Je Voyage Tout Partout

[David Barnert]

4 hours ago, resistor said:

 

Pardon my ignorance, but shouldn't every measure be two half-notes in 2/2 time? I added the extra bar lines and split made the ties based on my understanding of that.

2/2 looks just like 4/4 but plays twice as fast, 2 beats per measure rather than 4. Each measure has 2 half notes or 4 quarter notes or any equivalent with the same amount of beats. When I suggested notating it in 2/2 I meant keeping the notes looking the same but counting only 2 beats per measure, in other words, what I provided in my most recent post, above.

[lachenal74693]

15 hours ago, David Barnert said:

[1] Not quite. I have made these changes:

• L:1/4 (and L: should come after M:)
• Removed every 2nd bar line
• Lengthened two notes that were tied across bar lines that I removed (changing F2- | F -> F3)
• Doubled the length of the last note

[2] I’ve screwed up the underlay of the text (I almost never deal with text in abc) and I leave that to you to disentangle.

[1] 1st bullet point: I think the recommended order for the 'essential' ABC headers is X:, T:, M:, L:, Q:, K:. I always use this ordering. If I need to use R: and P:, they go (in that order) immediately after the Q:. If used, C:, Z:, O:, etc. go immediately after the T:.

 

2nd bullet point: I'd already edited the bar lines myself because it looked 'wrong(-ish)'. This helps clear up at least one thing which has been bothering me since I started this music lark. In 'legacy' ABC files, I often see 'suspect' bar lines (or missing bar lines) in 2/2 and 2/4 tunes. I've always thought - "Well, this guy is an expert; he must be right and I must be wrong - though I don't understand why...". It is confusing, but I now begin to think that maybe 'this guy' isn't as much of an 'expert' as I fondly imagined. I will now have a little more confidence when I 'correct' such files, though it's sometimes difficult to decide if it's 2/2 with too few bar lines, or 2/4 with too many bar lines...

 

I think I may also start using 4/4 and 2/2 and drop C and C| completely - it's 'clearer'...

 

3rd & 4th bullet points: Ah! I didn't think of doing this with the F2- |F and the final note...

 

[2] The lyrics looks OK to me?

 

Thank you DB for helping me clarify this point, in my own mind at least...

 

Edited November 13, 2021 by lachenal74693

[Owen Anderson]

On 11/12/2021 at 7:35 PM, David Barnert said:

2/2 looks just like 4/4 but plays twice as fast, 2 beats per measure rather than 4. Each measure has 2 half notes or 4 quarter notes or any equivalent with the same amount of beats. When I suggested notating it in 2/2 I meant keeping the notes looking the same but counting only 2 beats per measure, in other words, what I provided in my most recent post, above.

 

After playing the various versions back in my MIDI player, what I’m noticing is the the change from 4/4 to 2/2 seems to consist of changing when the harmony chords are played? I do like the 2/2 version better, but I’m trying grasp the intuition for arriving at that decision.

[lachenal74693]

3 hours ago, resistor said:

...I’m trying grasp the intuition for arriving at that decision.

Me too - this 2/4, 4/4, 2/2 stuff does my head (ears) in. I find it really difficult sometimes to discern the differences...

 

I meant to ask: Are there any more verses? What's your translation of the title?

Edited November 15, 2021 by lachenal74693

[David Barnert]

3 hours ago, resistor said:

After playing the various versions back in my MIDI player, what I’m noticing is the the change from 4/4 to 2/2 seems to consist of changing when the harmony chords are played?

What it changes is how fast the “oom-pah” goes. In my (2/2) version and your 4/4 version, each quarter note gets either an “oom” or a “pah.” In your 2/2 version, the quarter notes get stretched to half notes and each gets a whole “oom-pah.” But the harmonic rhythm (how often the chords change) is the same for all of them.

[Steve Schulteis]

Coincidentally, this showed up in my YouTube feed recently: 

 

 

The video starts out very basic, but I think it does a decent job of explaining the difference. I just wish it mentioned 2/4 as well.

