Fermatas and Arpeggios
It seems to me that an arpeggio on a chord having a fermata ought not to be changed in the speed of its execution, but only in its being held afterwards. This isn't the case. I've created an arpeggiated chord with a fermata of 3x time stretch on it to accompany a "fade out" instruction-text. The arpeggio plays as if the notes were 3x longer and so the arpeggio takes longer to execute. Is this standard behavior? I would have thought otherwise. Any ideas?
Comments
I would have the same expectations you do.
Fermutas themselves do not actually have any specific playback behavior- all articulations have the "time stretch" component which is a factor that divides the current BPM of the score for the duration of the note with said articulation. Arpeggios simply divide up whatever chord into equal intervals for each note in the chord. If you want what you're describing, you'll have to go into the piano editor and manually alter the timing of the notes in the arpeggio so that they come earlier; since you've increased the time stretch by 3, consider having each note occur 3 times sooner.
In reply to Fermutas themselves do not by LuuBluum
Thanks for the information and for the workaround information. This makes me wonder why there's no shortcut for entering into the piano-roll editor: it doesn't update if you keep the window open while you edit the sheet-music; you've got to close it and open it again in the mean time. It'd be nice to have a quick key combination for this.
In reply to Thanks for the information by worldwideweary
Oh, entirely agreed there. The more functional the piano roll editor, the better. Most of the stuff I make uses it at some point or another to adjust automatic timings so that they're less... off. Especially with grace notes and arpeggios.
From the point of view of someone playing the music I'd have to disagree: I would not want to run into a fermata at full tempo. I would want to prepare for it by a (often tiny) ritardando and, yes, by slowed down arpeggio if applicable (though certainly not by a factor 3).
I do think though that this stuff is hard to automate and if you want to create musically meaningful playback you'll need bells and whistles to manipulate details like arpeggios and many others on a case by case basis.
In reply to From the point of view of by azumbrunn
Personally I've never heard of someone interpreting a fermata to mean slow down (and definitely not a slow down by factor of 3! :) and stop but just what it literally means as stop (and implied hold), but the interpreter/performer of course has the right to do so depending on the music. If I were intending this I'd explicitly use a poco rit. prior to the fermata just to be clear.
The reason for my particular use is to get an F.O. "Fade Out" rather than having to add extra measures and tie the chords together to prolong the duration, so there's no need for any slowing down here. Thanks for the input though, and definitely yeah all of the detail tweaks require a good amount of patience.
In reply to Personally I've never heard by worldwideweary
I think it's an internal implementation issue as to why it's implemented using a slowing down rather than a hold - something to do with handling cases where there are multiple staves, the fermata might be on different beat positions, etc. But it's not ideal to be sure.