Re: Identifying to which note a grace note is attached

Hi Simon,

In both notated music and in MusicXML, grace notes and appoggiaturas are
not "attached" to notes that follow them (although ties or slurs could
provide such connections, as they do in non-grace-note cases). They simply
precede the following notes, in their order of occurrence on the page or in
a document.

If an application has a notion of attachment, that's up to the application.
MusicXML doesn't need to encode attachment, because music notation doesn't
have an inherent notion of such attachment.

That second scenario (grace note following normal note at the end of a
measure) is not seen in conventional notated music. Although one could
write it and encode it, its interpretation would be unclear to a performer.
It's not so much that the layout is correct or incorrect, as that the
conventional interpretation of a grace note or appoggiatura is dependent on
some normal note that follows it in the same measure.

Hope this helps,

.            .       .    .  . ...Joe

Joe Berkovitz
Founder
Noteflight LLC

49R Day Street
Somerville MA 02144
USA

"Bring music to life"
www.noteflight.com

On Wed, Sep 20, 2017 at 12:11 PM, Simon Giddings <mr.s.giddings@gmail.com>
wrote:

> Good afternoon,
>
> Firstly, my comprehension of music notation is not extensive, so please
> forgive me if I make any clearly wrong assumptions.
>
> When using notation software, we can add a grace note or appoggiatura to
> either the start of a note or after it.
> At this point, we can decide to link the notes with a tie, a slur or
> nothing as in this manner.
>
>
> I have two questions :
>
>    1. In MusicXML, how can I detect which to note the grace note is
>    attached since there is no tie or slur ?
>    2. Is this layout correct specifically for the second scenario ?
>
> Best regards
> Simon Giddings
>