'Sib. 7.5: More on bagpipes: Piobaireachd'

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Sib. 7.5: More on bagpipes: Piobaireachd - Peter Castine, 21 Nov 11:48AM
     Re: Sib. 7.5: More on bagpipes: Piobaireachd - Peter Castine, 21 Nov 11:53AM
         Re: Sib. 7.5: More on bagpipes: Piobaireachd - Bob Zawalich, 21 Nov 05:33PM
             Re: Sib. 7.5: More on bagpipes: Piobaireachd - Bob Zawalich, 21 Nov 05:58PM
                 Re: Sib. 7.5: More on bagpipes: Piobaireachd - Rob Tuley, 21 Nov 08:44PM
                     Re: Sib. 7.5: More on bagpipes: Piobaireachd - Rob Tuley, 21 Nov 09:58PM
                         Re: Sib. 7.5: More on bagpipes: Piobaireachd - Adrian Drover, 22 Nov 08:06AM
                         Re: Sib. 7.5: More on bagpipes: Piobaireachd - Peter Castine, 22 Nov 10:16PM
                             Re: Sib. 7.5: More on bagpipes: Piobaireachd - Bob Zawalich, 22 Nov 11:26PM

Sib. 7.5: More on bagpipes: Piobaireachd
Posted by Peter Castine - 21 Nov 11:48AM (edited 21 Nov 11:49AM)
Particularly for Bob Zawalich and Bob Dunsire…

I'm trying to recreate the notation used by Roderick Ross in "Binneas is Boreraig." I have Bob Z.'s Bagpipe Suite, which gives a start.

Ross's convention was to use a three-line staff, basically the top three lines of a standard treble-clef staff (see attachment). The point is that the bagpipes never use the bottom line of a treble clef anyway, and by reducing to three lines you can write the entire range with only a single ledger line below the staff (for the lowest note, written G4) and one above (for the highest note, A5).

I've created a new instrument derived from Bob's "Bagpipes Stems Down," setting the Number of Staff Lines (Edit Instrument -> Staff Type) to three. The first problem, however, is that no ledger lines are drawn for the notes that lie one ledger line above or below the staff. (Sib starts to draw ledger lines starting once you get to two lines above or below the staff, but that's already outside the instrument's range).

Suppressing clefs and key/time sigs isn't a problem (piopaireachd music tends not to be in any strict meter anyway, at least not in Ross's notation). But finding an appropriate setting for "Initial Clef" is tricky. Ideally, I'd have liked to place a G-clef with G4 on the ledger line below the staff, but I can't find a way to do that. Bass clefs sort of work (at least the lines and spaces are the correct pitch classes, but wrong octaves, also for the bass clefs with 8va and 15ma signs).

The color is actually significant: Ross writes the Urlar ("ground" or "theme") in green and uses red and black for different variations. But I'll leave that for another question (if I can't solve that myself). Same for the idiosyncratic repeat mark in the manuscript.

(The point of the exercise is that I want to add cantairreachd--a kind of solmization traditionally used in learning this repertoire--as well as to tidy up Ross's manuscript, which also contains some errors in the original edition.)

I'll add a .sib file with my attempt to realize this so far.

Thanks for ideas,
-- Peter
Attachments Screen Shot 2015-11-21 at 11.34.21 .png (66K), Struan Robertson’s Salute.sib (40K)
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Re: Sib. 7.5: More on bagpipes: Piobaireachd
Posted by Peter Castine - 21 Nov 11:53AM
PS: Let's skip the dumb jokes about bagpipes right now. I've heard them. All. You have been warned.
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Re: Sib. 7.5: More on bagpipes: Piobaireachd
Posted by Bob Zawalich - 21 Nov 05:33PM
As you can probably tell by looking at my documents for the bagpipe plugins, bagpipe notation is quite idiosyncratic, and is not handled well by Sibelius. I will look at the details you mention when I have a chance, but I would suspect getting it to work will be somewhere between hard and impossible.

There are some bagpipe-specific notation programs - have you looked at any of them? It might be worth using one of them rather than trying to fit Sibelius into a cylindrical hole.

I worked on the bagpipe suite because the people I was working with were already using Sibelius extensively, so I tried to get it to be less painful. But is is still pretty fragile and awkward, and if it were me, I would probably work with another program if that were an option.

And no jokes from me. I like pipes. Banjos too. And harps and guitars, among other things.

--
Bob

An experienced user of Sibelius. Sib 1.2 - 7.5, Windows 7 Pro SP 1 64 bit, 8 G RAM. Year 2015.
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Re: Sib. 7.5: More on bagpipes: Piobaireachd
Posted by Bob Zawalich - 21 Nov 05:58PM
After just a quick look I don't understand why Sib would not put leger lines on as soon as the notes are outside the staff. It does so if I change a 5 line staff to 3 lines and drag notes around.

