The relative loudness of beats in a bar, ie (accented) beats.
Music can be described in terms of rhythmic patterns of accent -- not all notes in a bar have the same loudness. So apart from pitch and time, there is also the emphasis which notes receive. This relative emphasis is declared with the accent element. Accent values are expressed as percentages compared to the loudest beat in the song, or alternatively, the loudest beat in a phrase (in which case accent needs to be a child of phrase).
| Start | Content | End | ||
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Tag | Attribute | Value | ||
| <accent | some attribute= | "xxx"> | beat number percentage |
</accent> |
| accent applies to beat | ||||
Here is an example of the long form of the accent. The beat numbers are indicated before the cola.
<accent> 1:10 2:15 3:20 4:15 </accent>
It is not necessary to explicitly accentuate each beat. Only selected beats may be highlighted. Here the relative accents of beats 2 and 4 are indicated.
<accent> 2:15 4:15 </accent>
This markup is translated into English as follows: The division's default note value is 1/8 notes. Bar 6 consists of 8 1/16th D-notes in octave 3. The notes become progressively louder from the first (65%) to the last (100%). On beat 8 there is a crash cymbal (note F-sharp) in the same octave. There are 3 1/4 rests in bar 6 before the crash.
This example would describe a snare intro that ends together with a crash cymbal. In this example noteset equals octave.
<bar barid="5" noteset="3">... <div> :8 <insrument type="snare"> <bar barid="6" note="(:16)8">D <accent>65 70 75 80 85 90 95 100</accent> <bar barid="7">... <insrument type="crash"> <bar barid="6">(R:4)3 Fs </insrument> </div>
© 1999, 2000 Author: Jacques Steyn