90:
>
>     The difference is (0.00064839149)*60/90 seconds per quarter note =
>  0.00043226099 seconds per quarter note.  But after only 200 quarter
>  notes (that is, 50 measures of 4/4, taking only two minutes and 13
>  seconds), that difference in timing has grown to ~ 1/11 second. And I
>  guarantee you that you can easily hear whether one melodic line is
>  offset from another by 1/11 second, since that equates to a difference
>  of slightly less than an eighth note at tempo 90.
>
>     Now, come on, Han-Wen...are you _really_ telling me the average
>  listener can't hear the duration of an eighth note a tempo mm = 90?
>  Seriously?
>
>     You're actually telling us that musicians should not bother to use
>  musical notes shorter than an eighth note at tempo mm = 90 because
>  ordinary listeners can't "such  carefully construed rhythmic finesse"?

I'm still baffled. I'm pretty sure you can find no human musicians
that can play notes in a 7919/4451 tuplet accurately, especially if
there is someone or something sitting next to them playing a 7909/4447
tuplet. If there is no human performer, then why are you using
LilyPond, which is a program for printing scores? Are you trying to
print these scores?



>     Please.
>
>     Broken tuplets offer a genuinely useful musical resource because
>  they provide a way for melodic lines to move out of sync with one
>  another. Since that lack of sync builds up cumulatively over time, it
>  very quickly becomes perceptible to anyone, anywhere, regardless of
>  your musical training -- as in, after a little over 2 minutes, the
>  out-of-sync timing amounts to slightly less than an eighth note.
>
>    So let's stop the silly efforts to marginalize or discredit this
>  kind of music, and try to focus on the real issue here: Lilypond's
>  internal integer representation cripples composers who want to use
>  broken tuplets. There are a whole boatload of current composers using
>  broken tuplets -- pop musicians as well  as classical honchos -- and
>  that list includes guys like Frank Zappa, and the music effect is
>  absolutely easily audible to anyone:

Yeah, those poor composers. They write 7909/4407 tuplets, and then who
would think that things break. Maybe the poor composers should try to
use Sibelius or Dorico instead? Also, I've heard you can typeset
tuplets with Finale too.

Good luck.

-- 
Han-Wen Nienhuys - address@hidden - http://www.xs4all.nl/~hanwen