Ray Keefe wrote: > Midi used 0-127 for program numbers because that fits into 7 bits of data > (Binary mathematics). [snip] > > There have been many good suggestions regarding numbering of bars and beats. > Each suggestion has merits. For instance, Beat 3 being the half way point > of a 4 beat bar seems silly from one perspective. Every musical theory book I've laid eyes on, not to mention my music teachers at school, always counted beats in the bar as 1, 2, ... etc. It makes NO sense to have the first bar numbered as zero! > my ability to make music. The idea of representing ticks as a positive > number from one beat or a negative number relative to the beat ahead of it > also has merit. -2 is easier to use than 238 (did I get that right?). I suspect that this may be harder to put into practice than to talk about. Tick 4.1.2.-32 is actually NOT at subdivision 2 of bar 4, beat 1! It's at subdiv 1; actually 4.1.1.209 in current parlance. > The segmentation of the measure into fields > does cause some problems though. eg. for a Decimal system, after 4.9 you > expect 5.0, not 4.10. Sorry but this is like the tape measure analogy; it's wrong! In decimal 5.0 follows 4.9; assuming that you add 0.1 to 4.9, that's maths! In Logic 4.10 follows 4.9 because "." is a placemarker separating the fields of a bar, NOT a decimal point. So 10 follows 9 because that field allows a value of 10. > I believe it is this latter issue that causes the most confusion. It is the lack of understanding of what the values represent that is the problem. When you see the date 4/2/99 you don't equate it to 0.0202 (ie 4 divided by 2 divided by 99)! Maybe EMagic should use a different symbol to separate the fields; instead of a "." they could use say "^". > We are happy if bars count OK, and many seem happy with > beats starting at 1, but we are used to zero based offsets within the > fractional fields. Maybe just the ticks should be zero based? No, the first tick in a subdivision is 1. -- /----------------------------------------- | Tommy Taylor - Systems Administrator, | | Biker and (supposed) Musician | | E-mail: tt@... | -----------------------------------------/