NOTION Music Forum

Does anyone know what the following conditions mean, or perhaps determined experimentally what notional event(s) effectively cause these condions' logic to switch on/off?

<if condition = "note-before-note" />
<if condition = "note-after-note" />
<if condition = "note-after-same" />

I have tried a few tests, but have not been able to figure these ones out. Intuitively they seem to hint at some capability to have a rule that could be based upon both the current note event and whatever note event comes either before or after. If so, this might be very useful in creaing rules that make a note act differently depending upon what immediately precedes or follows it. I am guessing that this might make it possible to create an effective response to certain notational subtlties like maybe geting phrase markings to actually tweek the beginning/ending notes of a phrase slightly.

Anyone have a clue what these conditions actually test for?
-DG

Very good question.

Same for both "note-on" / "note-off" "prefix" and "suffix": it needs some explication.

Regards

fabiolcati wrote:Same for both "note-on" / "note-off" "prefix" and "suffix": it needs some explication.

Note-on and note-off are pretty straight forward. In MIDI systems, a trigger signals for a note to sound (note-on) and a trigger to stop a note (note-off). So, a rule that specifies an action to happen on the note-on prefix means the effect will be triggered just before the note-on signal. A rule that specifies and action to happen on the note-off suffix indicates that the action is triggered just after the note sounds. It’s the same for note-off; with the prefix, the rule is applied just before the note is “turned off;” the rule is applied just after the note ends with note-off suffix.

I use a combination of the note-on/off and prefix/suffix techniques for my GPO legato rules in an effort to make the first note of a legato passage sound detache.

I’m not really sure how the other syntax mentioned in the OP works, though.

pcartwright wrote:I use a combination of the note-on/off and prefix/suffix techniques for my GPO legato rules in an effort to make the first note of a legato passage sound detache.

hmm... ok so "note-on-prefix" versus "not-off-suffix" is obvious enough to easily understand, but I am wondering how you exploit that in your own rules logic to effectively trigger a difference per only the first note and/or last note of a phrase? That seems like maybe you have figured out a trick that I could possibly adapt to accomplish very close to the sort of thing I had in mind. Phrasing is so important, and that tiny subtle gap that cues our ears to the end of one phrase and the beginning of the next is what I am looking for a way to coax out of the notation.

I can see perhaps using a <duration-change amount="0.6"/> on the last note of a phrase, but how do you get it to only happen on the last note and not the preceding notes? Are you setting a flag or using a special marking or something clever? I am intrigued and puzzled. Please elaborate a little more of your legato rules...

thx!

I'm not sure how a rule to indicate that the last note of a phrase be played shorter, but the rules you note from the original post may be useful... I just don't know. I think I can explain the logic of the note-on/off-prefix/suffix rules. See my legato rules for Aria:

<rule>
<!-- legato-->
<if condition="under-slur" />
<cc type="note-off-prefix" controller="64" value="127" />
<duration-change amount="1.02" />
</rule>
<rule>
<!-- not legato-->
<if not-condition="under-slur" />
<cc type="note-on-prefix" controller="64" value="0" />
<duration-change amount="1" />
</rule>

With a legato passage, the first note is bowed, tongued, etc, as if detache, all others are then played legato. In the rules above, I don't trigger the legato feature (CC-64) until after the note is played (note-off-prefix). Fortunately, CC-64 maintains its value to the next note unless the note isn't under a slur in which case CC-64 is reset to 0, ending the effect with the note-on-prefix syntax. Does that make sense?