Edited November 15, 2021 by Steve Schulteis

[Paul_Hardy]

4 hours ago, lachenal74693 said:

Me too - this 2/4, 4/4, 2/2 stuff does my head (ears) in. I find it really difficult sometimes to discern the differences...

 

I think of 4/4 as going | Rhu-barb Cus-tard | Rhu-barb Cus-tard |

while 2/2 goes | Green Sheep | Green Sheep |

where all four of the bars are all about the same time length.

 

I think 2/4 is a case of the continuing inflation in ever shortening written note lengths.

I think of it as | Tip Top | Tip Top |

where the bars are shorter time duration than the Green Sheep.

[David Barnert]

2/2 is very useful for notating 32-bar tunes. Traditionally they might be in 2/4, but by changing it to 2/2 the 16th notes (semiquavers) become 8ths (quavers) and the 8ths become quarter notes (crochets). It plays at the same speed but uses a lot less ink and elbow grease (fewer beams and flags) and is easier to read (more white space).

 

Here’s Soldier’s Joy in 2/4:

 

 

 

 

and here is the same tune (to be played at the same speed) in 2/2:

 

 

[These two examples are from different sources, so there are invariably minor differences in the tune, for instance the first full measure of the B section.]

[Owen Anderson]

12 hours ago, lachenal74693 said:

I meant to ask: Are there any more verses? What's your translation of the title?

 

Nope, that's it. The title is literally "I Travel Everywhere" or "I Travel All Around", but I think it's more idiomatic in English to render it in past tense: "I Have Travelled Everywhere". I've made the same tense change in the English lyrics relative to the French ones.  There's a version of the lyrics in Tahitian as well, I should dig them up...

[David Barnert]

Here are some more verses. And in English (actually, ’murcan), no less.

 

 

[lachenal74693]

14 hours ago, Paul_Hardy said:

I think of 4/4 as going | Rhu-barb Cus-tard | Rhu-barb Cus-tard |

...

That's very helpful - despite the fact that Rhubarb and custard is a childhood memory I wish to forget!

 

Thank you!

[lachenal74693]

6 hours ago, resistor said:

...The title is literally "I Travel Everywhere" or "I Travel All Around", but I think it's more idiomatic in English to render it in past tense: "I Have Travelled Everywhere"...

Thanks!

[lachenal74693]

13 hours ago, David Barnert said:

Here’s Soldier’s Joy in 2/4: etc...

 

 

Not immediately relevant to this thread, but that's a very interesting post.

 

If I try and type in the first version of Soldier's Joy using (Easy)ABC, I see different results in the score window if I do or do not explicitly enter the default value of L (L:1/16 for 2/4). Points up the confusing inconsistency when we have different 'default' values for different meters...

[Owen Anderson]

17 hours ago, Steve Schulteis said:

Coincidentally, this showed up in my YouTube feed recently: 

 

 

The video starts out very basic, but I think it does a decent job of explaining the difference. I just wish it mentioned 2/4 as well.

Probably due to being very mathematically minded, I didn’t find that explanation very helpful. Essentially all of the demonstrations I’ve seen seem to boil down to “they sound different if I say 1-2-3-4 over one of them, and 1-2-1-2 over the other”. 
 

I’d dearly love someone to demonstrate a melody played in both time signatures without overlaying a count, so I could actually hear the difference.

[Jim2010]

4 hours ago, resistor said:

Probably due to being very mathematically minded, I didn’t find that explanation very helpful. Essentially all of the demonstrations I’ve seen seem to boil down to “they sound different if I say 1-2-3-4 over one of them, and 1-2-1-2 over the other”. 
 

I’d dearly love someone to demonstrate a melody played in both time signatures without overlaying a count, so I could actually hear the difference.

I just listened to the youtube video again and I think the first six minutes address your question directly.

 

Mathematically, 4/4 and 2/2 both consist of the duration of a whole note or two half notes or four quarter notes or some other combinations. But there is a subtle difference between emphasizing four beats in a measure vs emphasizing two. If you march around the room counting/emphasizing 1-2-3-4, 1-2-3-4 over and over, you will get one feeling. If you keep marching but only count/emphasize 1---3--, 1---3-- over and over (leaving out the 2 and the 4) you will feel something different. Marching 1-2-3-4, bam, bam, bam, bam over and over gives a feeling of "straight ahead," "directed," "purposeful."  Marching 1---3--, 1---3-- over and over gives a lighter, "swaying side-to-side feeling."

