The bar concept relates to the bar (or measure) in written notation. The MML bar element, however, is more abstract than the bar notation and is a unit of abstract time. Usually, for most popular music, there is a one-to-one relation between bar and the notation "bar". Esoteric music that cannot be described with a notational bar could nervertheless conceptually be described with the bar element, as long as there is a rhythmic pattern. Obviously the bar element would be irrelevant for non-patterned music as it is a structural concept. However, it may be possible to assign an artifical structure to unpatterned music and map it onto a series of bars. In such a situation the bars function as structural containers, and not necessarily to describe structures inherent in the non-structured song.
A bar contains a relative time unit such as a minim, quarter, eighth, etc.
A bar typically consists of a number of beats, and beats in turn of ticks. A bar with a time signature of 4/4 typically consists of four beats in the bar.
Bars in the song are numbered sequentially. Bars are structural units and used as fixed reference points in the flow of music events. The content of a bar typically contains note values.
| Start | Content | End | ||
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Tag | Attribute | Value | ||
| <bar | some attribute= | "xxx"> | </bar> | |
For more examples see the Time Module: Bar
<bar barid="1">... </bar> <bar barid="2"> ... </bar> ... <bar barid="n"> ... </bar>
© 1999, 2000 Author: Jacques Steyn