Re: MEI Customisation

Hi James,

Thanks for your questions! These kind of discussions are normally best
placed on the MEI-L mailing list, but I am happy that questions like this
are of interest in this group too.
In answer to your questions:
1. In short, yes. Slightly longer: MEI separates logical from gestural
domain information. In this case I think @dur.ges is the attribute you are
looking for. This can express duration in a number of different absolute
units, including seconds (to floating point precision). In MEI by default,
no restriction applies to the symbolic or temporal length of layers, but it
would certainly be possible to impose such restrictions if they are
practical and required.
2. As far as I understand your point, this is basically already implemented
by the customization "hierarchy": mei-all allows all possible symbols and
modules with the least amount of restrictions, while mei-cmn, mei-Mensural,
and mei-Neumes define subsets.

I encourage you to post your questions to MEI-L for further discussion.

Zoltan


On Tue, May 24, 2016 at 12:34 PM, James Ingram <j.ingram@netcologne.de>
wrote:

>
> Hi Zoltan, All,
>
> Tido's recently published MEI customization
> <http://tido.github.io/mei-customization/> sparked a lively discussion...
>
> and
>
> For more information on MEI Go! please keep an eye on the MEI-L mailing
> list for updates
> <https://lists.uni-paderborn.de/pipermail/mei-l/2016/001796.html> and
> discussions. While it may not be the solution that the Community Group is
> looking for, I would like to draw attention to this effort as point of
> reference.
>
>
> I joined the MEI-L mailing list yesterday.
> MEI customization <http://tido.github.io/mei-customization/> says
>
> *We hope that this customisation can also be the starting point for a
> common basic MEI customisation* to be shared between several projects in
> future. We welcome comments and suggestions through GitHub issues.
>
> I've decided to post my comments and suggestions (questions actually)
> here, rather than on GitHub. Please repost there and/or to MEI-L if you
> think that's a good idea.
>
> I'm a beginner with MEI customisation, and need some help:
>
> Briefly: My problem with current encodings of CWMN is that they all assume
> that duration symbols have fixed meanings in a score, and that measures
> therefore "add up" at the symbol level. This ignores the performance
> practice tradition that is always associated with any humanly readable
> notation. In Mozart, for example, the last quaver under a slur is never
> played in the same way as the first. Ignoring performance practice
> traditions goes back at least to the invention of the metronome in the 19th
> century. I'm old enough to remember how awful the first computer renditions
> of Bach sounded in the early 1980s...
> I also think that the famous collapse around 1900 had more to do with the
> disintegration of fixed tempi, than with the exhaustion of harmonic
> possibilities. The notation collapsed because the conventions make no sense
> in the absence of humanly perceptible tempo.
>
> Whether this analysis is correct or not is, however, immaterial. :-)
>
> I want to make an MEI customisation that uses most of the symbols that are
> used by CWMN, but without assuming tempo. If there is no tempo, then
> neither tuplets nor grace-notes make sense. It should also be possible for
> the description of *more than one* temporal instantiation to be stored
> inside the XML elements that represent the score's graphics.
> I think that CWMN (as defined by both MusicXML and your project) could be
> regarded as a superset of such a customisation. If the *default* temporal
> realisation of such a score defined all the duration symbols to have fixed
> meanings, then <measures> could be made to add up at the symbol level by
> adding tuplet symbols (as annotations) and turning some notes into
> grace-notes.
>
> One advantage of having a tempo-less customisation would be that lossless
> transcriptions of recordings can be made, without going through
> "quantisation". I *compose* with milliseconds...
>
> So my initial questions are:
> 1. Can <measure> elements be redefined so that they do not have to add up
> at the symbol level? The different <layer>s in the measure must however add
> up in real time (milliseconds) in any one temporal realisation stored in
> the score.
> 2. Can you imagine such a hierarchy of customisations? I'm also thinking
> of the container hierarchy that could become part of the W3C standard for
> describing *any *polyphonic music notation.
>
> All the best,
> James
>
> --
> http://james-ingram-act-two.de
> https://github.com/notator
>
>

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