 

 

[Steve Schulteis]

43 minutes ago, Jim2010 said:

I just listened to the youtube video again and I think the first six minutes address your question directly.

 

Mathematically, 4/4 and 2/2 both consist of the duration of a whole note or two half notes or four quarter notes or some other combinations. But there is a subtle difference between emphasizing four beats in a measure vs emphasizing two. If you march around the room counting/emphasizing 1-2-3-4, 1-2-3-4 over and over, you will get one feeling. If you keep marching but only count/emphasize 1---3--, 1---3-- over and over (leaving out the 2 and the 4) you will feel something different. Marching 1-2-3-4, bam, bam, bam, bam over and over gives a feeling of "straight ahead," "directed," "purposeful."  Marching 1---3--, 1---3-- over and over gives a lighter, "swaying side-to-side feeling."

 

A detail that's mentioned in passing in the video is that typically the beats within a measure don't all get equal emphasis. In particular, the first beat is usually slightly stronger than the others. In my mind this is the clearest way that one measure with four beats can sound different from two measures with two beats each.

[David Barnert]

Let’s see if this makes it clearer.

 

X:1
T:Mary Had a Little Lamb
M:2/2
K:G
B2A2G2A2 | B2B2B4 | A2A2A4 | B2d2d4 |
w:Ma-ry had a lit-tle lamb, lit-tle lamb, lit-tle lamb.
B2A2G2A2 | B2B2B2B2 | A2A2B2A2 | G8 |]
w: Ma-ry had a lit-tle lamb, its fleece was white as snow.

 

X:2
T:Mary Had a Little Lamb
M:4/4
K:G
B2A2G2A2 | B2B2B4 | A2A2A4 | B2d2d4 |
w:Ma-ry had a lit-tle lamb, lit-tle lamb, lit-tle lamb.
B2A2G2A2 | B2B2B2B2 | A2A2B2A2 | G8 |]
w: Ma-ry had a lit-tle lamb, its fleece was white as snow.

 

They look identical but for the time signature. But in 2/2 you’d stress Ma- had lit- lamb. If you were walking (or dancing) your foot would hit the floor on each of those syllables.

 

In 4/4, each syllable gets the stress and footfall. Not very musical, if you ask me.

[Paul_Hardy]

On 11/13/2021 at 3:35 AM, David Barnert said:

2/2 looks just like 4/4 but plays twice as fast, 2 beats per measure rather than 4. Each measure has 2 half notes or 4 quarter notes or any equivalent with the same amount of beats. 

 

I think that "plays twice as fast" is wrong/confusing. A bar of 2/2 and a bar of 4/4 should both take the same amount of time, so no faster. The beats are twice as *slow* in 2/2.

 

On 11/13/2021 at 6:05 AM, lachenal74693 said:

I think I may also start using 4/4 and 2/2 and drop C and C| completely - it's 'clearer'...

 

Hear hear - I systematically switched tunes to numeric ratios when including them in my tunebook.

 

On 11/15/2021 at 4:52 PM, David Barnert said:

2/2 is very useful for notating 32-bar tunes. Traditionally they might be in 2/4, but by changing it to 2/2 the 16th notes (semiquavers) become 8ths (quavers) and the 8ths become quarter notes (crochets). It plays at the same speed but uses a lot less ink and elbow grease (fewer beams and flags) and is easier to read (more white space).

 

I agree entirely. Again I reset several tunes from 2/4 to 2/2 in my tunebooks to avoid use of semiquavers (16th notes for our American notation users) and make them much more readable.

 

It's interesting how the default symbol for a typical note seems to have suffered inverse inflation over the centuries, starting with breve and semibreve, and through crotchets and quaver, and heading for semiquaver. 'Breve' means 'short', but  its now longer than the longest note in common use (semibreve).