I notice that if I change the number of lines to 3, Sib automatically changes the gap between staff lines from 32 to 64. If you do that, the leger lines work as expected; if you change the gap to 32, I get the weird effect you see.

I don't know why it works this way, and I doubt anyone else does, but if you can live with bigger gaps, the leger lines work at 64.
--
Bob

An experienced user of Sibelius. Sib 1.2 - 7.5, Windows 7 Pro SP 1 64 bit, 8 G RAM. Year 2015.
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Re: Sib. 7.5: More on bagpipes: Piobaireachd
Posted by Rob Tuley - 21 Nov 08:44PM
Sibelius's idea of "a three line staff" is "it's still really a five line staff, but with the staff lines drawn in different places".

If you switch on leger lines for a 4-line staff, you can see the lines are drawn where the original staff had spaces (the G clef is now in a space, not on a line) and the leger lines start 1.5 lines away from the staff!

It works well enough for combining a few "one-line" percussion instruments on one staff, but it's not much use for anything else.

--
Rob

Sib 4.1, Windows 7.
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Re: Sib. 7.5: More on bagpipes: Piobaireachd
Posted by Rob Tuley - 21 Nov 09:58PM (edited 21 Nov 09:59PM)
> There are some bagpipe-specific notation programs - have you looked at any of them? It might be worth using one of them rather than trying to fit Sibelius into a cylindrical hole.

Lilypond has a "style" for bagpipe music including names for the grace note groups, etc, and getting the staff and leger lines and the "custom repeat" is easy: 

\new Staff \with {

  \override StaffSymbol.line-positions = #'(0 2 4)

  \override StaffSymbol.ledger-positions = #'(-2 6)

  \autoBeamOff \stemDown }



\relative c'' { \time 3/4  g a b c d e f g a \bar ";" g f e d8. c16 b8 a g4 

}

You can color everything, including staff lines etc. Stems and note flags on the "wrong" side of the notes, as in your attachment, is possible as well ... but this isn't a Lilypond forum!

--
Rob

Sib 4.1, Windows 7.
Attachment 3line.png (8K)
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Re: Sib. 7.5: More on bagpipes: Piobaireachd
Posted by Adrian Drover - 22 Nov 08:06AM
Posted by Peter Castine - 21 Nov 11:53
PS: Let's skip the dumb jokes about bagpipes right now. I've heard them. All. You have been warned.
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>

Dang!!!
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Re: Sib. 7.5: More on bagpipes: Piobaireachd
Posted by Peter Castine - 22 Nov 10:16PM
> > There are some bagpipe-specific notation programs - have you looked at any of them? It might be worth using one of them rather than trying to fit Sibelius into a cylindrical hole.

Since I'm already invested into Sibelius, I was hoping not to have to learn a new program, particularly because the output I've seen from bagpipe-specific notation programs hasn't been all that impressive. And, as opposed to "little music" for pipes (i.e., the typical folk-tune and dance repertoire), piobaireachd requires very flexible rhythmic capabilities. On top of that, Sibelius tends to do spacing better (to my eye), etc. etc.

Having seen the option to change the number of staff lines in Sib, I had hoped that would be the ticket. Since I want to keep the lines at the same distance as a five-line staff, it seems the ledger-line and clef problems are going to be deal breakers.-(

The pointer to Lilypond may be the way I'll end up going. Thanks.

-- Peter
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Re: Sib. 7.5: More on bagpipes: Piobaireachd
Posted by Bob Zawalich - 22 Nov 11:26PM
Suppressing clefs, is easy enough using the bars panel in the inspector or maybe in edit staff type. The ledger line stuff is harder. I have heard no explanation or workarounds.

--
Bob

An experienced user of Sibelius. Sib 1.2 - 7.5, Windows 7 Pro SP 1 64 bit, 8 G RAM. Year 2015.
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Messages in this thread

Sib. 7.5: More on bagpipes: Piobaireachd - Peter Castine, 21 Nov 11:48AM
     Re: Sib. 7.5: More on bagpipes: Piobaireachd - Peter Castine, 21 Nov 11:53AM
         Re: Sib. 7.5: More on bagpipes: Piobaireachd - Bob Zawalich, 21 Nov 05:33PM
             Re: Sib. 7.5: More on bagpipes: Piobaireachd - Bob Zawalich, 21 Nov 05:58PM
                 Re: Sib. 7.5: More on bagpipes: Piobaireachd - Rob Tuley, 21 Nov 08:44PM
                     Re: Sib. 7.5: More on bagpipes: Piobaireachd - Rob Tuley, 21 Nov 09:58PM
                         Re: Sib. 7.5: More on bagpipes: Piobaireachd - Adrian Drover, 22 Nov 08:06AM
                         Re: Sib. 7.5: More on bagpipes: Piobaireachd - Peter Castine, 22 Nov 10:16PM
                             Re: Sib. 7.5: More on bagpipes: Piobaireachd - Bob Zawalich, 22 Nov 11:26PM