DURATION
As we said, all sheet music shows, at a minimum, the pitch and the duration of a note. In ABC notation, duration is shown as a following multiplier or divisor of the L: value. Although in my examples, I used L:1/4 (quarter note, one full beat in 3/4 or 4/4 meter), most ABC files on the web use L:1/8 (an eighth note, half a beat in 3/4 or 4/4 meter). This is easier to illustrate than to explain! Once again, fire up EasyABC and paste this into the code window!
X:1
T:Duration
M:4/4
L:1/8
K:C
C/2 C/2 C/2 C/2 C C C2 C2 | C4 C4 | C8 |]
As you can see, if the L: value is 1/8, a quarter note (1 beat) is multiplied by 2, a half note is multiplied by 4, and a whole note (4 beats) is multiplied by 8. Conversely, a 1/16 (half of an 1/8 note, is divided by 2, indicated by the forward slash (/2). The forward slash alone is equivalent to /2 (C/2 = C/).
In sheet music, a dot after a note means the duration of the note is 1.5 times its normal length, so a dotted half note in 4/4 meter receives three beats instead of two. This is easy in ABC since it is all relative to the L: value. If L: is 1/8, then the quarter note multiplier is 2 and the dotted quarter note multiplier is 3, and the half note multiplier is 4 and the dotted half note multiplier is 6.
There is special notation for a dotted eighth note and a sixteenth note combination called "broken rhythm." It uses the greater than symbol (">") and the less than symbol ("<") to avoid complicated constructs like G3/2G/2 - instead this can be written simply G>G. This is illustrated in the following code snippet, copy and paste it into EasyABC to observe the effect:
X:1
T:Broken Rhythm
K:C
G3/2G/ G>G G/G3/2 G<G |
As we said, all sheet music shows, at a minimum, the pitch and the duration of a note. In ABC notation, duration is shown as a following multiplier or divisor of the L: value. Although in my examples, I used L:1/4 (quarter note, one full beat in 3/4 or 4/4 meter), most ABC files on the web use L:1/8 (an eighth note, half a beat in 3/4 or 4/4 meter). This is easier to illustrate than to explain! Once again, fire up EasyABC and paste this into the code window!
X:1
T:Duration
M:4/4
L:1/8
K:C
C/2 C/2 C/2 C/2 C C C2 C2 | C4 C4 | C8 |]
As you can see, if the L: value is 1/8, a quarter note (1 beat) is multiplied by 2, a half note is multiplied by 4, and a whole note (4 beats) is multiplied by 8. Conversely, a 1/16 (half of an 1/8 note, is divided by 2, indicated by the forward slash (/2). The forward slash alone is equivalent to /2 (C/2 = C/).
In sheet music, a dot after a note means the duration of the note is 1.5 times its normal length, so a dotted half note in 4/4 meter receives three beats instead of two. This is easy in ABC since it is all relative to the L: value. If L: is 1/8, then the quarter note multiplier is 2 and the dotted quarter note multiplier is 3, and the half note multiplier is 4 and the dotted half note multiplier is 6.
There is special notation for a dotted eighth note and a sixteenth note combination called "broken rhythm." It uses the greater than symbol (">") and the less than symbol ("<") to avoid complicated constructs like G3/2G/2 - instead this can be written simply G>G. This is illustrated in the following code snippet, copy and paste it into EasyABC to observe the effect:
X:1
T:Broken Rhythm
K:C
G3/2G/ G>G G/G3/2 G<G |
