One kind of grace note in palette

• Jul 29, 2011 - 02:19
Reported version
2.1
Type
Functional
Severity
S4 - Minor
Status
closed
Project

We currently have: Quarter, 16th and 32nd grace notes.

You can have 32nd acciaccaturas and 32nd appoggiaturas, but those aren't listed in the palette - you must click the existing 8th notes offered and change the value (same for grace notes listed above if value isn't offered).

To match the acciaccaturas and appoggiaturas, should we only have the one type of grace note in the palette that can be later adjusted?

Using MuseScore 1.1 and 2.0 Nightly Build (4616) - Mac 10.6.8.


Comments

I still think there is an imbalance (multiple values available for appoggiatura, whilst only one for acciaccatura). To address this, I propose that there be four types of grace note available in the palette:

Acciaccatura before note (implemented)
Acciaccatura after note (#19165: Acciaccatura after note)
Appoggiatura before note (can be presented as an 8th to match the others?)
Appoggiatura after note (implemented)

Once applied, the value can be changed.

It would might be better to do this before translation occurs? Perhaps it won't matter much and could be remedied later?

Well, musically speaking, there *are* different appoggiaturas, and there only *is* one type of acciaccatura. That is, different appoggiaturas are held for measurably different lengths according to the context and/or appearance. Whereas an acciaccatura has no measurable length at all - it is always conceptually zero-length regardless of context or appearance. One might choose to present it different visually - much as one might choose to draw an note with a longer or shorter stem than the default - but musically speaking, an acciaccatura is an acciaccatura is an acciaccatura.

So the palette is currently musically correct - there *must* be different length appoggiaturas just as there *must* be different length ordinary notes, since in fact an appoggiatura *is* an ordinary note in a way an acciaccatura is not. I would oppose forcing someone to enter a quarter note appoggiatura as an eight note appoggiatura and then changing it into what it truly musically is - a quarter note appoggiatura - just as I would oppose needing to do this with ordinary notes.

Whereas since there really is only one type of acciaccatura, there is no harm in there being only one type presented on the palette. Sure, some people might like to present it differently visually in certain cases, but there is no *musical* difference - it's purely a visual affectation. So it doesn't bother me a bit to need to take two steps to do it. On the other hand, it wouldn't bother me at all to see more acciaccaturas added to the palette - not that I can recall any user ever actually asking for them.

Now, there is one thing I would suggest here. There is little historical consistency in how these symbols are used, and the symbol we now refer to as an appoggiatura (the one with no slash) has often been used to indicate what we musically know as an acciaccatura. So if there is anything I would say is missing, it's the ability to create a symbol that is visually an appoggiatura but that plays back as an acciaccatura. I don't think this would make sense as a separate palette item - just as a property one could set on an already placed grace note. That is, user would place an appoggiatura then set a property to make it play back as an acciaccatura. Or, conversely, one might place an acciaccatura then set a property to make it display as an appoggiatura.

BTW, although there is a palette item for grace note after note (which is neither an appoggiatura nor a acciaccatura musically speaking - it's a totally different musical concept, used for trill endings), it isn't actually implemented. Add one to your score and you get an ordinary appoggiatura.

Well, by "not implemented", I mean it's not actually after the note - it's before. It's just a different icon for the exact same grace-note-before. Which is to say, it's not there is code to place the grace note after but there is a bug in the code - there is simply no code for this as far as I know. Last I heard it was an open question whether the feature will be implemented for 2.0 or not. And if not, presumably, the icon will be removed from the palette.

#13811: Select playback method of Grace Notes, Arpeggio & Glissando and Articulations & Ornaments does relate to what I was saying above, but it's much broader in scope. There's really only a couple of pretty situations where musical traditional has multiple meanings for the same symbol; I see no reason to go to the great lengths of making every single single have a large number of possible playback interpretations. Direct customization via the piano roll editors seems more than sufficient for the very few cases someone might want to override the standard behavior. It's really only the specific case of appoggiatur/acciaccatura (and also mordern/inverted mordern) where I think it makes sense for there to be special support for the multiple standards thayt do in fact exist.