What to do about fermatas in ABC transcriptions of old printed tune books/MSS?

[Roger Hare]

This is a reasonably technical query about fermatas in ABC, so if you are not interested, stop reading now. You have been warned...🙂

 

In ABC transcriptions of old printed tune books and MSS, we sometimes see a fermata, often at the end of a section, but sometimes in the 'middle' of a tune.

 

Without the fermata, the bar in question may be 'underfull' if you simply count the number of notes in the bar. Sometimes, the number of notes in the bar is correct, and the fermata effectively extends the bar (ie: it is 'overfull'). The result is that if you play the tune back in (say) EasyABC, the whole thing sounds wonky - the rhythm is audibly irregular on playback. (Sometimes that's OK, sometimes it isn't - I guess it's rather subjective.)...

 

Those old musicians new exactly how long to sustain the fermata so that they played the tune correctly - and without that disruption of the rhythm, there was no problem.

 

(Easy)ABC (or rather the underlying abc2midi program) ain't that smart, and plays the fermata with a duration of note+1 or 2xnote depending on how you have %%MIDI fermata... set. It is likely that neither of these settings will do the job satisfactorily...

 

So, my questions are:

 

Should I 'live with it', or should I just delete the fermata and (if necessary) pad the bar out with a suitably extended value of the note in question? Does anyone have a better suggestion?

 

The question arises because when editing these older transcriptions of older tune books/MSS, I try to arrive at an edited version of the ABC which both looks OK (in the score) and sounds OK (on playback). I don't always succeed. I don't particularly like the practice of preparing two versions of a tune - one for printing the score, and one for playback...

 

Also, I'm always conscious of the fact that I'm editing someone else's transcription, and would prefer to change the music content of the transcription as little as possible - most of my editing is of a 'cosmetic' nature...

 

Here is an example of what I mean:

 

X:26
T:Meeting Of The Waters, The
%A lightly edited tune from Anon MS No. 2, Cocks Collection: <insert source>
%Rudimentary accompaniment chords generated by ABCMus, setting 0.
B:Anon MS No. 2, early 19thC, Northumbria, Cocks Collection. CAM2.26
Z:vmp. Steve Mansfield 2016
N:* BAG G<ED2 in MS
M:6/8
L:1/8
Q:3/8=75
K:Gmaj
d>c | "Em" BAG AGE | "G" DEG G2 A/B/ | "Am" cBA ABA | "G" dBG A2 A/B/ |
"Am" cBA ABG | "G" dBG HA2 G/A/ | "G" BAG GED | "C" DEG Hc2 B/A/ |
"G" "^*"BAG G<ED | "G" DEG G2 |]

In this case, the bars in question are in the middle of the tune (bars 6 and 8), and the effect of the fermata is to overfill those bars so it sounds a bit dodgy on playback...

 

I explained that astonishingly ineptly(🙁). I hope someone understands what I'm getting at...

 

Thanks.

 

Edited July 30, 2025 by Roger Hare

[Michael Eskin]

Well as you've probably already have discovered, in my ABC tool,  based on a highly modified version of abcjs, the fermatas are purely visual and have zero effect on playback.

[DaveRo]

I see there is a proposed enhancement to abcjs:

https://github.com/paulrosen/abcjs/issues/429

Do you know what the "different ABC player" mentioned is?

[Roger Hare]

3 hours ago, Michael Eskin said:

Well as you've probably already have discovered, in my ABC tool,  based on a highly modified version of abcjs, the fermatas are purely visual and have zero effect on playback.

Heh! I hadn't actually tried that, but it was going to be my next move, so you just saved me a few minutes....🙂

 

I can always fix the problem by simply binning the fermatas and modifying the affected bars as I outlined in my OP, but that seems a bit brutal. I would prefer (if I can) to respect the original MS/tune book and/or the work of the original transcriber, but If I can't, I'll just take the quick way out...

 

There's another gotcha here which I didn't mention - if I have 'Ignore fermatas' set (in EasyABC), all bets are off - it will then behave like your Transcription tool - I think...

 

It's a nightmare - there are other things which don't 'work' - !wedge! for instance, which will appear fine on the score, but is ignored on playback (from memory, I checked this using Paul Rosen's basic editor some time ago, and abcjs ignores this as well?).

 

It's a hard life for us 'Forensic ABC-ologists'...🙂

 

PS: Incidentally, the new CSS features seem to be working fine - thank you!

Edited July 30, 2025 by Roger Hare

[DaveRo]

Here is how EasyABC plays it:

 

FWIW I prefer it with the pauses, to acknowledge the existence of the fermata. But that may be because I'm used to them playing like that. And as you said, you can turn them off in settings.

[David Barnert]

6 hours ago, Roger Hare said:

There's another gotcha here which I didn't mention - if I have 'Ignore fermatas' set (in EasyABC), all bets are off - it will then behave like your Transcription tool - I think...

 

That would have been my suggestion. I don’t know all the ins and outs of abc extensions that start with %%. Is there no way to use that to set up a command to ignore fermatas in other apps?

 

Remember: Fermatas don’t always mean “hold.”  Note this paragraph in Wikipedia:

 

Quote

In chorales by Johann Sebastian Bach and other composers of the Baroque, the fermata often signifies only the end of a phrase, and a breath is to be taken. In a few organ compositions, the fermatas occur in different measures for the right and left hands and for the feet, which would make holding them impractical. “In the older music the sign for the fermata is used, as frequently by Bach, merely as indicating the end of the piece, after a Da Capo, when modern composers usually write the word ‘fine.’ It does not then imply any pause in the music between the first and second part of the number.”

 

[Roger Hare]

1 hour ago, David Barnert said:

[1] That would have been my suggestion. [2] I don’t know all the ins and outs of abc extensions that start with %%. Is there no way to use that to set up a command to ignore fermatas in other apps?

 

[3] Remember: Fermatas don’t always mean “hold.”  Note this paragraph in Wikipedia:

[1] That's what I've been doing for some time (couple of years), which means that I don't actually have a problem. The panic set in when I realised that other folks might not have fermatas turned off, and possibly would end up in a mess if I sent them some of my files. Hence the original question...

 

[2] I don't know about that one, I'm afraid. My knowledge of music programs other than EasyABC is a bit limited, though I'm slowly getting to grips with ME's program...

 

[3] ..."In the older music the sign for the fermata is used, as frequently by Bach, merely as indicating the end of the piece, after a Da Capo, when modern composers usually write the word 'fine.' It does not then imply any pause in the music between the first and second part of the number."...

 

Interesting. Thank you.

 

Fortunately, I don't play the concertina with my feet - though some folks might say I'd be a better player if I did...🙂

Edited July 30, 2025 by Roger Hare

[Leonard]

11 hours ago, Roger Hare said:

......

Fortunately, I don't play the concertina with my feet - though some folks might say I'd be a better player if I did...🙂

You might try this one:

https://bandoneon-maker.com/foot-bass/

[Roger Hare]

11 hours ago, Leonard said:

You might try this one:

https://bandoneon-maker.com/foot-bass/

Nothing to do with fermatas, but I did look at the possibility of buying a foot-operated shruti box a few years ago, but decided against it. I wasn't aware of that Harry Geuns offering, as it's some time since I looked at his web site. Interesting, but a bit pricey...

 

Thanks to Michael Eskin, David Barnert and DaveRo for your input!

Edited July 31, 2025 by Roger Hare