Re: Proposal: Symbols for metrical stress patterns

Hi Erik,

This certainly seems like a reasonable request to me. Thank you for being thorough with your citations and examples.

Please create an issue that captures this proposal and we’ll stick it in the hopper for the next revision of SMuFL (though I don’t expect to start work on that imminently).

Thanks!

Daniel

From: Erik Ronström <erik.ronstrom@doremir.com>
Date: Wednesday, 31 March 2021 at 21:34
To: public-music-notation@w3.org <public-music-notation@w3.org>
Subject: Proposal: Symbols for metrical stress patterns
Hi,

I would like to propose an addition to SMuFL: symbols for notating metrical stress/accent patterns. These are used primarily by musicologists and in educational contexts rather than in scores but they also provide a useful way of communicating ”groove” which is otherwise hard to catch using conventional sheet music.

An early example in ”A Generative Theory of Tonal Music” (Lerdahl/Jackendoff 1983) uses equally sized dots:

[cid:image001.png@01D72676.5B7F3A20]

The notation later developed into using filled circles of different sizes (generally four, corresponding to levels of metrical stress) and additional ”decorations” signifying accents and ”swing accents”. This is from ”Karaktäristiska låttyper i svensk folkmusiktradition” (Sven Ahlbäck, ~1985, sorry for the poor image quality):

[Ska¨rmavbild 2021-03-31 kl. 09.48.49.png]



Lundberg/Ternhag 1996:

[cid:854AFFBE-9B00-4D42-A8A2-3C01B522ABDC@lan]



So basically these are the full-size (major metrical stress) ”balls”:

[cid:image003.png@01D72676.5B7F3A20]

The same variants should exist for medium and soft stress also, plus a small dot meaning ”unstressed beat indication”. That makes 13 glyphs altogether. Of course it would also be possible to define the balls and the decorations separately and combine them when drawing, if the principles for registration is clear enough.

I don’t know if this falls into the scope of SMuFL but I’d be grateful if they could be considered!

Regards
Erik





Product Marketing Manager
Phone: +44 20 3696 1811

Steinberg Media Technologies GmbH
Beim Strohhause 31, 20097 Hamburg, Germany

President: Andreas Stelling | Managing Directors: Masahiro Ikeda, Jun Nishimura
Registration Court: Hamburg HR B 86 534 | VAT ID: DE118677139

Visit the Steinberg website<http://www.steinberg.net> or connect with us on Facebook<http://www.facebook.com/Steinberg>, Twitter<http://twitter.com/steinbergmedia>, Instagram<http://www.instagram.com/steinbergmedia> and SoundCloud<http://www.soundcloud.com/steinbergmedia>.
Watch our Cubase<https://www.youtube.com/cubase>, Dorico<https://www.youtube.com/dorico>, Mobile Apps<https://www.youtube.com/mobile_apps_steinberg>, Nuendo<https://www.youtube.com/nuendo>, Steinberg<https://www.youtube.com/user/SteinbergSoftware>, Audio Interfaces<https://www.youtube.com/audiointerfaces>, VST Instruments & Plug-Ins<https://www.youtube.com/VSTinstrumentsplugins> and WaveLab<https://www.youtube.com/WaveLab> videos on YouTube.